{"id":152376,"date":"2026-01-27T23:50:07","date_gmt":"2026-01-27T23:50:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/152376\/"},"modified":"2026-01-27T23:50:07","modified_gmt":"2026-01-27T23:50:07","slug":"oakland-band-digs-into-country-rock","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/152376\/","title":{"rendered":"Oakland band digs into country-rock"},"content":{"rendered":"

Oakland-based musician Joe Rut<\/a> has been writing songs and releasing them on his own for a long time. Over the years he\u2019s delved into folk, electronic and experimental music, but said country has always been in his heart.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I was a kid, my neighbor in Bakersfield played pedal steel,\u201d Rut said. \u201cI\u2019d hear him practicing all the time, and it stuck in my head. Later on, we lived up the canyon from Merle Haggard\u2019s place. That made a cool connection in my head when listening to his albums.\u201d<\/p>\n

That connection is highlighted in the lyrics of \u201cUndercover Truckin\u2019 Man,\u201d the opening track on Joe Rut & the Sunshine Shovelers\u2019 eponymous debut. Rut sings: \u201cI like Merle Haggard, but he wouldn\u2019t have liked me.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rut took piano lessons in grade school, but they didn\u2019t stick. He asked his parents for a guitar because he wanted to be Ace Frehley of KISS. When his guitar teacher told him the members of KISS \u201cweren\u2019t real musicians,\u201d he stopped playing\u2014until high school. \u201cI found a friend who knew all the classic rock riffs. That\u2019s when I started hearing songs in my head,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

When working\u00a0an office\u00a0job and following his muse came into conflict,\u00a0Rut\u00a0quit\u00a0his job. \u201cThat was about 30 years ago,\u201d he said. \u201cI decided I was going to focus on songwriting. I drove up to the Sierra foothills, rented a cabin, tore the radio out of my \u201967 Fairlane Wagon and put the TV in the garage. I cashed in my 401k to buy instruments and recording gear that I did not know how to play or use. Two years later, I had my first album recorded. I never looked back.\u201d<\/p>\n

Over time, Rut put out experimental albums as Lumper\/Splitter, played in the country-noir band Loretta Lynch\u2014he was the only man in an all-woman band\u2014and made folk albums under his own name, including San Pedro and Sunflower. He never intended to start a band, preferring to capture the tunes he heard in his head on his own. Then fate intervened.<\/p>\n

\u201cA few years back, I was doing a gig as a solo acoustic act,\u201d Rut said. \u201cTim [Rowe], the drummer for the headliner, came up to me after my set and said, \u2018I dig your songs, let me know if you ever need a drummer.\u2019 Five minutes later, Russ [Kiel] came up to me and said, \u2018Let me know if you ever need a bass player.\u2019 I said to myself, \u2018Well, it looks like I\u2019ve got a band.\u2019 Jamie [Duncan], another musician I knew, was the obvious person to ask to play lead guitar, and there you go.\u201d<\/p>\n

The band honed their performances for over a year, leaning heavily into the country rock sound of Rut\u2019s childhood home of Bakersfield. Finally, Rut figured it was time to head into the studio.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI showed these songs to the band, playing guitar and singing,\u201d Rut said. \u201cThe arrangements are the result of four minds looking at these stories from different angles, being sensitive to what furthers the story and what does not. It was fun to be in the studio and not be steering the ship.\u201d<\/p>\n

The band played the songs live, with no click track, then decided what they wanted to fix or overdub. The result is an album that sounds like a series of short stories set to music.<\/p>\n

A mid-tempo country groove opens \u201cHitcher.\u201d Rut sings in a high tenor, describing the advice a truck driver gives to the guitar-playing boy he picks up. They smoke weed as the driver describes the hazards of the road and listens to the tunes the youngster plays.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe Gonna Have A Party\u201d lives up to its title, with a honky-tonk groove and a humorous lyric, full of over-the-top images. Duncan\u2019s guitar solos echo the sound of Roy Nichols, Haggard\u2019s lead guitarist, who blended jazz, country and rock.<\/p>\n

Rut & the Sunshine Shovelers will play songs from their debut at their album-release party at the Ivy Room. \u201cI love the precision of studio recording, but it ultimately pales to the excitement and abandon of playing live,\u201d Rut said. \u201cWe\u2019re stoked to finally bring this album into the light.\u201d<\/p>\n

Joe Rut & the Sunshine Shovelers<\/a> play the Ivy Room on Friday, Jan. 30, at 7pm. Ruby Lee Hill opens. 860 San Pablo Ave., Albany. ivyroom.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Oakland-based musician Joe Rut has been writing songs and releasing them on his own for a long time.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":152377,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[75129,143,145,57674,36325,144],"class_list":["post-152376","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-oakland","tag-country-rock","tag-oakland","tag-oakland-headlines","tag-oakland-music","tag-oakland-musicians","tag-oakland-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152376","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=152376"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152376\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/152377"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=152376"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=152376"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=152376"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}