Still, Rouse is pleased with the work and its reception, and he and Wagner continue to work on more songs together, with Rouse giving melodies to Wagner for the veteran’s lyrical input. “Usually the stuff I’m having trouble coming up with words for, I give to Kurt,” Rouse chuckles.
Rouse’s second full-length album, Home, opens with a low hum, followed by a distant rhythmic clicking. Then the song “Laughter” starts, with its shuffling beat, rising, mournful guitar, and snappy, immediately hummable chorus — accompanied by violin the first time, and later by a horn section. Despite the uptempo pace and the extra instruments (on “Laughter” and on other tracks), Home retains the core qualities of the first record. The songs are quiet and catchy, with the muted colors of an autumn weekend.
Rouse may take whatever comes down from above, but not for nothing does his music come out so suffused with the joy of melody-making, and not for nothing is there an undercurrent of sadness to it, and not for nothing is his album called Home. Almost subconsciously, the once-rootless musician lets his life drip into his work: his yearning for a solid place to live, and the power of his talent to take him to that place. All of this from a young man picking around, if he has the energy after he and his wife get home from work.
And that process — the process by which a song goes from being a whim in the living room to being etched by lasers onto plastic — is as simple and mysterious human reproduction. Some days, not every day, Rouse sits down with his guitar. When he’s got a melody, and words that “make sense,” he starts thinking about a counter-melody, and an arrangement. Then he puts it all into his four-track, but Rouse says, “I don’t like to get it too ‘done.’ If the demo’s too good, it’s hard to re-create it in the studio. The demo of ‘Marvin Gaye’ [on the new album], I got so used to the sound that it didn’t sound right when we finally recorded it.”
He wants to keep it open so that he and regular collaborator David Henry can build the song in the studio. On “Laughter”, for example, Rouse says that “I knew the trumpet, I knew what the strings would be. I just like to substitute other instruments for the guitar. It’s more interesting for me. I like bands that do that, like Lullaby for the Working Class, or Lambchop, or Belle & Sebastian.”
Rouse was initially worried that all the additional instrumentation — which he describes as “three chords, but really orchestrated” — would diminish whatever charm had appealed to people on the relatively spare Dressed Up Like Nebraska. “I like to make records that sound real,” he says. “I knew going in that I wanted to do a subtle record. Despite all the extra instruments, it still sounds really spare.”
In other words, he thinks it sounds like a Josh Rouse record. “I’ve kind of got my own little thing going on. But it does sound like a nice step up. The playing’s better, the singing’s better.”
Vocals are very important to Rouse. He says his favorite acts are those with strong lead vocalists, and he’s worked hard to give his own sandy tenor some distinctive shades. With practice, he explains, “you get to know your voice, where you can push the notes.”
Although he doesn’t think too much about the science of songwriting when he gets inspired to pick up his guitar, he does try to grow in the recording, and to avoid sounding too repetitive. On Home, Rouse says, “I tried to stay away from open E tuning, because I did that before, on the first album. Now I’m like the major 7 king, those easy listening chords.”
After the recording of any song, Rouse tries to hear it the way someone who’d never heard him before might hear it. To get that distance, “I listened to [these songs] while I was cooking. I definitely wanted an ‘around the house’ record.” Still, he insists again, “This record is definitely not roots-rock. I’m not singing songs about ‘Mama.’ It’s a pop record.”
As Rouse waits for the release of Home, he finds his year 2000 all but booked. He went to Europe in January to do press, immediately after which he went on tour with the Cowboy Junkies for a month. Michael Timmins called Rouse personally to ask if he wanted the opening slot; added to previous appearances with Wilco, Son Volt and Golden Smog, it’s another roots-rock association for an artist who’d just as soon shun the label.
Home hits the record stores in mid-March, accompanied by a push for the first single, “Directions”. That’s the only song on the record not produced entirely by Rouse and Henry; Brad Jones was called in to give the simple ditty a little punch. When asked if this was the label’s idea, Rouse concedes that it was, but it sits just fine with him. “It doesn’t matter. I know that’s the most accessible song on the record. I also know that I’ll probably get the same radio play that I had last year.”
Slow River plans to put a little promotional muscle behind Home, building on the warm reception of Dressed Up Like Nebraska and Chester. “They’re going to spend some money on it,” Rouse acknowledges. “But I don’t even know what that means.” He has a practical vision for his nascent career. “We’d like to get to the level where we have a fluke hit, sell maybe 50 to 100 thousand records.”
But so long as Home does well enough to get Rouse to his next record, he’ll be happy. He says that the third record is almost completely written already. “The record industry is always a year behind the artist at least. By six months in [after the first album was released], I was tired of beating those songs.”
He’d also like to get out from under a burden quite common to young artists with a record deal: debt to the label. Despite having his songs appear on “Dawson’s Creek” and “Party Of Five”, any lucrative licensing fees went straight against his overhead. Until embarking on the Cowboy Junkies tour, Rouse was parking cars at a tony Nashville restaurant, a job that he hopes he’s quit forever.
Of course, if he has to, Rouse will suck it up and go back to work to keep the bills paid. And if the gift of music ever falls through completely, the young artist has fantasies of becoming a professional chef. He has an affinity for cooking; he enjoys taking a handful of random ingredients and turning it into a meal — letting creativity work through his hands while they’re holding a tomato and a knife.
Where that gift comes from, what it might mean, whether it be done with melodies or vegetables, Rouse can’t explain or fully understand. “I just play around until I come up with something I like,” he says with resignation. “I pick up a guitar and my fingers will fall into the right place.”
Noel Murray is a freelance journalist who has written extensively about movies and rock ‘n’ roll. His work appears regularly in the Nashville Scene and in C-ville Weekly (in Charlottesville, Virginia). He currently lives in a dry county in central Arkansas, and makes frequent beer runs to Little Rock.
