Interview: The Ruta Beggars

Interview

Kyle Bulger: How do the Ruta Beggars maintain stamina throughout traveling and consecutive shows?

Micah Nicol:  We try to put new songs into the set every night and do things to mix it up. Every show is already a little bit different, but something large, like a whole new song or a couple new songs help to keep it fresh. And of course, the audience is different every night too, so that always feels special. But as for traveling, we do our very best to get enough sleep and stay well fed.

KB: And going back to the different audiences of each show, how does an audience influence you when you're playing live as opposed to playing alone in the studio?

MN: [The audience] is what I consider the thing that I get the most joy out of from music, I think the thing that initially pulled me to playing music in the first place was doing it for an audience. So to me, the observer is really who the event is for, I am entirely there in service to their joy, their escape from the mundane or the stressful. And every audience responds to different things. Some people really like a calm, collected sort of run of the night, some audiences are hooping and hollering. They just want to dance and party and make a lot of noise, which is really fun also. 

KB: Does the Bluegrass genre specifically entail audience participation?

MN: Yeah, I think bluegrass music is a special genre in that most of the audience is there also to jam and play. And playing with people who are your heroes in your band is not that far stretched. Everyone is interested in playing with everyone, and everyone's just there to love the music because they also love playing it themselves.

KB: Is that part of the reason why you guys started teaching music lessons? 

MN:  Yeah.  Our old banjo player, Trevin Nelson, is a big teacher, and our bass player (Noah Harrington) is always teaching folks, giving private lessons. I like to teach in a group setting a lot, and I think people find a lot of value in knowing about the music and can find appreciation in the technicalities of it in addition to just like, oh, these lyrics move me, or this beat moves me in a different way.

KB: And for those who aren't familiar with Bluegrass, say the college students here, what might they expect from the show and the Riviera? 

MN: The things that we prioritize, our energy, good songs with good stories and having a lot of fun, so that's sort of what bluegrass means to me. But by extension, musically, you can expect to see guitar, banjo, fiddle, mandolin, bass, those types of instruments, all acoustic. There’s also a lot of goofiness, but really the main thing is a fun time.

KB: The lyrics , is it you that predominantly writes the lyrics or is it a collaborative experience? 

MN: For most Ruta Beggars material, I have been the primary songwriter. We did a thing called song potato during COVID, but we kept it up for a little while where someone would start with a lyric or a melody and then, hot potato, toss it to the next person for them to add in their piece.

KB: Where exactly do you get your songwriting and your stories from? Do you draw from your personal life when writing those stories?

MN: Yeah, a lot of the love songs are sort of direct stories, or at least about the feelings that I've had in my life. There's a song directly about my grandparents that's sort of our homage to Alzheimer's and memory loss and the pain that brings and dealing with that. We also sort of draw on the traditions of bluegrass, like the murder ballad and moonshine. So on our soon-to-be-out record, there's a song called Mountain Rain, and that's our obligatory moonshine song. 

MN: That's right. Yeah. So we recorded it last year, and it's our first album on a record label. We've been independent up until then, it's very exciting for us. We worked with Jim Van Cleve, who's one of my favorite bluegrass musicians. He was our producer, the longest album that we've put out so far, and it'll have the widest breadth of material.

KB: When you say “widest breadth”, where are you pivoting in terms of the music?

MN: Something that's been part of our brand is swing, it’s our special spice in a way. It's done in an even more ridiculous way [on the new record]. We've got kazoos on it and we're shouting the lyrics at different points. Some very progressive sounds where it’s not just bluegrass rhythm, but each instrument is being used in a way that it isn't typically being used in bluegrass music.

[End of Interview]

If you want to check out The Ruta Beggars, they will play Friday, January 31, 2025 at the Riviera Theatre in Geneseo. If you can't make it, you can listen to their studio releases on streaming services, therutabeggars.com or their refreshingly wacky music videos on their YouTube channel. After you’re done tapping your feet to The Ruta Beggars, tune in to 89.3 WGSU-FM, where our 24/7 rotation of alternative and indie will have something just for you.