The Rubens are three brothers and a drummer whose biggest influence is the Black Keys. Music Feeds caught up with the guys before their show at Mum this Friday and we got the lowdown on the plans for the first album.
Music Feeds: How did you guys meet and decide to start playing in a band together?
Sam Margin: Well we are three brothers (Zaac, Sam and Elliott), and our drummer Scotty is a friend from school, so we basically formed at our parent’s house in our bedroom. We started writing songs in Sam’s bedroom and recorded them on his laptop, but when we decided to play live we realised we needed a drummer so we got Scotty on board.
MF: Do you guys all come from a fairly musical background?
SM: Yeah, we’ve all played different instruments and were in other bands before The Rubens. Our parents kinda tried to force us to play something when we were younger, we hated it then but I guess we’re glad we did now…
MF: How would you describe your sound?
SM: Like the Wild West, with lots of reverb and tremolo, but with strong soul and blues influences.
MF: One of the more obvious influences you can hear in The Rubens is The Black Keys, who are some of the older, more obscure influences for The Rubens
SM: Yeah, we cant deny that the Black Keys are our biggest influence, but we love them so it’s cool to be compared to them. Generally, our other influences come from the 60s and 70s and they include Van Morrison, The Doors, The Rolling Stones, Al Green, Jefferson Airplane etc.
MF: What’s the inspiration behind the songs you write?
SM: Not really sure, we’ve never really decided on a particular theme for a song, it just kinda happens… we have really had enough of young bands writing rubbish songs about clubbing, being drunk, clubbing and vomiting in clubs. We want to write songs that people can enjoy and relate to, drunk or sober.
MF: You’ve got a few really good demos floating around the interwebs at the moment, are there any plans to record an EP or album in the near future?
SM: Why thank you, well we are planning on releasing a couple of singles really soon and are actually having talks right now about recording a full length album around the end of the year.
We figure skipping an EP and coming out with an awesome album would be cool. The plan will be to rent a house for a month and all live there during recording, our engineer and producer will be there with us drinking beer and relaxing their bodies. We will be using some really interesting vintage recording techniques similar to how Tame Impala recorded Innerspeaker so we cant wait to make it happen.
Check out Rubens at MUM this Friday 29th July along with Let Me Down Jungle Man, Grams, Corpus, The Ganaschz, Simo Soo and Vulture Culture
