Understanding that modern music listeners are wellinformed and know what they want has led The Rubbish Zoo to approach their music with a simple formula: Craft intelligent indie rock songs that spill over with catchheavy hooks. Pair this with an exuberant live show, and the band’s end product is anything but simple.
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The Rubbish Zoo is the combined effort of the bands Save My Hero and This Isn’t Congress. Jordan Born, Ian Rowe, Jason Joyce, Jerrick Romero, and Adam Rowe hail from Cheyenne, Wyoming, where all five grew up and started playing music. When Save My Hero approached Ian Rowe, the then singer/bassist of This Isn’t Congress, to record an EP for them, Rowe ended up playing drums on the EP and eventually stepping in as fulltime drummer for the band. Soon plans to combine Save My Hero and the Rowes’ band were made and the group moved to Los Angeles in August of 2010.
Early on the bands marketed themselves independently, but found it more sensible to create a unified moniker to start anew in the LA scene. All five members played multiple instruments for their first run of shows in Fall ‘10; switching off instruments to play a split set of
both bands’ songs. But, determining that the band should exist in a form with the most potential, each person took on only one instrument. Jordan Born and Ian Rowe now share lead vocals, switching between songs and playing rhythm guitar and bass respectively. Jerrick Romero remains on lead guitar, Jason Joyce is now on synth, and Adam Rowe is playing drums fulltime.
The band recently finished creating and releasing their first EP, “A Great Detective Race”. Selfrecorded and mixed at their home studio, TRZ see the album as three steps forward: one step from each of their bands’ earlier material, and one collective step as they learn to
share songwriting responsibilities and craft a sound that is wild and diversea summing up of five individuals with unique tastesbut that will always play out as cathartic and inherently “whole”.
“We want every song to sound different, simple as that may be,” explains Romero. “There are some bands I listen to where all the songs begin to blur together. My hope is that someone can listen to any one of our songs and foremost tell it is a Rubbish Zoo effort, but then have to invest a few more listens before they can tie certain themes and ideas together.” The band interweaves these themes into each song in hopes of making their music an expanding, yet cohesive unit. Adds Born, “The most important key for us as writers is finding the balance between these intricate musical themes and working with popsensibility; so that people will want to listen more than once.”
With crowd pleasure being their sole focus, the band has developed an energetic, electric live show, that is continuously molding and developing to offer something new to every audience. “Our live show should be a compliment to our record, not one in the same,” says Ian Rowe. “We work hard to adapt our songs to a live setting. It’s our job to best understand how to best bring out the energy of everyone in the room. There’s something so perfect about seeing a show and getting the feelgood chills when a song hits home.” This focus has earned the various renditions of the band opening slots for Rx Bandits, This Providence, Rademacher, The Swellers, The Graduate, Justin King, PlayRadioPlay! (now Analog Rebellion), and Thieves and Villains. “Whenever we are around each other we are having fun. We’re happy and upbeat. The music we record is a glitterlined, dirty amalgamation of emotions, and only a small look into who we are,” adds Joyce. “The live performance gives us a chance to put on our game faces and let our brighter selves come through. In this setting we are able to expand and
embellish the record, to demonstrate that our songs are most fun when you don’t take them too seriously.”
However, when it comes to the future, TRZ are very serious. Adam Rowe relates, “There’s always room to improve. Whether it be our live performance or the songs we write, we can always be better. That’s why making music is so exciting; there’s no limit to our potential as a band.” Joyce adds on, “We look at all we do as part of a creative process. That means that we may not end up with simply an album at the end of the day, but our creativity coming through in other mediums, which are still inherently part of the band. We definitely plan to share these alternative mediums with our audience when they arise. I see them as positive means of accentuating our music. And hopefully,
through these ventures, we can inspire fans to be creative on their own.”
