Rich Ruth's Journey From Spiritual Jazz to Death Metal Noise: The Echoes Interview. Wicked Game turns 35.
This weekend on Echoes we talk to Rich Ruth. That’s the performance name of Michael Ruth, a multi-instrumentalist from Nashville. With Rich Ruth, you can hear 4 or five influences in any song. One track alone might conjure up John Coltrane, Brian Eno, Gong, Black Sabbath and King Crimson. Yet it all holds together in Rich Ruth. He has a new album out, Water Still Flows on Jack White’s Third Man records. His basic music philosophy is, wherever it goes he follows.
Rich Ruth: Essentially, it’s all made in like a laboratory with me spending hours and hours and hours, just like manipulating and, adding and subtracting until things feel right and just listening over and over and over again and getting inspired and tracking a bunch of guitars or synths or something and then sending it to people and so it just becomes this hodgepodge of all these different voices that I’ve arranged in these weird ways
His music is a flow from ambient to free jazz to parts unknown. We talk with Rich Ruth on Echoes from PRX.
Rich Ruth Feature Playlist
Artist – Album – Title
Rich Ruth – God Won’t Speak – Water Still Flows
Rich Ruth – No Muscle, No Memory – Water Still Flows
Rich Ruth – Aspiring to the Sky – Water Still Flows
Rich Ruth – God Won’t Speak – Water Still Flows
Kansas Bible Company – Summer Seance – Paper Moon
Kansas Bible Company – The Desert She Screams – Hotel Chicamauga
Rich Ruth – Coming Down – Calming Signals
Rich Ruth – Blue Shell – Water Still Flows
John Coltrane – Ascension Pt.1 – Ascension
Rich Ruth – Crying in the Trees – Water Still Flows
Rich Ruth – Desensitization and Reprocessing – It’s Over, I Survived
Rich Ruth – Heavy and Earthbound – It’s Over, I Survived
D.G. Godman – If You Were Someone I Loved – Space and Time
Rich Ruth – Thous Mayest – It’s Over, I Survived
Pharoah Sanders – Astral Traveling – Thembi
David Bowie – Warzawa – Low
Rich Ruth – Somewhere In Time – Water Still Flows
Rich Ruth – Action at a Distance – Water Still Flows
Dying Fetus – Subject to Beating – Reign Supreme
Rich Ruth – God Won’t Speak – Water Still Flows
It’s a Wicked Game on Echoes. Chris Isaak‘s single, “Wicked Game,” was released 35 years ago. Released on July 14, 1989, it was a single from his album Heart Shaped World released the previous month. I have been intoxicated with this song since I first heard it in the David Lynch film, Wild at Heart, where they used the instrumental version. Lately. I’ve been hearing Echoes of “Wicked Game” all over the place including “A Reckoning” from Jeff Oster, Vin Downes and Tom Eaton’s Seven Conversations and Still Corners’ “Today is the Day” from Dream Talk. This sound has influenced pop music, ambient country and more. We’ll hear a meditations on “Wicked Game” from the original, to covers to outer reverberations and early influences including Mimi Page, Jess Lamb, Parra for Cuva, and Hermanos Gutierrez. It’s on Echoes from PRX.