Milwaukee’s Red Stuff has a way of doing things their own way. Ten years in, they have delivered a sound that can veer from the thud-rock of The Troggs to The Ventures Songbook 101 to Yoko Ono-influenced rule-bending. The trio is constantly evolving. And in that sense perhaps it would be better to characterize them as a Folk Art project than a band.
A decade is a long time for a band, but not for a marriage. Multi-instrumentalist Kelly Buros (guitar, vocals, organ, autoharp, lap steel, percussion) and her husband Tom Wanderer (bass, guitar, vocals, percussion) are joined by drummer Steve Tiber (who coincidentally happened to perform Kelly and Tom’s wedding ceremony).
A few years ago Red Stuff were in the middle of an album they had been working on for five years. It would eventually be released this spring as Saccharine Underground. They started recording it many times. Then one night at rehearsal Wanderer wanted to record one song. Instead of working on the album, the band just started improvising. They had microphones set up for recording in case any ideas emerged that were interesting.
“Things happen really fast,” Buros recalls. And over the course of an hour they came up with a batch of totally new songs, recorded them and decided to put that record out immediately with the title Woodfaces.
“It is an interesting record, really weird, at points and almost embarrassing—but 100% genuine,” Wanderer says of the 2017 release. “Once we put our egos aside, that last shred of ‘we have to do this, we have to do that,’ our expectations went out the window.”
Highlighted by Buros’ melodica playing, the sound manages to find a lo-fi middle ground between garage rock and dub.
“The main point became we could read each other without having to talk to each other. That connection is always nice to have,” Tiber says. “I played what I felt and it gave me confidence to weave in and out of what Kelly and Tom were doing. In my experience it is rare to get to that point. And it allowed the others to do what they want.”
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This idea of music as a dialogue is nothing new. In Red Stuff’s case it is not about level of ability, but personalities working together.
And that idea of working together extends to their vinyl-centric discography, with material recorded by the band on analog gear and record covers screen printed and assembled by the band.
Wanderer ran up his credit card buying things like Austrian microphones off eBay. “They were definitely not industry standard,” he says. But that early step meant everything they record will sound different than the pack. By now he has tinkered with the band’s recording setup so long that he can just turn it on and record, allowing the band to not lose any momentum. “I can’t tell you how many 1-2 minute themes we have recorded.”
Tiber suggest ones of the band’s strengths is that “everyone can serve as editor on the fly with ideas, keeping or moving on. We try to get together each week but don’t always practice.” With the current lineup of Wanderer on short-scale bass and Buros on guitar and Fender Twin the evolution continues.
“I like every bit of the process and it becomes more fun with fewer expectations,” Wanderer says. “From the very beginning I wanted to put out records even though I knew they weren’t going to be technically flawless. I wanted to have the recordings and do the packaging—all that stuff. If we are going to do it, let’s do something really cool that people will see in a thrift store 20 years from now and go, ‘What the hell is this?’”
Red Stuff plays WMSE’s “Local/Live,” Tuesday, Nov. 6, at 6 p.m. Their albums are streaming at redstuff.bandcamp.com.
