For several years now, Rio Turbo has been one of the city’s most reliable party starters, routinely stealing the show with his heavy-hitting beats, his outsized swagger and his troupe of oftentimes scantily clad dancers, but that’s a pretty tough pace to keep up. Finding new angles from which to approach the same subject matter—in this case sex, drugs and being badass—becomes increasingly difficult, and while he once again pulls it off on his new self-titled release, it almost didn’t work out that way, since up until about six months ago, Rio Turbo was all but partied out.
“I had become kind of burned out on the entire thing,” explains Turbo (aka Joseph Peterson). “It got to a point that I didn’t know which way to go with it. It felt like it was becoming a novelty and I didn’t ever want that, so I was ready to go on indefinite hiatus.” Before he could hang it up however, a chance conversation with NO/NO guitarist Harrison Colby, formerly of The Delphines, sparked renewed interest in the project. “I talked with Harry and he had all these ideas for different directions,” Peterson says, “and suddenly it all felt rejuvenated.”
Tinkering in the studio with Colby, Peterson found the inspiration that had been eluding him, and set to work reinventing a well-worn persona to fit who he is now. “KISS FM was the peak of my party lifestyle, and iSH iSH was me going through some hard times, the darker side of that mindset,” says Peterson, explaining the headspace behind the new release, which boasts a sort of hungover morning-after clarity. “Sometimes I lose myself, forget where Joey starts and Rio Turbo ends, and that was kind of the perspective—it’s the ups and downs of being a party boy.”
If Rio Turbo’s new self-titled album finds Turbo taking stock of himself as an artist, however, it certainly doesn’t get bogged down in any of that introspection. In fact, from its slinky, synth-driven leadoff track “Lip Service” on, the genre-bending record rarely if ever takes its foot off the gas. “Regardless of how I perceive something that’s going on, it’s not going to become some ballad; it doesn’t matter what the content is, it’s going to be a party track,” says Peterson. “I write music that I want to listen to, and I only know how to party—that’s what I’m best at.”
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He may be charting unfamiliar territory, but it’s nevertheless a more confident and self-aware version of Rio Turbo than we’ve seen to date, and Peterson is quick to give the credit for that to his collaborators, a creative support network that, beyond Colby, included dancers Katrina Cary and Cat Reis, filmmaker/new DJ Matthew Plain and Willy Dintenfass of Dogs in Ecstasy, who guest produced two of the tracks. “They’ve got that ‘it’ factor, and I’ve been lucky to work with people like that,” says Peterson gratefully. “They see what I’m going for, and sometimes they’ll see it before I do.”
Though something of a triumph, one that could’ve easily not happened at all, Rio Turbo is already in Peterson’s rear view, with a remix album on the way and ideas percolating for a follow-up. “I intend on getting back into the studio with Harrison ASAP,” he says eagerly. “When you’re at the end of your rope and then you see that light, whatever that means to you, there’s no turning back; you see what’s beautiful, what’s awesome, what’s party in the world and you go in that direction, and I’m going like 250 in a 35-miles-per-hour zone right now.”
Rio Turbo plays an album release show on Saturday, March 28 at Linneman’s Riverwest Inn with The Fatty Acids, NO/NO, Lorde Fredd33 and The Sounds Of Time at 9 p.m.
