Rusted Root broke onto the scene in the 90’s with their hit, feel good song “Send Me On My Way.” Now, two decades later and with over 3 million albums sold worldwide, they’re still rocking venues with their mix of bluegrass and rock music. TheCelebrityCafe.com’s Michelle Vaccaro spoke with the band’s Michael Glabicki (vocals, guitar), Patrick Norman (bass, vocals), and Liz Berlin (vocals, percussion) about their influences, 20-year career and new music before their show on May 18 at NYC’s B.B. King’s Blues Club.

MV: The band has an eclectic sound. Who are your influences?

Rusted Root’s Patrick Norman: Everything…pretty much. I know that that sounds like an easy answer but I mean really we all listen to lots and lots of different styles of music and I think life influences…like lyrically, I’m sure life influences you, right Mike?

Rusted Root’s Michael Glabicki: Yeah, I think it more comes down to trying to find you know something on the guitar or something in the voice that’s on an emotional level on sort of the undercurrent level is moving. And then you kind of bring in these other influences to, you know, make that sort of bubble up and you know everybody in the band has had experience in percussion in from other areas in the world and such and we really sort of rely on that to kind of bring everything about.

MV: Now you guys have toured with a bunch of music greats like Jimmy Page & Santana. Is there anyone that you learned something from while you were on tour with them?

Rusted Root’s Patrick Norman: Every single one of them. How to play…how to play music properly. I mean we were on tour with Santana, he came into the room and we had a nice conversation and he was just telling me the role of the base…”you know, you make the women move…and the women moving makes the men want to come to the shows…so keep them moving.” It’s just…every single band that we’ve toured with like in that caliber has all been fantastic to us and given us a lot of parting knowledge.

Rusted Root’s Michael Glabicki: Santana was really a teacher. His whole way of being was really to teach. I…we didn’t realize it until later on in the tour how much he had already observed us and our music. And when we went up on stage and played with him I think the first night, he would just kind of like leave the stage and smoke a cigar on the side of the stage and we were like “why is he leaving us up here alone?” But he knew, already knew, that we could fill that particular song because it was similar to something we had already done. And already he had all of these thoughts going on. I didn’t realize until much later that that had happened. And I remember him…coming up to me and observing my guitar playing and he gave me all of these people to go listen to that would help me out or that I was very similar to. And then he actually took me in his dressing room one night and just goes “I’m going to teach you this certain thing that I think you’re missing.” It was just like wow, this guy has a lot of energy, you know? And you know, just as a band leader, I think he saw in me that I was afraid to get angry and cause sort of conflict and that he saw everything just kind of like be kind of too nebulous on stage and stuff and he got to me and grabbed me and he goes, “You need to get angry! You need to get really angry!” And I was like “What do you mean by that?” I figured it out a couple of days later. Oh, that’s what he’s talking about…

MV: You guys have been together for 20 years now…how did you guys meet and what is the trick to staying together?

Rusted Root’s Patrick Norman: We all met in Pittsburgh, in like around schools and stuff. We were all friends of friends… that type of thing. I met Michael through my friend Jim who was playing drums with him at the time. And I knew Liz from school. We had been in the music department together. She was taking guitar lessons and I was studying music there and so when I came into the band, they had already been playing but it was cool because all of a sudden I realized there was this familiarity that I knew this person from this place. We just all started playing there and jamming and just kept playing and still do.

MV: What’s the trick... you think?

Rusted Root’s Michael Glabicki: Yeah, I think as far as keeping it going…I was thinking the other day that it’s hard to remember sometimes where you were the night before. Someone says, “Oh where were you last night?” I’m like “Oh my God…” and I’m thinking maybe memory loss…is like a really good way to keep happy and fresh and you show up and you’re like “wow, what’s going on…”

MV: How has your music progressed over the years?

Rusted Root’s Michael Glabicki: That’s hard to say. There’s not one direction which we have progressed and matured…uh…I think we’re constantly figuring out what we’re missing or what we can do to expand the band and our horizons…and musical horizons. Those are like little streams that just kind of are like little roots that are… uh… continuous and ongoing. I mean, like for example, for me, I ended up doing like a lot of acoustic solo touring and I mean Rusted Root was pretty much my first band so I always had five or six people behind me. You know…whenever I would play something everybody was like on it, you know? So I never had that space of just like the acoustic guitar and my vocal and it was scary as hell and it took me like 4 years to like really figure it out and nail it but then I was able to bring it back to the band and go like “Look, I can maintain this space here for a couple of measures and then we can go ‘bam’ and it will be that much more explosive and so much more emotional. So like for example, that had happened and I think everybody’s continually growing as musicians and their influences and such.

MV: Now I heard you have another solo album coming out. Is that true? Can you tell me a little bit about it?

Rusted Root’s Michael Glabicki: Yeah, I’m working on that now and I’m about three quarters of the way through. And umm…I’m starting to put like little videos of me in the studio out on Facebook and such and kind of … people don’t’ really know that I have it coming out so I’m kind of in the educational mode.

MV: Now what can you guys tell me about The Movement, your latest album? Or how would you describe it.

Rusted Root’s Liz Berlin: Well first of all…the album…we took a different approach with this album. We have been independent for quite some time…and you know…off of a major label for a while and with this one we decided to do a fan funding campaign. So it was the first time that we really like went to the fans and we put the music out and said if you want us to have another album, we need your help to do it and a lot of people chipped in and supported us throughout the process. So...I mean…we feel like really really supported in that…and I think it shows in the music and I think it shows in how the album turned out.

Rusted Root’s Patrick Norman: Also, I think that being able to tour while working on the album, I think helped it a lot because we were able to try out a lot of the material on the road. We usually try to do that a lot but we were able to specifically take like...you know… a few songs that we were really working on and like let’s plug that into this set because it works well with this and see what the fan reaction is and if it works and if it feels right live…and then being able to take that back into the studio and rework the songs, I think really made for a really concise period of writing…to really focus on what we were doing.

Rusted Root’s Michael Glabicki: And… like this is really the first record that I totally produced and engineered along with some other engineers and that’s what gave me the freedom and relaxation to put my own timeframe out there and let it sort of flow how we wanted it to flow. But I think overall, the whole theme of the production was kind of getting back to just focusing on the live performance and kind of what our set…where we can go in our set…how we could envision the list of songs in the set and how we wanted to have it play out live.

MV: Now what can fans expect from the tour?

Rusted Root’s Michael Glabicki: Well, sex, drugs and rock n’ roll.

Rusted Root’s Liz Berlin: Not.

Rusted Root’s Michael Glabicki: Or it might be my sandwich…

Rusted Root’s Liz Berlin: Our set is really…um…is a really good mix between the old material and the new material and the thing that’s cool is because we developed the songs live on the road, the audience already knows all of these songs. There’s not like that lull where you go see your favorite band and they play this new stuff and it’s like “Oh, that’s the new song. Time to go to the bathroom.” It’s not like that. It’s really consistent from like start to end. High energy and you know people are just having a great time I think.

MV: What’s up next for you guys? Do you have any other plans? Obviously you have the tour, the album…do you have anything else upcoming?

Rusted Root’s Michael Glabicki: Just a lot of touring. I started…I put a few songs aside for the next record. So I think once these songs kind of play out a little bit live on the tours. I think we’ll start bringing out the new stuff and performing that live in front of people.

Rusted Root’s Patrick Norman: I think we’re also gonna work on a video…we’re going to put out eventually put out a live video probably and maybe a video or two for another single called “Cover Me Up…” and maybe start working on a live album…

Rusted Root’s Michael Glabicki: Yeah and there’s…we’re trying to put together sort of a docu…what do you call them…docu…

Rusted Root’s Patrick Norman: Rockumentary.

Rusted Root’s Michael Glabicki: Rockumentary. Yeah, so it’ll be a full length feature film.

MV: Where’s that going to be…how can people see that?

Rusted Root’s Michael Glabicki: We’re not entirely sure where it’s going yet, but we have to get it into theaters…that’ll be awesome.

Rusted Root energizes the audience with their live shows. They love interacting with fans, posting videos and comments regularly on their Facebook page. They are currently on tour supporting their latest album The Movement. To find out when they’re coming to your town, go to their official site.