Interview with Rodeo FM: ‘Country’s a great genre to write songs in and as we grew a bit, I pulled in other influences’

Berlin-based alternative country/Americana band, Rodeo FM, brought out their third album, Upgrade of Truth, which shines the spotlight on social injustice, last month, with plans to release a new EP this summer.

The group comprises Pat Carter (vocals, acoustic and electric guitar), Dominic Frassmann (drums and backing vocals), Desmond Garcia (electric guitar, banjo and backing vocals), Masataka Koduka (bass), Gigi de Cicco (electric guitar) and Georgi Sareski (electric guitar). Carter founded the band back in 2005 and the current line-up has been playing together for around seven years. ‘A lot of musicians assume we’re a radio station but we’ve had some nice chats and projects come out of that,’ Carter said.

Carter, who wrote the eight tracks on the album, had a good idea at the start as to how he wanted the album to sound and what kind of stories he wanted to tell. ‘Actually, it’s not the whole album. We cut 13 tracks, so we’ll do an EP with the remaining five tracks this summer. We’ve also got another five new songs to record.’

The first single, ‘The Worthless Game’, from the next – as of yet unnamed – EP will be released in March: ‘I wrote it in my early 20’s and I’ve revamped it for the band,’ Carter said. ‘It’s more abstract, it’s about a general feeling of injustice in society. It’s a bit more dreamlike, more Dylanesque.’

Upgrade of Truth marks a departure from their first album, The Other Side of Summer (2013), which was more straight-up country. However, one track on their latest album, ‘The Devil and The Riot’, pays homage to their more traditional roots: ‘I wanted a real country number on there,’ Carter said. ‘Now, we’re more indie rock/Americana but we used to be more country. I got chatting to a guy at a gig about music and jobs and he said ‘the devil pays the bills’, referring to the regular jobs people do, and it struck me that it would be a good song title! It was called that for a while until the US riots. (Riots erupted across US in May last year after an unarmed African-American, George Floyd, died in police custody. The riots started in Minneapolis where he died, before spreading to New York, Atlanta, Oakland, Dallas and many other cities across the US.) Our video for the song shows footage from those riots. It’s more of a traditional country song but with a progressive message, which I found intriguing.’

As the song goes: ‘So tonight I’m gonna start me a fire, that’s what I wanna do today, I might even start me a riot ‘cos the world needs another riot today.’

‘It’s about something looking good on the outside but being rotten on the inside’

The title track, ‘Upgrade of Truth’, is essentially a criticism of society’s greed. ‘I’m singing about neo-liberalism,’ Carter said. ‘It’s about something looking good on the outside but being rotten on the inside. The same goes for relationships, they’re complex and are shaped by the society in which you live and the limitations that may be imposed, including financial ones.’

This comes across strongly in the song: ‘We know that it’s happening, we think it’s not fair but everyone’s complicit so what do we care.’

Other tracks, such as ‘M29’, are more reflective: ‘It’s a bus line in Berlin going through Kreuzberg where I live. It’s about sitting on the bus at night and dreaming away. The gentrification in many cities happens slowly over time but in Berlin a lot of it has happened in the last 10 years and the question of ownership of properties, which have become expensive, will be one of the main focus topics over the next few years.’

The German government introduced a Mietendeckel, or rental cap, in Berlin in February last year in an attempt to curb spiralling rents in many parts of the city. However, some landlords are trying to circumvent it and Carter’s own landlord has threatened to charge rent above the rental cap, he said. Now, the initiative Expropriate Deutsche Wohnen & Co. is advocating one of the most radical housing plans in Europe – expropriating 226,000 apartments to create a new generation of affordable housing to be owned in perpetuity by the people of Berlin.

‘It was so witty and so different to what I expected country to be’

Interestingly, Carter says he’s ‘not a country boy at heart’: ‘Growing up, I was into The Rolling Stones and Nirvana, that’s in my DNA. When Nirvana broke up, I listened to a lot of jazz and alternative country like Giant Sand. Then someone gave me Johnny Cash’s album Live at Folsom Prison and it was so witty and so different to what I expected country to be and I started playing a country set with a former band. Country’s a great genre to write songs in and as we grew a bit, I pulled in other influences.’

Carter is conscious that he wants to steer away from the type of Americana songwriting that tends to focus on, in his words, emotions and loss. ‘There are some great songwriters but some of them are quite focused on the microcosm rather than the bigger picture. I love singer-songwriters like Iris DeMent (an American singer blending folk, country and gospel). For me, her song ‘Going Down To Sing in Texas’ was the best song of 2020. It’s piano-driven with radical lyrics. Every verse hits home, she calls out Trump and what it’s like to be a woman in the business who speaks out like The (Dixie) Chicks (who faced a backlash from country listeners when they criticised George Bush and the Allied invasion of Iraq). It’s long as well – 9 minutes!’

He acknowledges that the Americana scene in Germany is small but has been inspired by bands such as Giant Sand, an alt rock/Americana band from Tucson, Arizona. ‘They play improvised jazzy country music where it all comes together in the end. They were a big role model, as was their singer-songwriter, Howe Gelb. One album I love is Harrow and the Harvest by Gillian Welch and Dave Rawlings. He’s one of the best guitar players I know.’

If he could have toured with anyone, Carter goes with Thin Lizzie: ‘I would have loved to tour with them. My biggest regret is that I never saw them, I was too young.’

(Photo from left to right: Gigi, Masataka, Pat, Dom and Desmond.)