Guster Eyes Studio After Extensive Touring
April 17 -- Guster's Ryan Miller says that he and his bandmates — fellow singer-guitarist Adam Gardner and hand percussionist Brian Rosenworcel — were "skeptical" about their current concert tour. After all, the trio has been on tour for nearly all of the 15 months since the release of its latest album, Lost and Gone Forever, including a fall stint opening for Barenaked Ladies that Miller calls "a dream scenario." But after all that, Guster was afraid people might have had their fill of the band.
Fortunately, he reports, that's not the case. "There's an audience that, for whatever reasons, wants to hear us play our music," says Miller, acknowledging that a large part of that is a college crowd that's embraced Guster's combination of craft and cheeky charm. "It's definitely something we've worked sort of hard to cultivate — or have been lucky enough to attract. I never mind the Dave Matthews or Phish comparisons, because their audiences are authentic. They're not relying on the single being on the radio or their video being on TRL."
Nevertheless, Miller says Guster is anxious to start working in earnest on a new album, which is currently in its earliest stages. But he cautions that what comes next will likely be quite different than its three predecessors. "We're trying to drop any pretense of making a live-sounding record and concentrating on making a really beautiful and dynamic and spacious record," Miller explains. "Brian's playing a little bit of kit drums here and there. I've written a song on keyboards. One song was started on bass guitar. We're thinking a little bit more, and adding to our sound; we're sort of fed up with trying to support a whole song with just our six [arms] … That's a long-winded way of saying we're trying to concentrate on making a 'studio' record and worry later about how we're going to pull it off live. The good thing is the pressure's mostly coming from ourselves; if this tour is showing us anything, it's just that our fans are going to be around for us whenever we're done — although obviously sooner is better than later."
