Earthless

With a resume including impressive acts such as Off!, Rocket From The Crypt and Hot Snakes, Rubalcaba has enough life experience to not only know where he feels most comfortable playing, but how he feels most comfortable doing it. He cites his drumming with Earthless as his most self-representative, breaking the monotony of 4/4 drum beats for more liberating performances. Yet over years of playing, he’s been attempting to un-blur the lines between the similar concepts of jamming and improvised playing. To understand Earthless’ method of performing, the two need to be separated and distinguished.

“To me, improvising means you’re in absolute control of what you’re doing and it translates to composing on the spot,” says Rubalcaba. “Whereas jamming, even though the term ‘jamming’ gets used by us as well – ‘Let’s go jam!’ – it’s more just a term for, ‘Let’s play.’ An actual jam band for me spells people who are looking for chords or a note to play; they’re not really in control of it, they’re just tinkering around here and there – ‘Here’s a little bend here, here’s a little something there,’ you know what I mean? Improvising like jazz guys, it’s about coming off. It sounds like it’s together, like you’re making songs on the spot. To me it is a big difference, and we definitely come more from a jazz background. It might not sound like jazz per se, but it’s more of a jazz mentality for sure.”

Conventionally, jamming is an important part of the songwriting process. Styles emerge from secluded practice with other musicians – a seemingly different approach to Rubalcaba’s improvisation. What he implies through his idea of a ‘jazz mentality’ is that Earthless play well off each other in most scenarios, and always have. However, Rubalcaba notes the Californian psych rockers aren’t the first band to employ this technique.

“It’s developed, but it was there from the first time we ever played,” he says. “That is a feeling that is unexplainable. I can only relate it to reading stories from, say, the first time Led Zeppelin got into a room and played a cover of ‘Train Kept A-Rollin’. Apparently, most of the members, when asked about the first time they got together, it was just an explosion of insane chemistry from playing this basic, bluesy rock’n’roll riff song – anyone could explain the basic bars of the song and the way you play it. Can you imagine seeing that?

“For Earthless, we actually [first] played a mix cover of a Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin song together. It started out like a Led Zeppelin song that went into a 20-minute interlude of Isaiah [Mitchell, guitar] playing the way he does to this day in Earthless, along with the way I do, with Mike [Eginton] being a solid-ass bass player, holding it down so we could do the orbit around the sun and come back to ground. We’re all super grateful to still be doing this and playing together 15 years after we first got together in 2001.”

As the band members have progressed with their talents, they’ve reached a stage where practice is no longer necessary, opting not to have a warm-up before they reach Australia for their looming tour dates. Their improvisational style means Earthless are confident enough as musicians to quickly take the stage and perform.

“We’ll get a soundcheck, groove through a little something – I guess we’re really lucky to have a certain chemistry where we have complete faith in each other and each other’s abilities to just take it to the stage,” says Rubalcaba. “It keeps it interesting and it keeps it fresh. It keeps it really, really fun to play. We’ve all been doing it for so long now that we just know what we’re going to be doing.”