Reid Genauer interview Assembly of Dust to make venue debut at Unity College Centre for the Performing Arts May 16

05/07/2009

For the past seven years, a New York-based band, Assembly of Dust, has been causing a lot of excitement with its live shows, as well as some critically acclaimed CDs, like its 2006's, "Recollection."

Well, the quartet will be coming back to our fair state to perform next Saturday night, May 16, at the Unity College Centre for the Performing Arts. To that end, a phone interview was arranged with band founder and lead singer/songwriter Reid Genauer.

Now, he's played at the UCCPA before, hasn't he?

"I don't know, to be honest," Genauer said. "I'm not sure I did, but I'm looking forward to it. I think I've played at Unity College before with Strangefolk, and that was probably 15 years ago or something. It's been a long time, for sure."

When this last-minute phoner was set up, the band's publicist sent up a link to its Web site to help prepare for the chat; while there, one could get a glimpse of the lyrics for the songs that'll be appearing on AoD's upcoming summer-release CD. Also listed were the special guests that will be performing on 10 of the 11 original songs Genauer penned -- a list that is a veritable who's who of exceptional musicians like Bela Fleck, Ritchie Havens, Jerry Douglas, Phish's Mike Gordon and Grace Potter, just to mention half of those involved.

"That album comes out July 21, but we're gonna start releasing some tracks earlier than that -- quite a bit earlier," Genauer said.

The album will be self-released but it will be distributes through a partnership with a company called Rock Ridge and an imprint called Missing Piece.

"And they're distributed," he said. "Through A.D.A. which is by Warner Brothers. It's more about the distribution than anything else."

Well, seeing this new project won't be released for a couple of months, one could assume then that his group's touring in support of their "Recollection" album, correct?

"No," Genauer said. "We're touring in support of this new record and just kinda greasing the wheel, so to speak. We're actively soliciting press and radio starts soon and, like I said, we'll have promo downloads available probably at the end of May. So we're ramping into album-cycle mode."

Now, this will be his seventh album -- in general -- is that correct?

"Yeah, something like that," he said. "It all depends. Ya' see, there was a sampler CD or something that I did with Strange folk 'way back when. So, if you count that, it's either my seventh or eighth CD that I've put out."

Talk turned back to the subject most near and dear to Genauer's heart right now: that soon-to-be-released new album. One wondered if it was hard to recreate the new songs out on the road without the special guests being able to contribute as they did on the album.

"Well, we're not having a hard time," Genauer said. "We started playing the material and it's pretty natural, because ultimately it's music that I wrote that we brought to life, collectively, as a band. We were able to weave the guests in seamlessly, but on top of a foundation that was very much our own. So it hasn't been tough."

Was there anything he wanted to have passed on to the folks reading this "What's Happening" article about his show at the UCCPA on May 16?

"I guess that I'm particularly excited about this up-coming record: It has energized the band and all our hopes and dreams are tied up in it," he said. "And for me, it really feels like an arrival on a few fronts. One is, in terms of writing it and studio recording it, I feel like we took more chances than we normally do and we have a dynamic and somewhat new-sounding record. The other thing is that 'who's who;' it was just really rewarding musically and personally just to have the handshake and the implied blessing of so many great players."

Lucky Clark is a music journalist living in Sweden, Maine.