For its first trip to India, One Rusty Band is doing quite well. After stealing the limelight at Global Isai Festival in Chennai, it performed at the Mumbai edition and is now in Pune.
The French duo has garnered attention in the city for its dirty blues style of music, the kind of rock and roll which demands that you move to it.
Greg, the musical half of the band, plays guitars, both blues and electric, keeping time on the snare drum and cajon with his feet, alternating between harmonica and vocals — all simultaneously, in an impressive sight.
Naturally, he looks lost in a world of his own. Not to worry, standing next to him engaging the crowds to get up and dance is his partner Lea. With ‘adorkable’ expressions, she does acrobatics and tap dancing.
Lea is the rhythm half of the duo — her dancing isn’t just a visual component, but adds a layer of percussion to the music. She also plays the tambourine and washboard, which she wears like a breastplate. If they remind you of European street artistes, it is with good reason.
It all began in the streets of Toulouse, France, for Greg and Lea, who are married and have been together for 11 years now. This project, they say, is their baby.
“We started as street performers five years ago,” says Greg. “Before that she actually worked with a circus in Mexico, and I was in another rock band.” He points to Lea sitting beside him on a couch at Starbucks in Phoenix MarketCity. They have just finished their performance at the Global Isai Festival when we meet. Packing the wide set of instruments they travel with has taken them over half an hour, and they are now unwinding with hot tea.
“It is difficult as it is for artiste couples, but staying in different countries made it even more so. We wanted to live together, and we realised that the only way to do so would be to work together,” chips in Lea.
Lea started learning how to tap dance for this project, calling it her one big challenge, and YouTube, her friend. “About a couple of years ago, I finally went to an actual dance school and realised that what I do is not tap dance at all,” she laughs. Traditionally, tap is danced to jazz music, but Lea modifies the choreography to go with the rock and roll, blues-y music they create.
Yes, though it is Greg who first thinks up the harmonies, it is after he jams with Lea, who dances and brings in the rhythm to it, that the song finally takes shape. One of their songs, ‘Train to New Orleans’, uses harmonica and the tambourine to sound like a train chugging along, and into a station before it stops to a grand halt.
The X factor
Being a visual band, style is just as important to them. Greg has fashioned a mic out of the speaker of an old rotary telephone, and made three guitars — one shaped like a cigar box — all of which he plays.
Lea declares Greg a ‘one-man band’, and he says, “I need to separate the instruments in my brain, each follows its own reading like boom tah boom tah…” he starts vocalising. “You just have to keep training.”
She interjects, “The first time he tried it, I remember him complaining, ‘It is not possible, I can’t do it, I can’t do it’.” She looks toward him, brushing his arm, and adds, “But you picked it up in one month, it was so impressive.”
While Greg cites Jimi Hendrix and ‘70s blues as his inspiration, Lea is a big fan of Stomp, a US-based percussion group. “They create percussion with absolutely anything… A table, glasses, feet…” In India, Lea has danced with kathak dancers and jammed with a tabla player.
Though they are touring many countries now, they look back fondly on the days they played on the streets. “Here, people come to listen to us. But on the streets, there was always a chance that you touched someone who was a stranger to our music,” says Lea.