He says his love for the blues is deeper than it’s ever been. Still, over the years Wotherspoon has always returned to the Rescue Radio in some capacity, to fulfill his two concurrent musical lives.
Noah + the Rescue Radio will be performing alongside Sam King + the Suspects, and the Boxcar Suite March 21 at the Brightside. The event, titled Equinox Rock’n’Roots Revue, is the first time all three bands will share the same bill.
Around 2006, prodigal bluesman Wotherspoon moved from his hometown of Dayton to Providence, Rhode Island, the site of both a legendary blues scene and a healthy art rock scene. While blues was the main focus, he started playing in open tunings with high-fretted capos to pair with the ethereal writing he was doing at the time.
He put together the first version of the Rescue Radio with two guys he met on Craigslist, in a place where he, a virtual unknown at the time, felt free to experiment.
Absorbing mixtapes filled with the Velvet Underground, Elliot Smith and Paul Westerberg, the Rescue Radio became Wotherspoon’s way of following a more personalized muse, one that moved away from his blues roots and into melodic rock territory. He had just as much punk and the Beatles in his ear as he did first generation bluesmen, and he needed a way to express it.
“When I’m playing the blues and I’m in that realm, it does come from a different place,” Wotherspoon said. “I don’t know if the other stuff’s more cerebral, and the blues comes more from the solar plexus, but it is a different part of myself.”
He said the garage rock revival in the early 2000s was a guiding light for Rescue Radio, when luminary bands like the Strokes and the White Stripes were playing “Late Night with Conan O’Brien.”
“I’d watch those bands at night, and I think I now realize it was a fear of missing out,” Wotherspoon said. “I was like, This stuff is so cool. I wanted to be a part of it.”
Following that alternative creative muse, Wotherspoon started incorporating his rock side-project songs into his blues sets — which garnered a divided response he likened to Bob Dylan going electric at the Newport Folk Festival.
“Black Cloud Sugar,” the first track on Rescue Radio’s 2008 album “Elusiville,” is every bit of what’s great about rock n’ roll: distorted and memorable hooks in the verses, shimmery pop perfection in the choruses.
The open D guitar riff that opens the song has its toes in both of Wotherspoon’s disparate sonic worlds, as if subconsciously putting his blues listeners at ease.
His blues project, Noah Wotherspoon Band, has had significantly more traction than Rescue Radio over the years. But behind the scenes, he compulsively writes songs without borders, accumulating nearly 600 officially unreleased songs on private albums he calls the “Culmination Series.”
Many of the tracks were recorded on a 4-track Tascam, and some of the tapes subsequently disintegrated. He’s currently working to release a home demo series on Bandcamp.
After several incarnations of the post-Craiglist three-piece, this version of Noah + the Rescue Radio features bassist Tom Rastikis, guitarist Casey Ott, drummer Josh Johnson, and percussionist Erich Reith.
Now living in Park Hills, Ky., Wotherspoon often returns to Dayton stages with his diverse musical projects.
“In Dayton, there’s a feeling that I don’t get anywhere else,” Wotherspoon said. “It’s very genuine. I always feel at home there. It’s music history, too. You have the blues scene, and then you have Guided By Voices. Maybe growing up there gave me this complex.”
The blues begat rock ‘n’ roll, and both begat Noah Wotherspoon, coming to rescue our radios.
Brandon Berry writes about the Dayton and Southwest Ohio music and art scene. Have a story idea for him? Email branberry100@gmail.com.
HOW TO GO
What: Equinox Rock’n’Roots Revue, with Noah + the
Rescue Radio, Sam King + the Suspects, and the Boxcar Suite
When: 8 p.m., March 21
Where: The Brightside, 905 E. 3rd St., Dayton
Cost: $15 advanced, $20 door
Tickets: thebrightsidedayton.com
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