Xavier Rudd Brings Aussie Roots

To The Rest Of The World

By Will Jordan

His songs have a free-flowing familiarity to them, but a complex basis that stems from his Australian background as well as his travels and emersion into other regions of the world.
Xavier Rudd hails from “The Land Down Under” with conscious surf/roots songs that tell of the mistreatment of the indigenous people of his homeland as well as embrace humanity, spirituality and the environment with a concentration on life celebration.
Running through all of his songs are all sorts of instruments from guitars, shakers, didgeridoos, Weissenborn slide guitars, Tongue drums, stomp boxes, djembes, harmonica, ankle bells, and slide banjo—and they’re all played by Rudd.
Rudd recreates these songs live—playing the guitar, didgeridoo and various percussion parts simultaneously—using a unique stage set-up that finds him literally surrounded by his various instruments and singing from behind a stand holding three didgeridoos (of different keys).
The shaggy, blonde-haired, blue-eyed soulful, folk singer has embarked on tours of the rest of the world and is currently bringing his sounds to Canada for a string of 15 dates of shows and then he’s ripping through the US.
“We’ve been very lucky and have had lots of support everywhere we’ve gone,” Rudd tells Rib with an Aussie accent from a cell phone in Toronto. “Our fans are pretty stretched out. We just finished playing Europe which is a new territory for me and really enjoyed it.”
Rudd admits he enjoys playing at home most and since Australia is so far from many of the places he visits, he gets a little homesick.
“It’s always nice to get home. I miss it, but I’m lucky to be able to do what I do,” Rudd says. “The positives definitely outweigh the negatives. It’s a good life I have and I feel like I make the most of it.”
Rudd grew up in Bell’s Beach in Southern Victoria, and was “always singing as a child.”
After his brother took up classical guitar, he started messing around with the instrument, and for a very short time, began taking lessons.
He dropped the formal instruction and began plucking the guitar the way it felt natural to him, according to Rudd.
From a very early age, he was also drawn to the didgeridoo.
Before he even really knew anything about the instrument, he found himself drawn to it.
“I feel like the yirdaki was sort of born into me a little,” Rudd says in a release. “I remember when I was a little kid, I used to play it on the end of vacuum cleaner pipe.”
When Rudd was 10, his dad took him to see Paul Simon’s Graceland tour, and it changed his life. That earliest influence is still evident in his songs.
“I remember seeing it and knowing that that was what I was gonna do,” he says. “I had no doubt. It sort of made sense, because I’d always lived in my head, in this world of song that was my own little secret. But to see that show and that whole thing happening, I sort of felt comfortable as a human, and thought.”
As a teen, he began to concentrate on his songwriting, focused on slide guitar and began performing at school, with solo gigs following.
After school, he tried his hand at the band thing, but it quickly proved the wrong fit for the multi-instrumentalist, according to the singer.
“What I do now is just more me,” he says. “And it sounds full.”
A 2001 trip to his wife’s hometown in Western Canada would prove a life and career-changing experience. While in British Columbia, he acquired a Weissenborn guitar, which forever altered his sound.
“That opened a lot of doors to me,” he says in a release. “That was the instrument I’ve always felt more content on.”
Weissenborn in tow, Rudd started playing a few shows in British Columbia, and, before he knew it, word had started to spread back home.
The first post-Canada show he played at home—in Melbourne, the closest major city to his hometown—was unusually packed, and the crowds started to double with each consecutive show, as he toured Southern Australia. In 2002, Rudd released his debut album, To Let, on which he experimented with playing with other musicians, and continued to tour Australia. The next year, he found himself skipping between Australia and Canada (he currently maintains residences in both countries), and finding his fanbase growing and growing as word continued to spread of his unusual live show and careful songcraft.
He followed To Let with Solace, which received certified platinum status in Australia and soon bent the ears of like-minded tunesmiths Ani DeFranco and Jack Johnson, both of whom Rudd has now toured with.
His latest, Food In The Belly, is no departure from the uplifting, conscious-inspiring roots music on his first two albums.
“I just finished recording Food In The Belly last year, but am currently writing some new stuff,” he says.
His inspiration for early songs came out of experience in his homeland, but since lately he’s seen more of the rest of the world than Australia, he’s got new fodder for songwriting.
“It’ll probably be more of the same from me, but since I’ve been on new journeys, and going to so many different places, there’s a new pool of inspiration to draw from,” he says. “There’s lot’s to write about these days. It’s not going to be too long before we record again.”
For more information on Xavier Rudd and a complete list of tour dates visit www.xavierrudd.com

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