“I think the highlight has been playing songs that I have such an intimate relationship with and seeing other people who have an intimate relationship with them,“ says Dusty Reske, founder and frontman of Slumberland Records indie pop outfit Rocketship, who are currently celebrating the 30th anniversary of 1996 debut full-length A Certain Smile, a Certain Sadness with vinyl and CD reissues and a couple of live runs. This April Reske and crew took the album on a five-date West Coast jaunt, and this week they’ll play as many dates here on the East Coast, including a stop at Johnny Brenda’s this Tuesday, September 29th.
“We play A Certain Smile, a Certain Sadness front-to-back, and some other songs of that era, and then some newer songs that people seem to love, like ‘You’re Too Young,’” Dusty tells me during a recent phone chat when I ask what can be expected of these live shows, which he says have been going really well so far: “Playing has never been an emphasis of mine, so we used to just play random clubs, so it’s been sort of mind blowing in a way to be headlining proper venues.” He also tells me that audiences, which have been more recently mostly comprised of guys with beards and grey hair (who are always appreciated), have been pleasantly surprising: “There’s now a contingent of younger people that come to the shows, which is really exciting.”
“The surprise has been the intense emotional poignancy of singing them again, being swept back to where I was 30 years ago,” Reske explains when I ask how it’s been to revisit the earliest music of Rocketship, which Dusty tells me was the first time he had a band helping him shape his own vision, as opposed to writing with a band. And he does seem to have a lot of memories from that era, including many with Rocketship’s buddies and labelmates Henry’s Dress (“Henry’s Dress had moved from Albuquerque to San Francisco to be closer to the label, so we were hanging out at their house all the time, listening to new music and going to coffee shops.”), and many that would seem to be the starting point of his life to come.
“I was living in Sacramento, sharing a house in Oak Park with my friend, and his girlfriend and my girlfriend, Heidi [Barney], lived next door… There was a lot of socializing and young people drama… I worked at The Beat, which was a big record store out there, and getting into the independent music scene. Before that, I was listening to more major label ‘alternative’ bands, as we called it back then. I discovered thrift stores and riding my bike everywhere and a new sort of lifestyle that I’m still largely living today.”
Those who caught the September edition of Philthy Radio (now streaming via Y-Not Radio) heard “Let’s Go Away,” A Certain Smile, a Certain Sadness’ fourth and longest track, which closed out a block of songs from phriends of PHILTHY (also including phavorites from Squirrel Flower and Ida) who have upcoming headlining shows at Johnny Brenda’s, whose venue is celebrating its 20th anniversary this month, so I’m curious to hear Reske’s thoughts on the track: “I have a visual image in my mind, and a lot of it’s fictional. I love when the guitar comes in, and the chorus is something I really enjoy playing and singing a lot.”
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