The short story on The Root In Fluents is that they’re a young, blues/rock band from Winnipeg, MB Canada. Their debut album, Red River Flu, was recorded and written over the course of 3 years, and released March 2011. Simple, yes, but it doesn’t come close to telling you what you should know about RIF.
For instance, their music is not average or common. It’s heavily layered, with touches of clean complexity. The members; Kevin Johnson (lead vocals/guitar), Anton Cenerini (lead guitar/backing vocals), Nelson Sprout (bass/backing vocals), and Lee Galinaitis (drums/percussion/keys/mandolin/backing vocals) are also influenced by folk, progressive, and funk fusion, putting themselves on a level all their own. This kind of blended sound, one can imagine, is best appreciated when performed live. And as luck would have it, that’s precisely how RIF feels as well.
Live instrumentation is the dominating force that drives their music, especially since their acts on stage have earned them substantial recognition from the beginning of their career. Even though blues is their foundation, RIF have a ton of influences from Eric Clapton, to Led Zeppelin, to Cream, to The Black Keys. They also have a soft spot for The Allman Brothers Band.
“After we’ve matured more as musicians, we’ve discovered that nothing feels better for us than covering The Allman Brothers Band. They have major influence on our song-writing, and their songs showed us how to bring our live jams to the next level.”
Along with the variety of musical direction, there is diversity with style for each member.
Bass player Nelson is into jazz fusion and often comes up with complicated riffs and layered songs.
Lead singer Kevin likes hard rock mixed with a simplistic writing approach that resembles that of the Black Crowes or the Beatles.
Lead guitarist Anton prefers to show his musicianship, and just sticks to the music without occupying himself with the small details of song-writing.
Drummer Lee listens to music for its production value, so he likes both the simple and complicated tunes, and has the best production insight.
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