by Michael D. Ayers, N.Y. |
December 11, 2008 12:01 EST
Guster
After four albums with Reprise, veteran rock outfit Guster has signed with Aware/Columbia. The group hopes to complete its as-yet-untitled label debut in February.
Lead singer Ryan Miller says Guster plans to come away with "17 or 18" songs recorded, pared down from around 25 possiblities. Fatherhood has been a key factor in the writing.
"Three of us all had our first kids within four months of each other," Miller tells Billboard.com. "We're adjusting to this new era of fatherhood. The band met each other in 1991, and it's 2008. So, it's sort of an interesting place to still be excited about making music together."
These new responsibilities, as well as geographic challenges, led the band to write in a new way. Whereas Miller describes the process before as "meeting every day for a couple months," the new material was written in one- to two-week batches over the course of several months.
"We're trying to find new ways of creating music, but meanwhile, we're doing what we've always done -- sit in a room, play music, and hopefully make an album that people will want to listen to a ton of times," Miller says.
"It's humbling and intimidating and it's a very complicated feeling going into this next round," he concedes. "We're hungry on an artistic level. We've had a lot of conversations on creativity. We'd put out four records under the Warner family, and we'd lost a lot of our supporters at Warner when our deal was up. We saw an opportunity to start fresh and try something else."
The new album follows 2006's "Ganging Up on the Sun," which has sold 147,000 copies in the United States, according to Nielsen SoundScan.
Meanwhile, Guster will join new Aware labelmate John Mayer at the end of March for the second Mayercraft Carrier Cruise, alongside O.A.R., Brendan James, and Martin Sexton. The four-day event departs from Los Angeles en route to Cabo, Mexico.
Lead singer Ryan Miller says Guster plans to come away with "17 or 18" songs recorded, pared down from around 25 possiblities. Fatherhood has been a key factor in the writing.
"Three of us all had our first kids within four months of each other," Miller tells Billboard.com. "We're adjusting to this new era of fatherhood. The band met each other in 1991, and it's 2008. So, it's sort of an interesting place to still be excited about making music together."
These new responsibilities, as well as geographic challenges, led the band to write in a new way. Whereas Miller describes the process before as "meeting every day for a couple months," the new material was written in one- to two-week batches over the course of several months.
"We're trying to find new ways of creating music, but meanwhile, we're doing what we've always done -- sit in a room, play music, and hopefully make an album that people will want to listen to a ton of times," Miller says.
"It's humbling and intimidating and it's a very complicated feeling going into this next round," he concedes. "We're hungry on an artistic level. We've had a lot of conversations on creativity. We'd put out four records under the Warner family, and we'd lost a lot of our supporters at Warner when our deal was up. We saw an opportunity to start fresh and try something else."
The new album follows 2006's "Ganging Up on the Sun," which has sold 147,000 copies in the United States, according to Nielsen SoundScan.
Meanwhile, Guster will join new Aware labelmate John Mayer at the end of March for the second Mayercraft Carrier Cruise, alongside O.A.R., Brendan James, and Martin Sexton. The four-day event departs from Los Angeles en route to Cabo, Mexico.
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