Tuneful geeks become hot 'Rods' with 'Split Personalities'
JULY 31, 1998
With their spectacles and nerdish personas, 12Rods are musical geeks through and through. “Our parents made sure it was our destiny that we were musicians,” says 12Rods’ Ryan Olcott.
Mission accomplished. 12Rods – Olcott, his brother Ev and Christopher McGuire – Have just released major-label debut, “Split Personalities,” on V2 Records. The first Minneapolis band since Semisonic to sign a major-label deal, 12Ros seem poised to follow their hometown elders up the charts.
While most parents would be impressed with the prospect of their sons becoming stars, Ryan emphasizes that his parents were not exactly thrilled with the rock star aspect of things.
“Our parents did it [musical education] with such grace and positivity that they made us want to play music,” he says. “But they never figured we’d play rock ‘n’ roll.”
The Olcotts’ parents are academics who played and taught college level classical music and traditional jazz. McGuire also hails from a family of musicians; his father and mother toured the hotel circuit for years, and his father now fronts a blues band, Big in Iowa.
Ryan began playing violin when he was 4 years old and older brother Ev started when he was 5. McGuire’s father gave him his first pair of sticks when he was 5. Each Rod ahs been playing for nearly 20 years even though they range from age 22 to 26.
Ryan and Ev are multi-instrumentalists, and McGuire’s drumming technique, largely based on complicated jazz rhythms, reveals a skill that is extolled by other local musicians. (he has sat in with a number of local bands, including the Legendary Jim Ruiz Group.)
None of the Rods is a studio slouch either, recording “Split Personalities” at their Warehouse district studio and serving as producers for the project.
And as a nod to its roots, the band even enlisted its junior high jazz band teacher from Oxford, Ohio, to play bass on five tracks. “We taught him how to rock,” says Ryan. “It was cool to see him get it.”
After high school graduation, Ev attended the Peabody Conservatory, and Ryan headed to DePaul. McGuire stayed in Oxford, gigging with numerous bands and paying the rent by giving drum lessons. (He still has a few students he teaches whenever he’s back in Oxford.)
After holding a few parties in the summer of 1992 and landing their first official gig at the Oxford Teen Center, 12Rods seemed destined to be fore a side project than a career. After Ev graduated from Peabody, he headed to the Twin Cities, keen on someday working as an engineer at Prince’s Paisley Park Studios. Ryan want to pursue his “inclination to rock” that he discovered when feeling creatively stifled in his classical music at DePaul, and McGuire was game to give up his hectic schedule, so all the Rods landed in Minneapolis landed in Minneapolis.
The trio won over local audiences with its brash, adolescent onstage energy, revenge-of-the-nerds lyrical diatribes, Ryan’s vocal histrionics (which are often compared to Ozzy Osbourne’s) and a walloping wall of sound.
The group’s 1996 EP, “gay?” was a direct response to the inquires the musicians got because of their image. The EP managed to sell nearly 1,000 copies by word of mouth, and 12Rods were on their way.
With “Split Personalities,” Ryan continues to write songs in the spirit of avenging his high school experience with bullies or in heartbroken response to failed relationship. With the lyrics that pinpoint rock-star-like disorders in “Split Personality,” shyness at meeting girls in “Stupidest Boy” or the double-entendre sexuality of “I Wish You Were a Girl,” Ryan’s sons are slyly humorous, self-deprecating and filled with what he calls, “abstract paranoia.”
Married to this is the trio’s dense collage of samples, triggers and other touches, including the Eastern lines of “Chromatically Declining Me,” the odd tempo of “Girl Sun” or the weirdly new-wave vibe of “Red.”
With bass player No. 7 in tow (Bill Shaw), 12Rods are able to replicate their music onstage, and are eager to hit the road. “I love playing on stage and seeing people connect with the music,” says McGuire. “There’s nothing like it.”
Article By Vickie Gilmer of the Star Tribune staff
Special thanks to Justin
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