Today we’d like to introduce you to Roger “RJ” Ruuspakka
Hi RJ, can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today?
I started playing bass guitar in high school in upstate NY. A high school friend of mine loaned me a bass and amp to learn to play. He actually went on to play with the popular bands Savoy Brown, Foghat and the Outlaws. I continued to play in college and eventually attended Berklee College of Music in Boston for Audio Engineering. I recorded some of the best student bands there. After Berklee, I went back to school to get an Electrical Engineering degree and that is where I met the drummer (Mike “Spike” Hammond) of our current band. We were joined by Carl “Charlie” Miller on guitar soon after and called ourselves The Shrubs. We played out many times and ended up recording three albums worth of original music. After college, I got a job at Qualcomm in San Diego and the band more or less split up. After living in San Diego for a while, we got back together remotely and re-recorded our first album “Another Day Goes By” and released it. Since then we have recorded and released nine other singles. We currently are working on two new ones. I have also produced and recorded another artist named F.I. We released his first album back in April of this year and have a single in the works. On the day job side, I worked at Qualcomm for almost twenty one years before leaving to work a a couple of startups. The last startup was aquired by Illumina where I currently am employed.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
As a musician, there are constant struggles. There’s interpersonal struggles within the band and we also struggle with making the time to be creative. We all have day jobs and families (except Charlie) and Spike is part owner of a company so he is always working. Since Charlie and Spike still live in upstate NY, recording music remotely is difficult. We all use the same software and I built a small recording studio in my home. We try to meet via Google Meet weekly to keep each other updated on progress but making progess can be much slower than getting together to jam and work out our parts. The hardest part is just getting the arrangement that we can all agree on.
As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?
As I said, I play bass guitar and write music. I can also play some keyboard and guitar. We were excited to win the 2021 Alternative Arist of the Year for the Indie Star Radio network. One of the things I’m most proud of is a song I wrote. It’s a song called No More Bad Days. Charlie had injured his playing hand and I had to take over and play guitar for the track. I wrote and recorded everything except the drums, the guitar solo and one backing vocal. It was a lot of work and it was one of our higher streamed songs. The song was about a fan of ours on Twitter (at the time). She had struggled with drug addiction and would freely talk about struggling to stay clean. She had gotten married, had a child, but suddenly would fall off the wagon. She eventually disappeared and was never heard from again. Unfortunately, the song wasn’t finished in time for her to hear it. I dedicated the song to her.
Before we let you go, we’ve got to ask if you have any advice for those who are just starting out?
The world has changed so much since we started recording music. When we first started, we were limited to recording on four tracks. Now we have unlimited tracks to record on. For instance, I mixed one of our songs, “I Remember” and it used 56 tracks. Software, such as Cubase, can make you much more creative. Once you create music, distributors, like CD Baby, can send your music all over the world while collecting royalties for you. When we released our first album, the only way to distribute it was when we played out and hoped someone would buy it. Now, our songs are distributed all over the world. We have fans everywhere. It’s a tough business that’s made it easier to widen your fan base, but also easier for everyone else. You have to be really creative to market yourself.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://theshrubs3.bandcamp.com/
- Instagram: https://instagram.com/theshrubs3
- Facebook: https://facebook.com/The-Shrubs-153544634576
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/theshrubs3
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@theshrubs3
- Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/the-shrubs-911235784
- Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@theshrubsofficial
