Red Wanting Blue will return to Columbus Friday for their homecoming show. Credit: Courtesy of Stephen Albanese
Ohio-based indie band Red Wanting Blue is returning to Columbus for its homecoming show at The Bluestone Friday at 7 p.m. with support from rock artist Brian Vander Ark.
Vocalist Scott Terry said the band captures the sound of Americana, with influence from folk, rock ‘n’ roll and alternative country. Red Wanting Blue’s latest release is the 2024 album “Light It Up” — the band’s first self-produced album and eighth overall, according to a statement released by its record label, Blue Élan.
The band formed in the mid-1990s in Athens, Ohio, where Terry said he spent his undergraduate years at Ohio University. Other members of the band attended various Ohio universities, with bassist Mark McCullough and guitarist Greg Rahm graduating from Ohio State. Following graduation, the band relocated to Columbus.
“I wanted to take the band and … run with it and make it as big of a thing as I possibly could,” Terry said. “It seemed like the natural progression to be moving up to Columbus.”
Terry said over the years, Red Wanting Blue has gained familiarity with what lies outside of the Buckeye State. Despite Terry’s move to New York, he said the rest of the members still reside in Ohio, and Columbus remains the band’s “home base.”
“When you’re a young band and you’re trying to get a name, build a name for yourself … I think you have to get your feet under you first, so you find yourself playing around the city,” Terry said. “If you’ve established yourself as a band, at some point, you find yourself playing your hometown less than — or about as often — as you play anywhere else.”
Terry said it was always a goal for the band to further its outreach.
“The whole band’s always been fascinated with the idea of being an American rock n’ roll band, and the only way you can really claim that is by going out and trying to play all over America,” Terry said. “I was always interested in seeing the country through the eyes of a band … we wanted to spread our music and play music full-time.”
Terry said the band incorporates various, lesser-known instruments, such as McCullough’s Chapman Stick and Eric Hall on the Lap Steel. He said each member of the band plays several instruments alongside their mains, apart from Dean Anshutz, who plays drums.
Terry said that the titular song of their latest album “Light It Up” is an example of the band’s continuous lyrical honesty with personal struggle.
“I write these lyrics for myself, but I also write them as the storyteller of Red Wanting Blue, so the whole band takes that on — these stories are our stories,” Terry said. “Even 30 years later, we’re talking about things that are vulnerable and talking about the different roles that we play in our lives as musicians — career musicians that are performing — and our private lives.”
Terry said it’s important to give listeners a connective experience to the lyrics.
“If you’re a little afraid … that’s usually a good sign that you’re tapping into something that’s vulnerable,” Terry said. “That’s what people want to connect with — nobody wants to hear vanilla, cliché lyrics that we’ve all heard 100 or 1000 times before.”
Terry said that there are only so many themes that a song can follow, such as love, anger or heartbreak, and for whichever route, it’s up to the artist to provide specificity.
“What really distinguishes your song from the million other love songs is the fingerprint that you have on your own life,” Terry said. “People really connect to the details and I feel, as a writer, the best details come from those that have actually lived. You can draw firsthand experience on those things.”
Red Wanting Blue has grown together through every season, Rahm said in an email.
“[We] built something that feels more like family when away from home,” Rahm said. “Music has always been my compass, and this band has been the vessel that’s carried me farther than I ever hoped to go.”
Rahm said performing is something that grounds him, but also gives him a push.
“[It] reminds me why I fell in love with music in the first place,” Rahm said. “There’s nothing like connecting with people in a room, sharing songs that have become the soundtrack to so many moments of other’s lives.”
Terry said the “heartland rock ‘n’ roll” band — as he calls it — holds Ohio’s reputation as “the heart of it all” near and dear to its roots.
“Ohio has got so much amazing music,” Terry said. “There’s so much talent just right at our fingertips, if you’re willing to give it a chance and look at it.”
Looking back at his years in undergrad, Rahm said being in the band has taken him places he never could have imagined.
“I’m incredibly lucky to still be doing this so many years later,” Rahm said. “Especially when I think back to walking the Oval, or staring at the ceiling in Steeb Hall in my bunk at Ohio State, dreaming that maybe one day I’d get to live a life in music.”
Doors open at 7 p.m. Friday. The Bluestone can be found at 583 E. Broad St. Tickets can be purchased through Ticketmaster.
