Rue and Sabien
Rue & Sabien
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Rue & Sabien
Gary Rue (guitar, piano and voice): Composer, lyricist, performer, songs recorded by Helen Reddy, Nick Lowe, Prudence Johnson. 2010 MN Music Hall of Fame inductee.
Randy Sabien (guitar, violin, mando, piano, and voice)
Jazz violinist of the Stéphane Grappelli school: hot club, blues and western swing.
About Gary Rue
Gary Rue is well known to regional audiences for his work with FAB 6, Nip and Tuck, and the Sensational Sleepers, but he has also enjoyed a 50 year career as a songwriter for national and international artists. Other artists include Robert Robinson, Prudence Johnson, Butch Thompson, Pat Donohue, Debbie Duncan, Rio Nido, Mary Jane Alm, The Rose Ensemble, The Mavericks, Honeydogs, Willie Murphy, Leslie Ball, Dan Chouinard, Maria Jette and of course, Randy Sabien.
“…vibrant, catchy, exciting melodies.”
(San Francisco) Bay Area Express
“…these songs are a clear cut above the usual…each one features at least one major-league moment, phrase or hook…”
~Minneapolis Star Tribune
About Randy Sabien
Randy Sabien describes his sound as “Bob Wills meets Art Blakey (be-bop) meets the Allman Brothers (blues rock).” You can expect to hear classic Western swing tunes such as “Maiden’s Prayer,” an instrumental version of a Grateful Dead song, “Stella Blue,” or a swinging Duke Ellington tune, “Mr. Gentle and Mr. Cool.” Just as Will’s Texas Playboys. Sabien has toured the world playing in different styles and with many greats of the music world.
“Rather than simply embellish a tune, he re-conceives it, building and developing intriguing new musical motifs along the way . . . his playing couldn’t help but bring a smile to virtually every face in the room.”
~The Chicago Tribune
“Jazz Profiles” of NPR dubbed him “The past, present and future of jazz violin.”
“Jazz Profiles” , National Public Radio
About the Performance
A Rue/Sabien performance is an ad lib, rapid-fire affair, riddled with a melodic cascade of personal favorites peppered with musical ideas (occasionally interrupted by an errant thought: they sometimes feel the need to explain the process), duologues on inspiration (and what does not inspire), oblique social commentary, and comic highs and lows (when good things happen to bad people), all thoroughly plumbed from the musical depths of piano, guitar, violin, mando and voices that soar, growl and bubble within a sardonic Robin Williams/Noel Coward sense of humor. Influenced by nearly anything and everything musical.
Buckle up!~Charles Bunbury