Roger Klug is the first to admit that his recorded output has been somewhat sporadic over the course of his career. Things were fairly regular in the 1990s: His acclaimed work with The Willies early in the decade; his 1995 solo debut, Mama Mama ich bin in dem La La Land; his excellent 1997 follow-up, Toxic and 15 Other Love Songs; and the conceptual 1999 “compilation,” Where Has the Music Gone?: The Lost Recordings of Clem Comstock. And then ... nothing.
For the better part of a decade, Klug surfaced only for the occasional live appearance as his faithful fan base waited in vain for another flash of the singer/songwriter’s studio brilliance. His creative glacier finally began to move last year with the release of the startlingly great More Help for Your Nerves, the album he’d been working on for several years.
“This is going to sound pretentious and asinine, but I get in this state where I feel like I’m doing the human race a favor by putting an album out,” Klug says, laughing. “I walk around with records playing in my head that I haven’t even recorded yet — the bitch is getting it out into the tangible world. And it never sounds as loud and as awesome out here as it does in here, but I feel like I got pretty close with Nerves.”
This year, Klug’s work has taken a variety of forms, from the crazy seven-minute performance/IHOP commercial video for “Facebook Friend,” a new song by Klug’s “side project” Rant to Save Yourself, to his phenomenal down-on-the-farm take on “It Came Upon a Midnight Clear” for Ring, the public radio fundraising Christmas CD. With the overwhelmingly positive reviews for Nerves and Klug’s recent live activity with the Roger Klug Power Trio and Rant to Save Yourself, the stage seems set for a full-blown resurgence by the Power Pop wunderkind.
Klug and his Power Trio perform a free show Saturday at Northside Tavern.
Read Brian Baker's full interview with Klug here and get show and club details.
