If you have been waiting, as iconic anti-war rocker Neil Young has, for “some young … musician to come along and write [protest] songs and stand up,” you need wait no longer.
Hot Buttered Rum is on tap at the Malibu Inn on Thursday at 8 p.m. And the rock-as-message, politically/socially driven music of the 1960s protest era is alive and well.
Raised in the hotbed of social activism of San Francisco’s Bay area, the five virtuosos who make up Hot Buttered Rum bring a mix of bluegrass, rock, jam and reggae to their concert tour, all fueled by an urgent social conscience.
“We live in a time that is equal to the problems our country was seeing in the late ’60s and early ’70s,” said Aaron Redner, fiddle and mandolin player in the band. “So at our show, we want to create a conscious environment but within a fun, dancing atmosphere.”
Their music ranges from rousing rockabilly to contemplative blues and their energy is infectious. “We embrace all American styles, even going back to Django Rhinehart and Stéphane Grappelli,” Redner said. “But our influences run from Art Blakey and Coltrane, to Dylan and Crosby, Stills & Nash.”
With Hot Buttered Rum, the medium is the message and their themes are as important as their harmonies, whether it be concern for an unjustified war or pleading an environmental cause. In fact, they embody the rubric, “organic and sustainable,” traveling the country, playing up to 175 gigs a year, in a tour bus that runs on strictly alternative fuels.
“We pretty much use recycled vegetable oil and bio diesel,” Redner explained.
Much like their idol, Willie Nelson, who famously has been using a tour bus powered by biofuels for years, the band’s goal is to live what they preach.
“We’re all about sustainable fuels,” Redner said. “Our goal is to install solar panels on the bus someday.”
The home on wheels is also outfitted with recycled and refurbished kitchen appliances and when they need to re-fuel, they’ve been known to pull up outside a Chinese or Mexican fast food joint and ask the puzzled manager if they can relieve him of all his discarded cooking oil.
“We have two tanks on board the bus,” Redner said. “One for the dirty oil and one for the oil that has been filtered.”
The members of Hot Buttered Rum are children of the Haight-Ashbury counter culture generation. Nat Keefe, guitarist with the band, said they came by their activism while growing up.
“We were all friends in high school and college, and my parents were musicians from the Bay area,” Keefe said. “They wrote a lot of protest music.”
All the Hot Buttered Rum members have extensive musical training with classical and ethnic influences. Keefe absorbed the rhythms of West African music while on a work-study program in Ghana and noted that “the roots of most truly American music come from West Africa.”
Considering their band doesn’t feature any drummers, the demands for setting rhythm are divided amongst the players.
“We have multiple song writers in the group,” Redner said. “So we all get a chance to ‘lead.’ Our band is an exercise in democracy and co-existence.”
Featuring guitar, fiddle, bass, mandolin and banjo (as well as clarinet and some rocking vocals), the string-driven group could be said to lean heavily on bluegrass, but Redner insisted they can not be pigeonholed.
“We’re bigger into folk rock and psychedelic rock,” he said. “We played with [well known blue grass guitarist] Peter Rowan, but Béla Fleck as well.” (Béla Fleck and the Flecktones have been Grammy nominated in an eclectic range of styles, from country, to jazz, to pop and classical.)
Still, as energy-loaded as their music might be, Hot Buttered Rum wears its politics on its sleeve, which requires a certain amount of courage in this day and age.
“After the Dixie Chicks, we were nervous about playing some songs,” Redner said, referring to the country group’s public ostracism following lead singer Natalie Maines’ denunciation of President Bush during a concert in 2003.
“We have a song called ‘Reckless Tex’ that is critical of the president and we didn’t know whether or not to sing it for awhile,” Redner continued. “But you gotta sing what moves you, what is honest. If your message resonates, then you’re doing the right thing.”
The band’s commitment to social awareness has paid off, with enthusiastic audiences across the country, ranging from “teenagers to grandparents,” embracing their message of social responsibility.
“We’re finally being endorsed by our musical heroes,” Redner said. “It’d be a dream to open for the Dixie Chicks!”
Tickets and information for the Hot Buttered Rum concert can be obtained at the Web site, www.hotbutteredrum.net, or by calling the Malibu Inn at 310.456.6060.