Local singer gets personal about process

04/07/09 - Roz Raskin and the Rice Cakes are an up and coming band out of Providence, R.I., consisting of Roz Raskin singing and playing keyboard, John Cairo on bass and Casey Belisle on drums.The band received some buzz when they placed third in the 2008 Tazza Café singer-songwriter competition as well as being nominated as one of the "Best New Acts" in Motif Magizine.

Roz and the Rice Cakes played at 193 Degrees Coffeehouse March 28, and she sat down with the Cigar for a slice of pizza and a quick interview at Ronzio's.

It's difficult to describe The Rice Cakes sound to someone who hasn't listened to it before, and Raskin herself has trouble defining its sound.

"I can't say that I could put us in a genre," said Raskin. "I would say it's very rhythmic and very jazz-oriented- actually in a lot of ways, more than people would really know from the basis of it, because that's just my background. All my stuff is based off jazz chords and very melodic."

While mentioning jazz has a tendency to scare of most music listeners, The Rice Cakes are an accessible band with a pop oriented sound.

Roz went onto describe her band's sound as "Catchy pop riffs, mixed with jazzy chord progressions, very interesting drum work by Casey," adding that her goal is to make every song as catchy as possible.

In addition to Roz's jazz roots there are many other influences worked into the sound of her band's music. These include a surprising, unanimous band influence by The Mars Volta and the work of Radiohead.

"I really like Radiohead a lot, everything that they've done. My favorite album is probably OK Computer by them. I really love the sound they were working with in OK Computer because it involved just so many different types of styles to create something awesome that no one had ever really heard before."

The song writing process is one of the most interesting aspects of being a musician. Raskin described the process, or, in her case, the lack of a process.

"There's no real process, sometimes I'll just be sitting somewhere like sitting say right here," Raskin said.

At this point, a Ronzio worker yelled out for an order of a personal pizza and Raskin used this as an example of her organic writing process. "Say I heard that and maybe I might put that into song. I don't know. I can be anywhere when I think of lyrics," she said.

Raskin described how she wrote the chorus to one of her songs. "When I was on a subway in New York I thought of the chorus to "Sing to Me." The lyrics and the music just popped in my head."

Roz described that experience as unique and preferable to sitting down and writing, which can be a very frustrating experience.

She described a frustrating song writing experience that occurred during the two most recent snowstorms: "I was in my house cooped up; no one was there, so I tried to write a song and failed miserably. Everything I wrote just sucked."

The Rice Cakes' songs have a intimate feel to them and that is the result of the songs being about personal things to Raskin.

"A lot of the songs from my first album were about a certain guy that I was dating," said Raskin. "It's so weird to go back and think about how in love with this kid I was at the time and be like "What was I thinking?"

Raskin talked about how music is a way to capture a moment in time and how this experience is reflected in the message behind her songs.

"As cliché as it sounds, time really does heal everything," she said.

Roz Raskin and the Rice Cakes will be playing the 90.7 WXIN Rock Hunt at Providence's Firehouse 13 on April 14 at 8 p.m.