Country in the city

Borrowing from one of River City's song titles, Jon Kruger, the vocalist, guitarist and harmonica man for the local band, could be described as "poetically indifferent."

When asked about the music he makes with his year-old band—musicians who switch from instrument to instrument and play everything from the banjo (Andrew Armerding) and pedal steel guitar (Bubba Lee) to the washboard (Rob Ivy, who also plays drums) and piano (Chad Pittman)—Kruger says, quite aloofly, "It's just enjoyable, it's nice, it's fun to play and I think it speaks well to people."

If you push Kruger a little more and ask him to describe the specific sound River City is going for—which I'd personally say is mostly melancholy poetry set to sometimes twangy, other times soothing, folk music—he'll answer, "I usually say indie folk or something. Rob called it 'sonic folk' when he first heard us."

But maybe calling Kruger "indifferent" is unfair. Maybe he's just the poetic part and the indifference comes when people ask him to put his abstract thoughts into straightforward, journalism-friendly quotables. The guys is, after all, an artist (he does all the poster and flier art for the band, a surreal collection of cute anthropomorphic characters that can be viewed at www.myspace.com/ rivercitytheband), and the band is what it is: a group of talented, city-dwelling musicians who like to play music that makes listeners feel like they're in the country—like they should be sitting on hay bails stomping their feet on wooden floors while a rooster crows somewhere in the distance.

And for those who think urbanites don't know the first thing about country, they should see a River City show in a greasy San Diego dive bar, close their eyes and see how easy (or hard) it is to shake off pre-conceived notions.
—Kinsee Morlan

River City plays The Radio Room, 3519 El Cajon Blvd. in Normal Heights, at 9:30 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 13.

http://www.sdcitybeat.com/cms/story/detail/all_that_is_night/7490/