Todd Rundgren brings legendary inventiveness, infectious new electronic project to Grand Rapids

With an L.A. producer, two singers and a light show in tow, this is not a greatest hits revue but a tour touting Rundgren’s new ‘Global’ album and ‘collective consciousness.’ He plays The Intersection Thursday.

 

Some artists reach a point in their work where they contemplate some sort of creative reinvention as a way to keep things fresh. But for Todd Rundgren, the act of continuous creative reinvention has itself been the major project of his career.

Over the past four decades, Rundgren has been consistently unpredictable.

He’s a shapeshifter, transforming from a psych-garage prodigy to a sensitive singer-songwriter; from an avant garde Western mystic to sweet pop confectioner. He’s a guitar god and a synth scientist. He’s been the industry’s “it” producer and a frequent sideman to an ex-Beatle. The dude’s CV is deep.

When he plays a sold-out show at The Intersection in Grand Rapids on Thursday, Rundgren will be showcasing one of his recurring incarnations, that of the electronic groove machine with a social conscience. Rundgren is touring in support of his 25th solo studio album, “Global.” Much like his 2013 album “State,” the album is a dance party that places Rundgren’s socio-cosmic worldview and R&B roots in a fresh, post-EDM context.

“This is a record about trying to foster collective consciousness, a planetary consciousness for starters, seeing the world as one thing, as opposed to all of the factional divisions that we’re forced to confront every day,” Rundgren said.

Part of the concept of “Global” is to consider the planet as an interconnected whole, like an astronaut would, and to recognize “the uniqueness of it and the special opportunity it represents and what the onus is on us in order to realize … all of the ideal possibilities that a place like this planet affords.”

CREATING ‘A COLLECTIVE CONSCIOUSNESS’ TO INFECT THE LARGER POPULATION

“You’re always battling people’s fearfulness and avarice all the time,” he continued. “The question is, can you begin to create a collective consciousness that can infect the larger population?”

Audience members expecting a nostalgic trip through the 66-year-old Rundgren’s back pages — like 2010’s Muskegon revisiting of the “Todd” and “Healing” albums — might be disappointed. This tour’s set list leans heavily on material from “Global” and deep cuts from his 21st century LPs, with only a couple of classics sprinkled in.

But it’s not just the set list that might be unfamiliar. This time out, rather than touring with standard rock band, Rundgren has opted for a multi-media extravaganza backed by Los Angeles-based DJ/producer/keyboardist Dam-Funk, two backup singer/dancers and an intense video and light show.

Rundgren acknowledged that economic considerations played into his decision to work in this configuration — each additional musician added to the ensemble brings higher travel and lodging costs, not to mention salaries. But he added that this arrangement brings its own benefits.

“The advantage of having sort of a DJ-like setup is that we can tune ourselves perfectly to every room; we can do things in the performance that are difficult to do with live musicians unless you have rehearsed a whole lot of special cueing,” Rundgren said. “I think there are advantages in essentially having confidence that the music is going to sound a certain way.”

Los Angeles-based Dam-Funk (pronounced “Dame,” as in Damon Riddick, his given name) is a veteran of the current electro-funk renaissance. He was hired for the tour after Rundgren was invited to visit Dam-Funk’s longstanding weekly funk/new wave/disco club night called Funkmosphere. Funkmosphere’s mission is to dig into the kinds of rare records that hip hop artists are inspired to sample. In the process, Dam-Funk developed an innovative presentation of playing keyboards while spinning records.

That combination of live performance and pre-recorded tracks fit with Rundgren’s vision for this tour. Todd attempted to DJ for himself on the “State” tour in 2013, but decided it was too much for one person to handle.

A DJ VIBE MORPHED WITH LIVE GUITAR AND VOCALS

“I had too much singing to seriously do anything else,” Rundgren said.

One of the exciting components of the performance, Dam-Funk said, is that Rundgren is including some elements of the originally recorded studio tracks that can be cut up and re-arranged, as opposed to merely trying to mimic the parts.

“It’s almost like a DJ vibe, but really not,” Dam-Funk said. “It’s kind of like a morphing of a live presentation, with him live on guitar, and all the vocals are live, but just flourishes on top of the original material.”

Dam-Funk added that the show might be a challenge for people expecting a county fair-type of greatest hits concert, but Rundgren’s current period of creative fertility shows in the live setting.

“I’ve been looking at him, man, and I gotta tell you it really does seem like he has a new vibe. It’s like a new energy. He’s dancing, he’s moving, he’s not just sitting on a stool playing guitar. He’s having a good time up there,” Dam-Funk said. “It even blew me away.”

“We all hope that his audience continues to grow with him and [doesn’t] just settle on always having to do the rocking out band thing and the hits,” Dam-Funk said. “It would be nice to see that an audience continues to go on the journey of an artist’s progression and his journey in life because they’ve been there since the beginning.”

A longtime Todd fan, Dam-Funk said he said he was first exposed to Rundgren during his formative years, when he would ride his bike to the record store and stumble on the intriguing jackets of classic 1970s LPs like “Something/Anything” and “A Wizard a True Star.” But, like many Rundgren fanatics (this writer included), it was what was in the grooves of those records — the inventive sonic textures, the orchestral chords, the cynical but beautiful lyrics — that hooked Dam-Funk.

“That’s what gravitated me toward realizing he was a modern-day genius,” Dam-Funk said. “I just always admired his musicality and the fact that he was in the line and tradition of Prince and those kind of cats who did all the music, or the majority of it, himself,” he said.

FASCINATED BY TECHNOLOGY, MYSTIFIED BY THE ‘RETRO’ FAD

Rundgren has always been interested in technological innovation. His career is filled with groundbreaking experimentation with synthesizers, drum machines and video graphics. So he seems bemused by the current retro-futurist trend that sees analog synths, vintage drum machines and vinyl back in vogue.

“It’s mystifying to me. I don’t know how long it could possibly last, because there are reasons why that stuff goes out of fashion, and that’s usually because people eventually find something that’s more convenient,” Rundgren said.

Today’s analog modular synths are smaller and more stable than the early models Rundgren experimented with on “A Wizard a True Star” and “Todd.” Of course, he remembers the pains of being an early adopter.

“It used to be that you’d have to turn your synthesizer on for 20 minutes before it would stabilize enough to tune it,” Rundgren remembered. “I don’t think that’s what they intend to go back to, but it’s so interesting that, even from a hardware standpoint, it’s barely necessary because everything can be so easily emulated in software.”

The funny thing is, Dam-Funk is a prime avatar of this back-to-analog movement.

He has produced a series of small analog drum machines in collaboration with Bleep Labs, and his songs like “I Want to Thank You (For Steppin’ Into My Life)” are filled with vintage sounds. He said he hasn’t had the conversation with Rundgren yet, but he hopes Todd will consider pulling out some old Moog synths or Linn drum machines for his next project.

Thursday’s sold-out Intersection show is a “fully seated” affair. Doors open at 7 p.m.

Copyright 2015, Spins on Music LLC