How It All Started...

The band Rubikon was founded in late 2001 by a southern man and three northerners. Though clearly outgunned in the Civil War reenactment department, Mississippi cave dweller and singer Jae decided to stick it out and make some music up in the chilly environs of Boston that he called home for a while. Northern aggressors Hubes (bass), Diggs (drums/vocals) and DR (guitars) were clearly pleased with Jae’s white flag of surrender and decided to start writing music with him. And music, my friends, was indeed written.

Into the Meat Grinder Go We

The band quickly emerged as something of a musical meat grinder, merging layers of progressive hard rock riffs, soaring melodic vocals, complex harmonic structures, mile-high atmospherics and claustrophobic metallic outbursts into a flavorful musical sausage. This audio sausage was released on a few mouth-watering EPs in 2001 and 2002, then skillfully aged into a full length album, 2004’s “The Hollow Men”. The band took their artisanal meat wares on the road and toured the country a bunch of times playing hundreds of shows to folks all across our righteous meat-eating nation.

The Slight Detour and the Cheese Merchant

In late 2005, the grinder was placed on the top shelf behind the mixing bowls – that is to say, Rubikon decided to take some time off from music and make babies, go to school, and age gracefully in a low-humidity mushroom cave to impart earthy textures and flavors to their music. In 2009, old friend and cheese merchant Josh roused the band from their slumber with a well-placed tickle - and music was made yet again. The Rubikon sausage mixed so well with Josh’s cheese that he immediately joined the band on guitar, and Rubikon became a five-piece.

Firing Up the Machine

The newly revived Rubikon spent 2009 and 2010 writing and recording “American Dream Machine”, which was released in March 2011. After a string of shows supporting ADM, the band got together and started poking around with some new material. This time around, the pedalboards were put aside in favor of a “plug straight into the amp and see what comes out” approach to songwriting. This yielded considerable musical fruit, as it were, which found its way onto 2015’s Delta – an album that put songwriting at the forefront and emphasized different facets of the band, namely Jae’s southern soul upbringing and Josh’s blues-based style on the guitar.

A Robust Charcuterie Plate

The opening banger “Live That Lie” became the band’s first Top 40 charting tune and ended up landing on the Showtime series Shameless, among other cuts from the album. After running through a host of shows supporting this album, the band once again got together to work on a new record...which they very creatively titled “The Record”. This release is out on September 20, 2019 and features more rock tunes written by five guys (not the fine eatery) that have grown increasingly close over their nearly 18 years together. A tasty mélange, as it were.

Check, Please...

When you think Rubikon – think sausage, cheese, and fruit – and bam, you’ve got yourself a well-balanced musical meal.