Adam Busch

Common Rotation is feeling at home

Friday, February 06, 2004

By APRIL HELMER The Express-Times

Adam Busch doesn’t claim to have all the answers, but he’s hoping to figure as many out as he can — one living room at a time.

As half of the duo of Common Rotation now touring, Busch is on the road with Eric Kufs, not only hitting clubs and coffeehouses, but also doing house concerts which seem to be the highlight of the current tour for Busch.

"It’s all of the things Eric and I like about touring and none of the stuff we don’t like," Busch says. "The sound systems, the clubs, the club owners. I think it’s how I would like to see the (musicians) I like."

He says the response to the band’s Web site, commonrotation.com, was tremendous when they mentioned the living room performances — thousands and thousands of people offered their homes both here in the United States and in Europe.

"We can play wherever, whenever we want," Busch says.

Tonight Busch and Kufs will be playing two acoustic shows at The Point in Bryn Mawr. They’ll do a sold-out living room show at Swarthmore College on Saturday afternoon and another in Virginia on Saturday night. Then it’s to West Virginia on Sunday.

"We play The Point almost every month, every other month," Busch says. "It’s one of our favorite places to play; it was one of our inspirations for the living room tour. Like the couches there, that feels like a living room. I think that’s why venues like that feel so nice, it feels like home.’’

Busch refers to the living room tour as "a movement" and says he and Kufs are straight-ahead folk singers, even if their latest full-length studio album doesn’t reflect that.

"We knew we were making a pop record," he says of "The Big Fear." "It starts off with ’Indie Rockin’ which is full-on electric and kind of talks about people who try too hard and just keep trying and trying and trying."

But at the end of the album, a hidden track is a decidedly un-pop song, revealing the band’s folk intentions.

"We kind of wanted to say we know it’s a pop album and the next album is going to be a folk album and we’ll probably have a hidden pop track on that one."

The cover of the CD sums up the pair’s attitude — it’s the image of a TV dinner.

"It definitely reflects the theme of the album and the name of the band," Busch explains. "It’s the idea of any kind of life lost in fear and not living to its full potential — any standard TV dinner life.

"This record is our way to attempt to get out of that, the torture of the familiar or the unexplored."

It would be very difficult to describe Busch’s as a TV dinner life. He’s got his brother, Matt, on board as Common Rotation’s tour manager, when he can tear himself away as the manager for The Grateful Dead, The Allman Brothers and Government Mule. And Busch himself is fitting in the venue tour with the living room tour (which will also include a DVD recording in the spring) with the constant recording of new material.

And he’s also an actor, and a pretty successful one at that.

He was Warren on "Buffy the Vampire Slayer." He built a fembot and later, after becoming the leader of a big bad trio, he was flayed by a vengeance-seeking witch.

Now he’s filming promos for a new Fox series, "The Jury," by Barry Levinson, based on "12 Angry Men," Busch says.

It seems as though he embraces the attention his acting gets for the attention it can get for his music. But he fears the acting overshadows the music in some people’s eyes.

When Common Rotation played in Europe with fellow Buffy-ster James Marsters’ (Spike) band Ghost of the Robot, the show opened an entire market for the group.

This summer when Moonlight Rising 2004, a ’’Buffy the Vampire Slayer’’ fan convention, comes to Jim Thorpe, Pa., Ghost of the Robot and Common Rotation will share the bill for a Saturday night concert.

Registration for the convention, available at moonlightrising.com, is already half-full, according to organizers.

Though the show has brought along people automatically open to Common Rotation’s music, Busch says acting can be a facet of his life the media focuses on too closely.

"It’s just work," he says. "It affects me when I talk about it with you. If it becomes about how an actor plays in a band, that’s not what it’s about — not what it’s supposed to be about.

"That would be a drag."

"We don’t have all the answers," he says of himself and Kufs. "But we’re trying to learn them. We think if there’s ever a good time for a folk music movement, this is it. So we’re traveling around, seeing where people live and learning." Arts and Entertainment Editor April Helmer can be reached at 610-258-7171 or by e-mail at ahelmer@express-times.com.