.rod laver - No Toque El Toro

With the release of a third album, No Toque El Toro, .rod laver is getting serious. Not that their lifetime has been all fun and games up to this point, but with a recent signing to Davdon Management, and a completed tour alongside Slick Shoes, .rod laver is like a tennis pro going in for the win, or a bull going in for the kill.

“We're definitely attempting to become more professional,” admits vocalist Rudy Nielsen. It's now a familiar story how this band, led by former youth pastor Nielsen, was quickly signed within a week of recording its first demo. When things happen this quickly to a new band, there is not a lot of time to map out long range career goals. It's more of a situation where you gas up the van and just go.

“Things happened kind of fast for us,” Nielsen says over the phone. “There was never a period where we were like . . . you know . . . those stories of like those 16-year-old kids who are hanging around their mom's garage. They dream some day of getting signed to a label and going on tour. We kind of got signed, did an album, and went on tour within about a two month period. We never really had the opportunity to establish ourselves as any sort of business or anything like that, or in any way be professional. Now we're kind of taking a few months off. We're with different management and different booking, and stuff like that.”

No Toque is the band's final album for Screaming Giant Records, so the next time you hear recorded .rod laver music, it will be from a brand new label. “We're entertaining some offers from labels,” offers Nielsen. “We've fulfilled our contract. We had a three-album deal with [Screaming Giant]. We're moving on.”

They are exiting Screaming Giant on good terms, by the way. “We're not exactly leaving them. It's not like there was a huge fight or anything like that,” Nielsen explains further. “We've fulfilled our obligation to them, and now we're moving on.”

“There's somebody that we have in mind right now,” is all Nielsen will say about laver's prospective new label. “We have a suitor. Someone's courting us, if you will. I don't know if it's going to be mainstream or Christian market. We don't know yet.”

Right now, the band is excited about its new release. “There's no real theme to the album,” explains Nielsen. “There's a lot of sarcasm, if you will. I usually try and talk about issues, or life, or whatever it may be, or the love of God, but do it so it's not so obvious, I guess.”

The title of the album literally means “don't touch the bull.” “That can be taken any way you want it,” Nielsen notes, “but really it's just kind of a joke. A friend of ours came up with that, and we thought it was kind of funny.”

The new album continues .rod laver's established musical direction, which is one of rock & roll with a little hip hop thrown in. “We're trying to be timeless,” Nielsen says. “We don't want to be stuck in a genre, or in the middle of a movement.”

The group is equally excited about its recently completed tour, where they did a month with Slick Shoes, Ace Troubleshooter, and Calibretto 13; on what was called the Tooth & Nail Tour. It began on the East Coast, and ended up on the West Coast, and played in about an equal split of general market and Christian clubs.

Nielsen is especially enthusiastic about the kind of professionalism Davdon has brought to the outfit. “Our road days will [now] be a lot more productive, you could say. We've toured a lot; we've played a lot of shows. We did this aimlessly for a while because we didn't really have any support. We kind of did everything on our own.”

.rod laver is not a band that would describe itself as overtly Christian in content. “We don't write a lot of praise songs,” Nielsen says. “I don't say 'Jesus' and 'God' in the lyrics a lot. We're obviously Christian guys. We obviously do the band as a ministry. It's not overly preachy, and it's not overly praise and worship oriented [either], if that makes sense.”

.rod laver may never want to trade its current, more stable position for its haphazard beginnings, but its early days serve as a reminder to the group that God was in it from the very beginning. “People that we've talked to have told us that they just can't believe that we've made it being as independent as we were, staying on the road full-time for two and a half years, just recording albums on like shoestring budgets and just being out there, basically, by ourselves. God's just totally blessed us through all that.”

Wherever their road takes them next, .rod laver at least knows that God is traveling right there with them.

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