"You guys gonna be quiet?" Josh Rouse asks the New York City crowd, most of whom have gathered at Irving Plaza early to secure a spot for the Cowboy Junkies. But the question mark at the end of that statement is only out of politeness. You don't tell a roomful of strangers making a racket to shut up just so you can play moody pop songs -- you ask them, and just hope they do. And if they don't, you play them anyway.

At least that's what Nebraska native Rouse did. Rouse, who just released his second album, Home, is not under the misconception that things will come easy. "It's always a matter of winning somebody over every night," he explains. But like any opening act, he knows his job is the musical equivalent of hors d'oeuvre. "There's nights where there's nothing you can do. We're like wallpaper."

So for those of you who couldn't hear over the clamor of the crowd, and even for those who had the nerve to answer "No!" to Rouse's request, this is who you missed.

At twenty-eight, Josh Rouse has lived in more places than most people do in a lifetime. With a father in the military, he spent much of his adolescence crisscrossing the American West and Midwest, but his heart was in the British post-punk of the Smiths and the Cure. After three years and a semester at Austin Peay College, outside of Nashville, the nascent philosophy major moved to the country music capitol to pursue music full time. While working as a parking valet at a restaurant, his tape caught the ear of the founder of Slow River Records. And in 1998, his debut, Dressed Up Like Nebraska, was in stores while he toured with the likes of Aimee Mann and Wilco, writing songs for his follow-up.

Today Rouse sits in the reception area of a noisy Manhattan office, where in between interloping well-wishers ("We're just doing a little interview, here," Rouse gently tells one of them), he discuss his new album.

"If you breakdown on the highway, everybody is gonna pull over and ask, 'Hey, you need some help?' and take you to their house and feed you dinner," Rouse explains, wistfully reminiscing about his home state. "You don't meet many people from Nebraska," he says.

He's right, you don't. But if you listen to Rouse talk about the warmth and familiarity of the place, you'll wish you did. Nebraska not only represents a basic goodness and expansive view fitting of Rouse's nomadic years, but his use of it in Dressed Up Like Nebraska captures a simplicity, starkness and practicality that exemplifies his ability to make poetry out of the pedestrian.

Home brings things inside, letting you listen through walls to conversations you only half understand. "Home" is a powerful word, but as Rouse describes it, "a simple word. And the songs I do are kind of simple, so it seemed to fit."

The word "simple" in all its permutations, with all its synonyms, will crop up in every answer to every question you can pose to Josh Rouse. If he's talking about those early influences, what he tells you he appreciates is "the simple melody, simple little pop songs." As for his own simple pop songs, "If it's not coming out when I pick up the guitar, I just put it down," he says. "I don't want to force it too much."

The self-described "lazy" songwriter "only writes fifteen songs a year that are done." "But there's some people," he continues, "who write like 200 songs a year, but maybe about twelve of them are really good. So when it starts sounding like crap, I don't even mess with it. I just walk away."

In contrast, Rouse's filtering is internal, perhaps explaining the admittedly elusive lyrics. Though he edited his songs early on, he noted a loss of intensity in the finished product and stopped after "a conversation with this guy in Nashville who saw me play two songs." He advised Rouse not to edit, and warned, "Don't get sucked up by this whole industry, don't let it control the outcome of your songs." When asked who the guy actually is, Rouse says, "All he is, what he gets paid [to do], is just go and talk to people." A therapist? "Yeah, kind of. He just travels around Nashville and meets people in coffee shops. I guess he bills 'em at the end of the month," he says, laughing. "I don't know what happens, but what a cool job!"

It's not surprising that Rouse is more interested in receiving life stories than giving his. His pet peeve is being continually grilled about what his lyrics mean. Nevertheless, questions about lyrics are not limited to journalists. "My family has got to wonder what I'm singing about," he says. "My wife does too, but I don't tell 'em."

Though the term "singer-songwriter," is often attached to Rouse's name, it makes him uneasy. "I guess because of the word writer," he says, drawing out the "i." "I don't write poems or books. I don't even write the words down to my lyrics."

His distinction becomes a bit clearer when asked if he sees any connection between his debut album and that other Nebraska album by Bruce Springsteen. "I don't think so. He's a writer," Rouse says, adding that even though he admires Springsteen's storytelling ability, he does not think he shares it. "I've done a couple of things like that and I'm like, 'Oh, this is boring.' I don't want to bore somebody with a story."

While he may not write "stories," his songs are about the stuff of which life is made: longing, hopefulness, disappointment and reproach embedded in melancholy, but without the melodrama. Rouse is no simpering songwriter. When he sings "Hey, porcupine, where on earth is you sharp ass wit today?" (from "Porcupine"), you hardly worry that he would ever lose a battle of words. And the dreamy, rock-you-to-sleep-on-the-subway ballads belie a sharp wit. The last track, bearing the caustic title "Little Know It All," has a mournful opening, but only Rouse's unnervingly calm tenor could deliver the line "Be on the lookout for me" with an ambiguity to make it scarier than any direct threat.

But for all of Rouse's concern about coming off as if he possessed the mettle of wet tissues, his sensitivity and ability to write are his strengths. There's an acute sympathy at work behind the observation, "Is it natural/With your head down low." And only a writer could put it all together in a song of promised triumph and call it "Marvin Gaye."

Ultimately, Rouse says he wanted to make a record that "doesn't have to be really heavy," but didn't want people to think, "This guy takes himself really seriously." Maybe Rouse is right though when he says that people won't get it. Mimicking the voice of the "brawn" stagehand who grabbed his ear after a show one night, he says, "Not bad for whiny college rock."

Not bad at all.

CHRISTINA SARACENO
(March 24, 2000)