Susto frontman Justin Osborne was thinking about what his next live release would look like — he’s put out supplemental material before, like Susto Stories in 2018, before Ever Since I Lost My Mind. He wanted to do a project that would have a similar rawness, but be unique to where he’s at in his career currently. So, he decided, “Let’s capture the vibe at Royal American on a Friday night.”
“Anyone familiar with the Charleston music scene knows what it was like pre-pandemic to go to a packed Royal show, what the energy was like,” he said. It is this atmosphere, along with just Osborne’s acoustic guitar and stripped-down vocals that come together on Susto’s new live album, Rogue Acoustic, recorded in February 2020.
“Over the last year-plus, I whittled down what were the best performances from that night — some covers, one unreleased song and different versions of songs across the catalog, with special guests that either had something to do with the writing of that song or someone who reflects the spirit of the song.”
Hunter Park of She Returns From War sings with Osborne on the Rolling Stones cover, “Dead Flowers.” Former Susto member Johnny Delaware, now of The Artisanals, jumped on stage for “Mystery Man.” “Hard Drugs” is performed with Band of Horses frontman Ben Bridwell. Susto’s own Dries Vandenberg sits in on harmonies for “Jah Werx.”
“I did the show, and then a month later, the whole world kind of shut down. What was really interesting to me over the last year, listening back to it, was the sound of the crowd, just hearing everyone being slammed up against each other, not knowing that just a few weeks from then we were all going to be holed up in our houses and not seeing people for a long time.”
As a fan of bootleg acoustic records, Osborne wanted to not only emulate that simplistic, organic sound with Rogue Acoustic, but also present the vulnerability and excitement that comes with trying to win over a crowd without the benefit of amplified guitars and crashing drums. It may not have a lot to it as far as instrumentation, he said, but the emotion is all there.
“To me it’s got a lot of interesting features,” he said of Rogue Acoustic. “Especially in the time we’re at now, where we’re coming out of the pandemic, back toward those live shows where people are crammed in together — it has a hopeful aura to me.“
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