Roosevelt

There are at least three bands with the name Roosevelt 1) Alias of Cologne based producer Marius Lauber, signed to Greco-Roman, the Berlin-London party collective and record label that has been a home for Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs, Disclosure, Baio and Hot Chip's Joe Goddard. His debut single 'Sea' blends Balearic haze with his hometown’s trademark electronica to make loved-up guitar pop. 2) Athens music scene veterans may remember shaggy rock power trio Roosevelt as one of a pile of heavy hitting rock bands who kicked up some post-jangle dust in the early-’90s. Roosevelt played hard, loud, and fast. They had elements of the blues-rock of ZZ Top and Zep, the ambling country-twang sounds of Neil Young and Johnny Cash, the prog tendencies of King Crimson, and the quirky punk of Meat Puppets and Minutemen. As the bassist John Crain, drummer Ballard Lesemann, and guitarist Daniel Pruitt grew older, they matured musically, developing an accomplished instrumental technique and moving closer to the prog-rock complexities that were always underneath its punk. But Roosevelt never quite abandoned its classic rock roots, no matter how tangled. Roosevelt (named for the U.S. presidents, not the likable old guy who danced and hung out at the Georgia Theatre) kicked up in Athens in late 1989. Crain (of Greenville, S.C.) and Pruitt (of Savannah, Ga.) were longhaired university students who had already put a year or so into the prog-rock trio I.S.S. (or “Independent Skyleague Section”) with drummer Isaac McCalla. The band broke up in late ’89. After a stint on bass guitar with Old Scratch and on drums with The Killbillys and Put The Strange Damsel To Work, bespectacled drummer (now Charleston City Paper music editor) Ballard Lesemann completed the lineup in January, 1990. Roosevelt independently released their vinyl-only full-length titled Shingle in 1991 and extensively toured the Southeast behind it. In 1992, the band recorded a vinyl-only, four-song EP titled Person and contributed three songs to the seven-band compilation album Fuel: Seven bands From Athens, Ga.. Both the EP and the comp came out on the fledgling local indie Self Rising Records. On September 28, 2001, Roosevelt reunited for the first time since their amicable split in 1993 for a special “CD Release” show in which they released a limited edition 17-song “best of” on compact disc titled 1990 1993 (Dust Bunny). The collection was culled from studio sessions recorded by David Barbe, Robbie Collins, Harper Hug, and Rick Fowler. The album also included live tracks recorded by Pattiy Torno at the Squashpile club in Asheville, N.C., and by George Vest at the 40 Watt Club when it was located where the Caledonia Lounge now stands. Currently, Crain and Lesemann reside and work in the Charleston, S.C. area and occasionally play together as the rhythm section in several bar bands (MacDaddy, The Stiff Joints). Pruitt splits his time between Savannah, Atlanta, and Tybee Island, doing house restorations and writing acoustic power ballads. Text taken from http://www.myspace.com/rooseveltband 3) Roosevelt was a short lived emo band from south Florida. The band itself released only two EPs. This was the first band to have released material officially for most of the members. Both of their releases are now long out of print. discography demo split 7'' w/ Culture (1994, Intention Records) s/t 7'' (1996, Boxcar Records) Neither of these bands are to be confused with "The Roosevelt" an Indie Rock band from Washington, D.C. Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.