REUNITED AND IT FEELS SO GOOD: Rustic Overtones.

The tiny room in the East Village shook from top to bottom for almost an hour on a frosty New York night last week. Rustic Overtones came to town relaxed, satisfied, a conquering army. They numbered nine in the white As Fast As van: the original seven (with no extra horns or strings), tour manager DLo, and producer/engineer Jim Begley.

The venue was the Mercury Lounge, a little past the Bowery on the Lower East Side. Not a big room like Wetlands or Irving Plaza, where the band had played during the glory days of the late ’90s. At the Mercury the cover was only ten bucks and the lady at the door reading Time made sure to ask who you were there to see.

“Rustic Overtones,” I said.

She grunted and made a check mark under their name. It looked like I was number twenty.

The tally didn’t include the sixty suits on the guest list, though — cats from the Velour Music Group. The small NYC label had wined and dined the band earlier. Eric Krasno, a member of the label’s biggest act, jam band/soul-shakers Soulive, was at the show, and introduced the show: “The Rustic Overtones are back!”

And through the crowd the seven members of Rustic, Spencer Albee, Dave Gutter, Tony McNaboe, J. Ward, Ryan Zoidis, Dave Noyes, and John Roods, made their way to the stage. They jumped right into “Light at the End,” the title track off the new album and the newer album, which (Gutter announced with a grizzled casualness) will be re-released nationwide on Velour in March.

The room looked to be shaking physically, Gutter’s vocals shoving the white bricks back with every yell. The bricks didn’t stand a chance; those yells had been lying in wait for a while.

Back in the day, at the massive State Theatre shows, Rustic were larger than life, even though I’d run into Gutter at 7-Eleven or Tony at the Drum Shop. They were the rock stars of Portland, and it just wasn’t the same after they called it a day in 2002. The new bands were good, the new material was rock ‘n’ roll you could be proud of, but in the sometimes smoky, sometimes tipsy, sometimes empty halls of the Portland music scene, the foundation had cracked.

Like dorks we all talked and speculated about when the reunion might happen. Most people felt the rift (whatever the rift may or may not have been) was irreparable and there was no chance. Some people just believed it would happen, and a good number of people really didn’t put much thought into it. There was the As Fast As show one night at the Big Easy when Gutter, then of Paranoid Social Club, jumped on stage to help sing “Skin the Cat.” And there was the time Spence played keyboards on PSC’s tune “Gangster.”

Then there was summer. Summer in Maine is an amazing time for a great many things, but it’s the best for bringing old friends back together. This summer, with Rustic Overtones, that is what happened.

Watching them a little over four months after that big throw-down in July, it made complete and absolute sense. They know it. Begley knows it. I asked him what he thought of the show: all he could do was laugh. The band, too: Here was this big important rock show, the showcase for the new label, and Roods and Spence spent the majority of both “Hardest Way Possible” and “Carsick” laughing at each other. During “Gas on Skin,” the horn section swayed back and forth like a doo-wop group. And what’s a Rustic show without Spence pulling an awkward handstand on the B3?

Matt, the dancing Bosstone from Bath, was a sweaty mess after the show. He stood wide-eyed, with a large smile across his face.

“They’re going to get theirs,” he said. “I’m so happy for them. They’re doing what they should do.”

“It’s great to see them back together,” Chad from Windham gushed.

Busting with oozing sentimentality the Mainers, one wearing an I am CYY T-shirt, started for the door. Rustic headed for the bar, for the back room, and for an old friend in the crowd. They shook hands when they were supposed to and ducked outside for cigarettes when they could. At the end of the night, they were out on Houston Street packing up the trailer. Down the street a couple of drag queens were getting kicked out of a cab and down the other way, a gal in green tights pedaled a three-wheeler down the sidewalk.

On the Web
Waterville Opera House: www.liveattheoperahouse.com

Ryan O’Connell can be reached at portland-feedback@thephoenix.com.