Electric Blues

The Zoo Crew is spinning “Electric Blues” by The Rumours, off the album Suck It, and if you have been riding with the Zoo Freaks for any stretch of time you already know how this one lands. It is not the song that kicks the door in. It is the one that leans on the bar, lights a cigarette, and lets the guitar do the talking. Waterloo, Iowa’s hard-rocking road dogs put it third on a nine-song record that clocks in just past half an hour, and the cut itself runs four minutes and twenty seconds. Reviewers who got their hands on the vinyl back in the spring of 2020 called it a sleeper. Not a slap in the face, more of a mid-paced rock and roll number stuffed with sweet riffs and lead breaks that could have sat on a late eighties record and nobody would have blinked. That is exactly why the Crew keeps it in the crate. The Zoo Freaks like a song that sneaks up on you.

Suck It landed on March 19, 2020, and it was the band’s first record pressed to vinyl. The LP came with a 24-by-24 band poster, which is the kind of thing you pin over the workbench and leave there until the corners curl. Every note on the album is credited to The Rumours. The words, except on “You Suck, Baby,” belong to singer and guitarist Carli Foxx. On this particular session the lineup was Foxx on lead vocals and guitar, Ela Rose on bass, Stu The Dew on lead guitar, and Daniel Kluiter on drums. They cut it with Kevin Rife at Rife Recording Studio in Marion, Iowa, then handed the mixes to a fellow named Aristotle at Inner Light Records Studio in Iowa City. Kluiter told Sleaze Roxx they took more time on this one than they had on the earlier album Hot Bang. Same studio, same engineer, different mixer, more attention to the little things. He still called it raw, dirty, and in your face. The Crew will co-sign that. You can hear the extra care in “Electric Blues” without losing the grease.

The release itself turned into a road story nobody planned. The band had five album parties lined up across the Midwest. Club Underground in Minneapolis, the Gas Lamp in Des Moines, Spicoli’s Reverb in Waterloo, The Washington in Burlington, and Liar’s Club in Chicago. Those dates got wiped out when the world shut down. A record that was supposed to be handed to people in bars ended up traveling by mail. One collector wrote that he scored his copy off a cheap-record sale in a group chat, and the package still showed up fast. He put “Electric Blues” in the sleeper slot and said the lead breaks sounded like something you would have heard on a late eighties rock record. Later that same year Foxx sat down for an acoustic livestream out of the bunker at Spicoli’s and played the song stripped down, right between a couple of her own tunes and a Tom Petty number. A radio pal over at Super Cool Radio even used the studio version as walk-in music when Foxx came on to talk about the record. That is how a deep cut earns its keep. People who already know the album reach for it when they want the band without the fireworks.

The way The Rumours got started is pure small-town rock and roll, and it explains why a song called “Electric Blues” sits so naturally on their second full-length. Foxx and Rose, who also goes by Ela Moore, sat catty-corner from each other in algebra class in Waterloo. Right after they graduated high school in 2015 they started jamming under the name The Rumours. Foxx has said it feels like they have been in the band forever. The spark for her came earlier than that. Her mom took her to see Joan Jett when she was fourteen, and the next day she stole her dad’s old electric guitar because she wanted to do what Jett was doing. Rose came in from the Motörhead side of the fence. The band still describes itself as the love children of Motörhead and Joan Jett, classic punk with a metal edge, three pieces of in-your-face rock and roll out of Iowa. That electric guitar leaving the closet is the whole plot of “Electric Blues,” whether the lyric sheet says so or not.

Three or four months into the project they got an offer that still makes them wince. FRYfest in Coralville booked Joan Jett and the Blackhearts, and somebody decided a band with girls in it ought to open. Foxx has guessed out loud that the bookers figured it would work. It did not. She remembers stepping on a cable and unplugging her own guitar. Rose says they were terrible. Jett stood at the side of the stage and watched the whole mess. Foxx spent the set trying to signal her bass player with gritted teeth and a jerk of the head, and Rose did not catch on for a while. Afterward Jett was kind. Foxx still talks about how small she was and how she could take anybody out with a look. The band has been chasing a redo ever since, and Foxx has put it on the record that if Joan is listening, they would like another shot at the opening slot. That night is the origin story. Two kids from algebra class, a borrowed guitar, and a Hall of Famer watching them blow it.

They spent the next stretch learning how to be a band. The first records, including Hot Bang in 2017 and then Suck It, were still the sound of people finding themselves. Moore has said the more aggressive they got, the more they found the band. They started as a four-piece with another guitarist and later figured out they did not need the extra player if the two of them could cover the ground. A lot of the songs come out of growing up in Waterloo and walking into rooms where somebody assumes the women unloading the van are carrying a guy’s gear. Foxx calls them a kick-in-the-face, female-power punk-rock band. Moore talks about having to prove they were musicians, not a novelty, starting in their own town. “Electric Blues” sits in the middle of that education. It is slower than the spitfire tracks around it, built for the lead guitar to wander, and it still carries the same attitude. The album cover concept was Foxx’s. The whole thing was produced by the band. Nobody handed them a sound. They built it in Marion and Iowa City and took it on the road when the road opened back up.

Since then the van has kept rolling. They have opened for the likes of Joan Jett and the Blackhearts, Amyl and the Sniffers, Buckcherry, Supersuckers, Faster Pussycat, and Marky Ramone, and they have played Rock Fest, Rocklahoma, Muddy Roots, and Motoblot. An England run came in 2023. Newer records followed Suck It, including Kill or Be Killed, but the Crew still reaches for the 2020 album when the request line wants something with a little room in it. “Electric Blues” is the track you put on after the first beer and before the last call. It does not hurry. The riff sits there, the vocal has that rasp, and the lead break sounds like somebody who learned the instrument because a rock and roll show rearranged their head.

If you want the whole story from the source, the band keeps house at their official website, The Rumours. You can also find them on Facebook, Instagram, and X. The official site sits right there with the socials, merch, tour dates, and the albums, Suck It included. The Zoo Crew will keep spinning the deep cuts for the Zoo Freaks over at THE ZOO. Turn it up, leave the lights low, and let “Electric Blues” do what it was built to do.