Cody Clark

In 2005, Ryan Shupe & the RubberBand took a huge step up the music industry ladder by signing a deal with venerable Capitol Records and turning their self-produced album "Hey Hey Hey" into the major national release "Dream Big." TV exposure helped the title track from that album climb into the Top 40 on Billboard's Hot Country Songs chart. Alas, that turned out to be as big as the band could dream, at least in terms of national sales, leading, predictably, to a parting of the ways with Capitol.

The message in the new album's title, Shupe said, is that "we are a band that's action-packed. We put up a good fight, you don't want to run into us in a dark alley."

The group's main cog is only kidding about being hard-nosed. Some bands might beat you up and steal your lunch money in a dark alley, but if you actually ran into the RubberBand under those same circumstances, they'd almost certainly help you find the nearest bus stop, wait there with you until your bus showed up and probably even buy you a corn dog.

On the other hand, there are plenty of musical acts that, for whatever reason, are never heard from again after that first whiff of success turns sour. So it's evident that Shupe, 36, and his mates, who have a show in Saratoga Springs on Saturday and a show at Provo's Timpview High School on June 28, have a fighting spirit, even if they'd never use it to punch you in the nose.

(The Saratoga Springs show, part of the city's Saratoga Splash celebration of summer, is free. It's $10 to attend the show in Provo, which is being held to benefit the Timpview High School Marching Band.)

Shupe said there are no hard feelings about the failed partnership with his former label. "We thought Capitol was great. I still think they're great," he said. His biggest regret is that the promoter who brought them to Capitol took a job with a different employer not long after they'd signed.

"It's hard to move to a new label," Shupe said, "and then have the guy who was your champion get another job."

New label, old fans

The good news is that Montage, to judge by the early returns, may be just what the RubberBand really needed all along. The label used its Internet moxie to help make "Last Man Standing" the 12th-best-selling album on e-tailer iTunes's listing of Top Country Albums just two days after its release on May 27.

(The group was still hanging around in the Top 100 Country Albums on iTunes early last week, at No. 62.)

"They've been really successful at getting the word out on the Internet in various ways," RubberBand banjo player Craig Miner, 36, said of Montage.

The company's Internet marketing department helped get the band on MySpace, Facebook and other social networking hubs, and hasn't just "handled" the band members, expecting them to be seen and heard at concerts but absent from the conference room.

As bassist Ryan Tilby put it, "Montage has been really cool about bouncing ideas off of us and listening to our opinions."

And, although it's only been in recent years that Nashville has taken notice of Ryan Shupe & the RubberBand, the genre-busting, boundary-crossing Shupe sound has had pockets of loyal fans, particularly in Utah and surrounding states, for going on two decades.

"We trust our fans, we think they're awesome," said Tilby, 28, an original Shupester from way back, who returned to the band after former bassist Colin Botts made an amicable decision to transition from a music playing career to a music teaching career in the aftermath of "Dream Big."

They may not be as organized as, say, the famous Kiss Army that rallies behind the tongue-wagging metal gods of Kiss. But the RubberBand fans have followed their heroes tenaciously, and Tilby said that fans sometimes even volunteer to perform menial duties such as selling CDs at concerts.

At the "Last Man Standing" CD release concert in Sandy on June 6, Tilby said, the fans "all turned out in spite of the fact that it looked like it was going to rain at any second. We didn't pull any punches, we played for, like, two hours and they just sat through it and clapped."

It's only one show, but, as Miner said, the consensus about the new album seems to be "an overwhelming sense that people like it."

Sticking to what works

The excellent response in Sandy may be partly attributable to the generally heady buzz of a live musical performance, but "Last Man Standing" reportedly has all of the Shupe signatures: fun, sometimes goofy songwriting; plenty of musical experimentation; and top-caliber production values.

A reviewer for Country Standard Time magazine writes that the new disc "finds Ryan Shupe the RubberBand broadening their tight musical skills, resulting in a complex album that keeps your attention."

And at AngryCountry.com, a country music news and reviews Web site, the word is that, "Fans will enjoy this latest chapter in the band's catalog," while all listeners "will agree that the band's mix is original, and their musicianship is top-notch."

Shupe, who lives in Provo and talked to the Daily Herald by phone while noisily rummaging through boxes in search of an ice pack -- old water-skiing wound -- said that he hasn't really changed, over the years, the process he uses to write songs.

"I'm not the 'clock in, clock out' kind of writer. I just read stuff, observe stuff," he said. "Eventually, my brain will just filter through information subconsciously."

Once Shupe has things down on paper, he said, "we'll sort of play through them, and then we'll kind of jam on them. I try to keep an open mind about the arrangements and stuff."

The name "RubberBand" was initially a reference to Shupe's willingness to make music with whoever was available, but, except for the replacement of Botts by Tilby, the band hasn't changed much over the last several years, despite most of its members being in their 30s, and several of them being husbands and fathers in addition to rockers. (Shupe himself has two children.)

Miner said that the band plays between 60 and 90 shows a year, but that even when they're doing three or four in one week -- summer is the busiest time of year for the group -- "the truth is it's fun to play a gig."

And nobody's too worried about anyone else's family commitments. "You can say, 'Look, I have to go home and babysit,' " Tilby said, "and nobody looks at you like you're a complete idiot."

The band takes care of its other family, too. Shupe said that they're always happy to meet their fans. After a show, he said, "if everybody in the place wants to meet us, we'll try to talk to everyone."

• Cody Clark can be reached at 344-2542 or This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it