Artist Profile: Country Restroom
Over hallowed strummings and lonesome harmonica, Riley Getz, under the alias Country Restroom, belts words of suffering and joy, of late nights and early mornings gazing up at grey skies, of feet steeped in dewy grass.
His newest project, “Summer Rain”, encapsulates all of these experiences and more, seemingly drawn out directly from scribbled notebook pages into sonic form.
“Originally, the idea was to make it kind of sound like basement tapes, like that Bob Dylan record a little bit…I wasn't trying to force any certain sound or genre, but I think just the influences kind of caught up with me and made it sound naturally a little bit more cohesive.”
Growing up in Southern California, Getz was exposed, mostly by his parents, to great music. Alternative rock, including the tunes of The Replacements, populated his childhood home.
His first influences counted a number of alternative and punk bands, including The Violent Femmes and The Pixies.
This was, eventually, augmented by a sense of competition with his older brother, who is also a musician. As he picked up a guitar, so did his brother, and the pair began writing songs together.
“[My brother is] someone who I've always kind of been competing with, in a sense. It's not competitive at all anymore, but when we were kids, for sure. It was always just like who can find the coolest band first, or who can write the better song… It's definitely been very informative.”
While the process of songwriting was something that came “pretty naturally” to them, the refined sound that Getz pursues today took time to form.
He played in various bands, with and without his brother, throughout his adolescence. However, when COVID hit, their primary project dissolved, and, ultimately, Getz moved to Los Angeles while his brother moved to Chicago.
Thus, many of Getz’s old artistic connections having been severed by proximity, Country Restroom was born.
“The solo stuff [began] out of necessity, of just needing something to constantly push music through, as opposed to having to write for a band with other friends.”
Materializing much of what Getz learned in his various employments in earlier projects, “Summer Rain” is a clearly polished and intentional record despite its homegrown foundations. Recorded primarily on his friend Donovan Wildfong’s analog eight-track, it pulls largely from the annals of DIY folk, including Robert Lester Folsom and Arthur Russell.
From the jangly grooves of the title track to the croonings of “Leaving California”, Getz bears his influences fully while maintaining his unique sense of harmony and sonic complexity.
This has recently been enhanced by the addition of a third guitar in Country Restroom’s live shows, played by Adam Weddle.
As Getz looks to push his sound further, he plans to incorporate more robust instrumentation, manifesting some of the finer points of his first project. He has recently finished writing a new record that he will begin recording in the coming weeks.
“I think [the new record] is really good. I think it's a lot better than the last one. I think lyrically it will be a lot more interesting. It seems just a lot larger, a lot more guitar, a lot more dynamics going on… There's still, I mean, maybe max four chords in every song, which is important for me, but there's definitely more variation.”
