 Michael Glabicki founded Rusted Root upon returning from a post-high school trip to South America in 1988. After a false start with one group of musicians, he called Liz Berlin, an old friend with whom he'd collaborated previously, and asked her to sing with him. Through her came drummer Jim Donovan, with whom she’d taken an African drumming class - this being a prerequisite Glabicki had established. Donovan recruited Patrick Norman, another classmate, to play guitar (he’d later switch to bass guitar, helping shape Rusted Root's rhythm-centric sound). A year later, multi-instrumentalist, visual artist and bicycle messenger John Buynak and vocalist Jenn Wertz, originally hired to photograph the group, signed on. Buynak’s distinctive artwork would give Rusted Root a strong visual image.
Rusted Root would adopt a hard-touring way, their polyrhythmic multiculti rock and soul picking up devotees like a junkyard magnet as they swept across the nation. In 1990, they self-released a CD, Cruel Sun. The disc attracted Mercury Records which signed the band and released When I Woke (1994). Two more records (Remember in 1996 and the self-titled third in 1998), three EPs (Evil Ways, Live, and Airplane), a home video (Rusted Root Live) and miscellaneous film and TV soundtrack credits (Twister, Mathilda, Home For the Holidays, Party of Five, Homicide and the animated feature, Ice Age) followed. Welcome To My Party is the icing.
"It was a conscious effort to take our time and not let anything interfere with that process," says Glabicki. "We made sure that every element of the songs and the music were well maintained and brought into the spotlight." Norman sums up it up well: "Rusted Root has always been a beautiful collaborative effort all around. It's a pleasure just to create music together."
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