Profile

Personnel

Interviews & Articles

Reviews

FAQ

Gear

Historical

R-Three, based in northern California, is an independent music project with a rotating line-up of collaborators centered on the words, music and production stylings of the founder and driving creative force Rhett Redelings.

At the core, the R-Three project is about truth: Finding it, understanding it and telling it, no matter how personal, painful, unfashionable or challenging it may be. Known as much for unusual and genre defying song arrangements as the lyrics in those songs, the music of R-Three is about the inner processes, asking and struggling with the big questions while trying to bring something new and genuine to the musical landscape. Regarding the atypical approach to arrangement that characterizes most R-Three songs, Rhett Redelings had this to say:

“I believe that we appreciate art when the delivery or presentation of that art jars us and frees us from our preconceptions and expectations just a little bit, so we can experience it for what it is instead of comparing it to our previous experiences. In music, I attempt to do this by making unexpected sound choices, collaborating with artists who are coming from a very different place than I am and by using atypical time signatures, unusual arrangements and musical explorations that deviate just a little bit from the pop formula, so long as it serves the song and keeps the energy where it should be. I do this not to be clever, or elitist, or weird but because I believe you can only really appreciate a new experience if it feels both familiar and, at the same time, brand new.”

The artists who contribute musical elements and performances are encouraged to challenge the initial framework of the songs they work on, to add their own ideas and interpretations and to compliment or contrast the works of other contributors; leaving it to Redelings to pull it all together into something that serves and enhances each song in a hopefully fresh, compelling and universally resonant way.

R-Three is not a rock band, nor is it strictly Redelings’ solo project. R-Three does not conform to expectations, respect genre lines or seek to find and perfect the formula for perfectly seamless or marketable pop music. R-Three is trying to make a kind of music you’ve never heard before and push the envelope just a little bit while still delivering catchy hooks, infectious beats and memorable lyrics.

R-Three doesn’t make rock, pop, electronica or alternative anything. R-Three makes what can best be described as “smart-pop”.

Enjoy.

Personnel | The R-Three Project is:

Rhett Redelings | words, music, voice, guitars, bass, synths, samples, loops, Theramin, misc. percussion, engineering & production, artwork and design {1997 - Present}
Rhett is the steam that drives the R-Three engine. He's worked as a recording/live sound engineer and producer for more than 10 years, mostly unpaid. He scored the One Dream Productions film Holocaust in my Body in 1998 and hasn't scored a film since. He wrote an opinion piece called 'America is Shamed' which was published on Information Clearing House and copied wildly across the internet. He has not been published since. Rhett is a bleeding heart liberal who believes in civil rights, racial, economic, sexually oriented and gender based equality in a country that seems to be going the way of hard hearted, neo-conservative, religiously intolerant, corporate sponsored fascism. He believes that speaking out is important, even when people disagree with him. He cries at movies, yells at the television and uses humor as a defense against the world. He's a moody bastard who likes sushi, Thai food, chocolate, wheat beer and Malbecs from Argentina where his family is from. He is a self taught musician, vocalist and digital artist. He enjoys playing guitar, singing, photography, science fiction, the company of his lovely wife, really good films and modern art. Lately all he can talk about is playing his bass guitar. Really, it's getting on everyone's nerves! He reads books about love, the human brain and takes voice acting classes. He believes that a consumer-driven culture is not sustainable, but he really likes stuff. This is his wishlist. His ambition is tempered only by his laziness.
Gear: Southern California born larynx, Northern California raised mind, Fender American Standard Telecaster, Line 6 Variax 700, Peavey Classic 30, Line 6 Pod XT, Fender Aerodyne Jazz Bass, Line 6 Bass Pod XT,Hohner acoustic steel string, no-name classical guitar, Roland Juno 60, D50, U220, R5, Korg: Wavestation S-R, EX-8000, Crybaby Wah pedal, Ibanez Tube Screamer, Ibanez Digital Delay pedal, Etherwave Theramin, Audio Technica AT 4050, AKG C-414, Voiceworks processor, Yamaha SPX-90 processor, Digidesign Digi001 with ProTools, Sony: Sound Forge, Acid, Tascam Gigasampler, Dell Optiplex, spinnet piano, various harmonicas, misc. percussion, world instruments and shortwave radio.

with contributions from:

Brad Steffen | synths, bass, guitars, voice, treatments, samples, programming, words, music {1997 - 2004}
It was Brad who initially suggested a collaboration and made the first steps possible with his generous investment of time, energy and musical gear. While his involvement has long been a tidal one, his contributions have been signficant and R-Three would not exist without them or him.
Gear: Propellerhead Reason, Digidesign MBox with ProTools, Acid, Ableton Live, Kantos, Tobias 5 string bass, Nemesis bass amp/cabinet, Steinberger Spirit, Korg Wavestation A/D & S-R, Roland D50, R8, U20, Peavey Pro-Fex guitar processor

Peggy Gill | voice {2000 - 2005}
"While Peggy's warm voice was critical to offset my sometimes challenging soundscapes of the earlier works, what made her vocal contributions unique was her approach to the music itself. Before each session, we'd talk about what the song was about, what each section of the song was meant to convey and what I was looking for from her. Sometimes I'd have a specific idea, but more often than not Peggy would internalize the songs and surprise us both with something inspired and wholly unexpected that gave the song that critical something it needed. Her voice offset the masculine nature of the work and helped bring out the feminine qualities in it. Her contributions will be missed." - Rhett, R-Three
Gear: Alabama born larynx

Elspeth Golden | voice, percussion {2003 - Present}
Elspeth is the best songwriter I know. She can write rock 'n roll to shake your hips, country/folk songs that spin yarns you'll never forget and ballads that will make you weep for the whole of human suffering. She's also quite a handy singer and every once in awhile I'm lucky enough to get her into the studio and on to one of my comparitively paltry offerings. Of course, she'll be probably be mortified that I said all these nice and completely true things about her talent in public, but that's just a risk I'll have to take. My creative process can be a long and laborious one as I record revision after revision while closing in on an idea and I rely on her experience, taste, intelligence and insight for feedback on lyrics, melodies and concepts usually well before my first demos are even recorded and she never, ever lets me down. Everyone has an opinion but I trust Elspeth's opinions more than anyone else on the strength of her incredible and as yet mostly unpublished body of work. This is what she did with the lyrics to Something to Believe In while I was still mucking about with my version. Listen, it's brilliant!
Gear: New York born larynx, Fender Stratocaster w/midi, Line 6 Pod XT, Sony Acid

Bob Gaut | live drums {1999 - 2001}
I'm not one to put stock in defining moments. Mostly I believe there are too many in any life to count and mostly definining moments are for story tellers. That said, in every moment I can think of that lead me down this path of making music, Bob was there. He knew he wanted to be a drummer and he inspired me to want to sing and play synths. He came along when Brad was more out than he was in and he infused new life and faith in the R-Three project when I needed it most. He was the guy who took me into a music store when I was 16 and my brain made up it's first melody. Bob Gaut is the real thing. He's a Class A drummer and producer. While I'll always be thankful for his friendship, I'm truly grateful to him for the time and energy he's contributed to R-Three.
Gear: Big-ass loud drums. Ludwig, I think...

Erich Tisnado | bass {1998 - 2001}
Before falling head over heals in love with his mountain bike, Erich Tisnado used to play bass. He was pretty darned good. You can hear him on Secrets really nailing the bottom end. A good friend and a great guy, R-Three will always respect his solid rumble.
Gear: Guild Pilot Bass, Peavey 2x200 watt biamped bass amp, Sansamp Bass DI as a preamp with a 4x10 cabinet.

Kofi Glover | bass {1997 - 1998}
Kofi is about the coolest dude you'll ever meet. He was there at the beginning. He was one of the original "three" and he had the grooviest, funkiest, poppiest touch with the bass guitar. I loved working with him. Unfortunately he had too much talent and wanderlust to stay in any one place for too long and he moved on. I think I may have a recording of him somewhere around here...
Gear:: N/A

Dan Catlin | loops, music {2001 - 2002}
Dan and I found each other on the old Mp3.com. I was just learning to work with loops and Dan had a whole catalog of amazing songs he'd made completely from found samples and loops. Dan was interested in starting an indie label and he asked if R-Three would be one of his first projects. I agreed and in return for doing him this favor (which was actually a favor to me), he let me make a vocal contribution to a song of his called 'Fragile Beauty' whch he'd asked other singers to contribute to, but it had never worked out. He sent me a low resolution mp3 to work with and I sent him to different vocal tracks to work with. He was happy enough with the result that he sent me the loops and music files for another instrumental piece called 'The Inner Workings of a Hive'. Dan already had a version of this up on MP3.com that ended after about 2 minutes after the 2nd "chorus". I basically grafted on a lyric I'd written in mid 2001 and, with his blessing, finished the song writing a mid section and an ending. We still kept the name and enjoyed some of the best reviews either of us had yet enjoyed on our own. This lead to 3 more collaborative attempts but sadly Dan's hard drive crashed and he didn't have any backups. Since most of what I worked with were low resolution mp3 tracks, there was no recovering the original material. "Hive" and one or two of the other demos are all that remain. After that, Dan and his label MRC Records kind of evaporated for me. He was a cool and talented guy and I'll always be grateful to him though for supporting R-Three during the early days and for making possible one of my favorite songs (The inner workings of a hive).

Britt Daniel | bad weather guitar {2000} Britt was a friend of mine.. We hit it off and I like him very much, but we seemed to find it hard to stay connected. Anyway, after years of talking about putting a band together (Britt was always talking about putting a band together with someone...), he made it over to the studio for 1 strange session. He said he liked to play "noodly bits" and he had the best pedal collection I'd seen in awhile. So, when the tape wasn't rolling, he'd play the wildest, most deliciously inventive strangeness, but once tape rolled, he'd just strum the chords through those great effects of his. I ended up twisting up his sounds into atmospheric treatments which very nicely complimented Secrets. Britt died in 2006 in a motorcycle accident. He was one of the good guys.
Gear: Gretsch DuoJet with Filtertronic pickups and pedals... didn't catch the brand names....

Matt Aaron | violin {1999}
In 1999, my then girlfriend Heather and I opened a little gift shop on 4th street in San Rafael, called Poplollies. The night before we opened, as I was washing the windows and putting on the finishing touches, I heard the most haunting violin playing from down the block. Matt was one of 2 or 3 teenagers playing the classics interspersed with some beautiful avante garde improvisations for a few bucks in front of the local Double Rainbow. I went down, said I wanted to record him, gave him my phone number and walked away again into the night. It was a very wanna be rock star thing to do and while I can't imagine what he thought, thankfully he called. I recorded him on a song I haven't, at the time of this writing, ever released. He improvised for about 8 tracks and gave me a tremendous wealth of samples and bits to work with. It's his violin you hear on Secrets, Secrets (refrain) and Prelude to Silence, songs I'm not sure he's ever heard. He was very uncomfortable playing for money as I recall, although he was pretty confident of his ability. When I finally got him to agree to charge me, he set his rate at $7.00 per hour. I paid him $10 per hour and still felt like I was robbing him blind. I never saw him again.

Neil Finn | samples and loops {2000}
In 2000, Neil Finn, who I admire very much (and have never met, just to be clear!) put a bunch of samples and loops up on his web site NilFun.com and invited artists and fans all over the world to download them, make new music from them and send them back to him with the intent of putting the best on a CD. While one of the R-Three compositions was good enough to make the "Best of Your Work" page (and I was invited to audition for Neil's Band of Stranger's shows in the U.K.), the CD never happened. Such is the way of the artist. Anyway, our "collaborations" with Neil Finn just kind of languished. Since the sample bits were put out without any kind of restrictions and not from any copyrighted work we could license, I decided to make them available with a note that if you like the songs that use these samples, you should totally check out Neil Finn! The piano loop and ,I think some of the backing vocals, in Elspeth Green are from Neil as well as the piano, backing vocals and much of the guitar in Secrets. Since R-Three is, in many ways, about collaborations, I saw this as a collaboration with Neil Finn, one of my heroes. I hope you like them and I hope you'll check out his work. Neil Finn is the master. Of course, if you are already a Finn fan, my hope is that you will enjoy these songs. They are not intended as copies of Neil, but done with respect and appreciation. I don't advertise the Finn elements in these songs because I don't want people to be mislead and buy them thinking they're new songs from Neil, but I'm not trying to hide his presence either. Enjoy! -RR

R-Three | Interviews and Articles
Argentine Progressive Rock Zine Nucleus - Interview with Rhett from R-Three - While somewhat dated, this overly verbose interview reveals some of the creative process and behind-the-scenes dynamics in detail behind the R-Three project. (PDF download)

R-Three | Reviews

soon...

R-Three | Gear

Rhett and the R-Three contributors use the follwing instruments and musical gear:
Digidesign ProTools LE with Digi001 Audio interface, Mackie and Tascam mixers, Line 6 Variax 700 modeling guitar, Line 6 Pod XT Guitar Amp modeler, Line 6 Bass Pod XT bass amp modeler, a Fender MiA standard Telecaster with Fender Noiseless pickups, an Alvarez MF80C acoustic-electric guitar, a Fender Aerodyne Jazz Bass with a Fender Vintage Noiseless single coil pickup, Tobias Growler bass, Nemesis II bass amp, Ludwig drums, Roland D50, U20 (as a midi controller) and U220 synthesizers, Roland R8 and R5 drum machines, Roland Juno 60 analog synth, Tascam Gigasampler, Korg Wavestation A/D, Wavestation S-R, Korg EX 8000 analog synth module, ukelele, Andean 10 string guitar, Sony Video: Sound Forge and Acid, Cakewalk Sonar 2, Etherwave Theramin, E-bow, Peavey Classic 30 guitar amp, vocoder software, upright piano, shortwave radio, Windows XP, Dell PC hardware, misc. samples, loops, "ethnic" instruments and household items.