Greeting a visitor to his Reston townhouse, Andrei Busuioceanu is dressed in basic black. That wouldn’t be notable, except that Busuioceanu is better known as Gold, bassist for RDGLDGRN. The band also features vocalist-guitarist Green, born Pierre Desrosiers, and guitarist Red, whose given name is Marcus Parham. Onstage, all wear clothing that’s color-coordinated with their names.
The band, which melds hip-hop and alt-rock, is playing its first show in several years this weekend. The gig marks the 10th anniversary of RDGLDGRN’s self-titled debut album.
“Ever since covid, it’s slowed down a little bit for us. But luckily, things are picking back up,” says Gold. “We have fans all over the world. And some of them are traveling here for this. So it should be fun.”
The trio hasn’t been inactive since its latest album, “Red Gold Green 3,” appeared in 2019. The three musicians are working on a new record, and recently released a single, “Heads Are Gonna Roll,” that features Canadian singer Madalen Duke.
Green has also been active as hip-hop performer King Green. “It’s not alternative music,” explains Gold. “It’s definitely more of a rap project.”
“Heads Are Gonna Roll” is featured in the latest version of the Madden NFL football video game. Gold is enthusiastic about that inclusion because as an adolescent, he discovered a lot of music via the Tony Hawk’s series of skateboarding video games, with soundtracks that mixed punk, rap and hard rock.
RDGLDGRN are self-managed and -produced, and Gold notes that music-making technology has changed dramatically since he began making demos almost 25 years ago.
“We come from the digital age. We’ve been doing it since the late ’90s, early 2000s,” he recalls. “Back then, I feel like, it was a little bit harder to do it yourself. To make a really good-quality-sounding record. Nowadays, it’s very much doable. It’s amazing what you can do with a laptop.”
High fidelity is easily achieved, but sometimes it’s trumped by a moment he describes as more authentic. “For example, you can record a voice memo on your iPhone, and the quality — obviously, it’s compressed. But it sounds really nice. Sometimes you want to take that sample and put that in your music.”
Although RDGLDGRN uses rap-style production techniques, it’s equally a live band. The trio has performed on multiple continents — Gold cites Germany, Britain and Australia as particularly congenial — and employs a live drummer, Adam “Snaxx” Orlando, who’s practically a full-time member.
Orlando draws as much from driving rock as from syncopated go-go, Gold says. “He can play both of them, and he very much loves both of them. He can go from Fugazi to some D.C. go-go bounce-beat stuff.”
The band is planning a spring U.S. tour, and may record while on the road. “We can set up wherever,” notes Gold. “We like to be able to move around, and set up shop in different places. Every record we’ve ever done, it’s kind of been in a different place.”
And yet Reston remains a constant. None of the musicians are natives — Red is originally from California, Gold is from Romania, and Green was born to Haitian parents who moved first to France and then to the United States — but all have lived there for most of their lives.
“Where we grew up had so much diversity. People from different countries,” says Gold.
He illustrates this with an observation about the variety of sports-team paraphernalia he sees people wear in Reston. “This isn’t like Boston, Baltimore, Philly. In those kinds of cities, you see just one team on people’s jerseys. In D.C., you have people from everywhere.”
Nov. 10 at 8 p.m. at Songbyrd Music House, 540 Penn St. NE. songbyrddc.com. Sold out.
