News The Rumble Strips: Where Are They Now?

There’s a special place in our hearts for those bands who, unfortunately, seemed to be doing exactly the right thing at exactly the right time. You know the ones. They just had something going on that could only work during one brief moment in time. This in turn would launch their careers into dizzying levels of success, before those rock and roll dreams inevitably fizzled out as the attentions of the public shifted elsewhere a year or two later.

Where Are They Now documents life after the band for some forgotten favourites. Last time round, resident investigator Nathan Standleee found members of The Rakes to be starting their own labels and becoming band managers, post-split. On this occasion, he takes a peek into the current standing of ‘not-officially-split’ trumpet-wielders The Rumble Strips.

Oh, The Rumble Strips. With their neo-Dexys horn-friendly indie. That was a fun time, was it not? Just watch this video for ‘Alarm Clock’ if you don’t believe me:

See them having a fabulous time on a farm, fixing tractors and hammering things and whatnot? Just delightful.

In terms of chart success, the Rumbles weren’t particularly prolific, ‘Alarm Clock’ reaching number 41 in March 2007 being their highest ever entry. However, the charts didn’t accurately reflect just how popular and seemingly well-known the band were. They had a dedicated following and were tipped by just about everyone to make massive waves in the music world. ‘Girls and Boys in Love’, released later that year was probably their most well-remembered song. It soundtracked this Bailey’s advert, as well as Oscar Best Picture near misses ‘Run, Fat Boy, Run’ and ‘Angus, Thongs and Perfect Snogging’. Everything did seem to be headed in the right direction though, and fans eagerly anticipated a second album.

Being a band that uses trumpets and such, it was inevitable really that Mark Ronson would hijack their second album. He’s a man known to take liftoff at the melodious tootle of a car horn. Unfortunately for The Rumble Strips, it was a somewhat disastrous move. Titled ‘Welcome to The Walk Alone’, its release in 2009, its singles failed to break the top 100, with the album peaking at a dismal number 76. Since then, it’s been a slow and steady decline, and for most people, The Rumble Strips are a distant and hazy memory.

Suffice to say we were reasonably surprised to find out that, according to their most recent tweet, they’re still going strong. Granted, it was nearly a year ago since that tweet was posted, but even so, there’s definitely been no official word of a split yet. So despite preferring to reserve this feature for defunct bands and artists, we’re making an exception this time round. Let’s see what we can find:

Singer Charlie Waller has predictably gone AWOL. It’s almost impossible to find anything on his whereabouts, but we did come across this video of him playing some new solo stuff from last year. It basically sounds like acoustic Rumble Strips, with his signature hiccup-y vocals leading the way.

Trumpet player/pianist Henry Clark went travelling all over the world and started a blog documenting all his adventures. It’s pretty interesting to read. His entry entitled ‘Mission Abort’ is particularly fun, telling of when he moved to Korea to try and be an English teacher but disliked it so much that he quit and moved back home within a month. Because ‘who would want to do that for a living?’.

Drummer Matthew Wheeler went on to play in Berlin-rooted DIY favourites The Blood Arm. They received funding to make their fourth album ‘Infinite Nights’ back in 2012 through Kickstarter-stylee site Pledge Music. Check out their song ‘I Like All The Girls’ here:

Saxophonist/bassist Thomas Gorbutt is an interesting one. Google searches proved difficult to turn up any telling information. However, himself and the rest of the Strips may or may not have set up their own doughnut company.

This link states that Mr Tom Gorbutt is a director of a ‘Gorbutt’s Doughnuts Limited’, along with fellow band members Charles Waller, Benjamin Clark and Matthew Wheeler…now this sounds exciting doesn’t it? Who wouldn’t want some Rumble Strips doughnuts, right? Well, don’t get your hopes up, because it’s almost certainly a fake company set up just to collect masses of royalties from all those Bailey’s adverts. Damn.