Writing “The Reckoning” (bit.ly/45tyKjE) the first single released on Piedmont-based singer-songwriter and guitarist Mike Rufo’s upcoming album “living is,” took him 63 years.
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The decades-long journey began in childhood, a time when Rufo’s unconventional nomadic upbringing bore the imprints of the civil activism of his grandfather, Charles Lam Markmann, who in 1965 wrote one of the first books on the ACLU (a.co/d/27JqDFC). Rufo’s mother, the late Julie Rufo (bit.ly/3xpNiV4), picked up the torch and passed it on to her son.
“My grandfather instilled in her a passion for civil liberties,” Rufo says. “She was captivated by the ’60s: She protested the Vietnam War, supported free speech and was alert to authoritarianism. If I got in trouble in high school, I knew my mom would take my side.
“I exploited that by debating with teachers about narrow-minded positions they presented. One world history teacher just went from one war to another, lecturing about artillery. One day I objected and asked why we were never thinking about ways to avoid war. I got sent to the principal’s office.”
Rufo and his family relocated often during his early years, but eventually, he landed at Hollywood High School in Los Angeles. There, he says he listened to folk and rock music but didn’t dive in full-force — other than “being into playing air guitar before air guitar was a thing.”
Interested in the environment and energy fields, he attended and graduated from Sonoma State University and earned a master’s degree in technology and human affairs from Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. He and his wife, Marcie Rubel, moved to Piedmont in 2012 and are the parents of two adult children.
During 30-plus years as an energy-climate consultant, Rufo became a highly sought expert in policy assessment, cost effectiveness, resource forecasting, evaluating and strategic planning. Honored with a Lifetime Achievement Award at the International Energy Program Evaluation Conference, he pulled back to part-time consulting after the music-making bug bit him while working on and, especially, producing his first album, “Streets of Plenty” (mikerufomusic.com/home#music).
“Because that was my first album and came late, at midlife, I’d written those songs over decades,” he said. “I was awestruck by how cool it was to produce a song you carried around for years on an acoustic guitar. The whole artistic process of making a studio album was revelatory.”
His second album, “Nothin’ But Now,” shifted gears from alternative rock to tap into folk influences.
“It was 2016, and I’d just stopped running the 100-person consultancy. I was still involved, but part-time. I got a steel-string guitar and started writing songs. It’s a psychological throwback to my unconscious, to the ’60s. The folk music came back to me as my work schedule slowed down.”
The album “Helsinki” followed in 2021 with a title track that opened the window on his past and a strong propensity for storytelling. Rufo had spent his junior year in college studying in Sweden and met a family while traveling in Finland.
“I went back 30 years later and reconnected. The song is a metaphor for relationships that span across time and continents. The stories, I just put up my antennae and listened for them.”
Rufo is releasing “living is” — an album revolving around environmental and interpersonal loss — one track at a time. He says it’s a double-edge environment for musicians who might enjoy more control over producing music independently but fight the industry’s brutal economic landscape.
“I’m not dependent on the income, but still it’s hard to find a good model. Artists have to be assertive, engaged in social media — even if they hate it. There’s a culture and collective wisdom that says, “Hey, you have to put out a single every month. You have to be giving the algorithm something new.’ ”
The irony, he emphasizes, is that any musician’s song is one of roughly 60,000 songs uploaded to Spotify each day.
“If you don’t shout about your music all the time, it’s just a drop in the ocean,” he says.
Rufo describes himself as an extrovert but admits to disliking the constant push of social media. Some musicians are motivated by the accelerated demand to write, edit and throw out songs that don’t work, refine those that do and produce, release and promote singles and entire albums rapidly.
“I like making albums that have continuity and a story,” he says. “ ’Living is’ was written during COVID and loss. It’s me grappling, trying to find and renew myself. My biological father and step-father were gone. My mom died in November 2021. The next three months, I spent under a rock.
“By 2023, I was recovering with therapy from depression I’d never experienced before. Recording these songs picked me up. I had no plan; it just felt good and brought me back to life. I knew I had to go forward and music was a great thing to grab onto.”
With a third single, “I Saw the Devil,” being released June 28 (“The Reckoning” and “How I Feel (in the Morning)” preceded it), Rufo is busy performing with his band, No Exit, and promoting the new album.
“Living is” was produced with Gawain Mathews, with whom Rufo has collaborated previously, and features drummer Brady Bladeon, violinist Ben Andrews and backup vocalists Sarah Larkin and Megan Slankardon.
“I started doing house concerts about five years ago because my rock band plays some rock ‘n’ roll, and it was hard to get our middle-age friends out to loud bars. I thought, ‘I can do concerts at my house’ and tried it. It was intimate, lent itself to acoustic music, and I can include headliner musicians I support. It’s a great community-builder.”
Looking ahead, Rufo hopes to record “new songs I’m sitting on.” He’ll remain active with Music Declares Emergency, a consortium of artists and music professionals addressing the climate crisis and serving on the board of the nonprofit civil liberties advocacy organization Defending Rights and Dissent.
The power of combining art, climate activism and social justice advocacy is woven into Rufo’s past and future.
“I have opportunities to depolarize the politicization of critical issues through music. I’m excited. I want to make that happen.”
Lou Fancher is a freelance writer. Reach her at lou@johnsonandfancher.com.