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By KATHERINE VOLIN Aug. 12, 2005 Urban Folk Rocker Sonia Rutstein - SONiA of SONiA & disappear fear - acknowledges that she's a Baltimore native. But don't even try to discern her age. "My grandmother said not to tell people after you hit 20, and I'm over 20," she says, with a laugh. But the wild-maned lesbian lead singer of Grammy-nominated SONiA & disappear fear is forthcoming on most matters, particularly politics, which plays a starring role in the name of her latest album: "No Bomb is Smart." The album's title song questions the 2000 presidential election methods, hypocrisy in democracy and media responsibility, ending with the refrain "no bomb is smart." But Rutstein maintains that matters of the heart concern her more. "I don't care who's a Republican or who's a Democrat," she says. "I'm much more interested in the human aspect of love, 'cause your heart doesn't know what political party you belong to. Your brain just applied it that way." SONiA & DISAPPEAR FEAR first showed up on the rock radar in the early '90s, when Rutstein and her sister - CiNDY - toured in a six-piece band. After a few years, however, CiNDY's desire to be with her young sons eventually outweighed her desire to tour with the band. So SONiA toured solo for several years. The band now numbers three, with Laura Cerulli on drums and vocals and Angela Edge on bass and trumpet. Rutstein plays guitar, in addition to singing. When comparing SONiA & disappear fear's new sound to its old, Rutstein says it is now a much more centralized sound. "Everything really, really shines because it's so exposed," she says. "It's one guitar, one bass and one percussionist." Rutstein's love of music began when she was quite young, before CiNDY was even born. "When I was really little, the only thing that would keep me entertained was when my mom would set me up with the stereo," she says. She learned to play the guitar at age 13, beginning with Neil Young's "Only Love Can Break Your Heart." After her friend taught Rutstein the three-chord melody, she played it for the next eight or nine hours. "I was scared that my fingers would forget how to do it, so I didn't want to stop," Rutstein says. The next morning, she immediately picked up the guitar and practiced the song once more. "Good," she remembers thinking, "it didn't go away." It still hasn't gone away, as Rutstein's packed summer tour schedule shows . While performing at the New Jersey Pride Festival in June, Rutstein ran into U.S. Sen. Jon Corzine (D-N.J.) backstage. After handing him a copy of her CD, she also gave him a magnetized strip bearing a strong resemblance to the "Support Our Troops" magnets that decorate the bumpers of many cars. This magnet, however, was black instead of yellow and on it was written "No Bomb Is Smart." Rutstein says Corzine held the magnet up to his heart. "See it's not sticking," he said, according to Rutstein, "So [my heart's] not made out of iron or stone." Rutstein was inspired by Corzine's response. "Every senator outta have this for his car," she thought. Now every senator does. Rutstein arranged to have the magnetized strips sent to each member of the U.S. Senate. |