Summer gigs at the Guild kick off with Rue, Sabien

A dynamic duo who are Cronner's Jazz Club mainstays, Gary Rue and Randy Sabien, are heading to Northfield's Guild Theater this Saturday, July 13.

Gary Rue and Randy Sabien will perform between 20 and 25 original songs during their Northfield concert titled "Rue and Sabien Play Rue and Sabien."

What audiences won't hear will be songs by the Eagles and Fleetwood Mac. Instead, they'll hear a mix of jazz, indie, Americana and pop. "No offence," said Rue, during a phone interview Tuesday. A few years ago, the pair joined forces after agreeing they were tired of listening to tribute band music. "We decided to feature our own songs by trading off playing one of my songs, then one of his songs and talking about each song in between."

Rue, who plays guitar, piano and sings, is a composer, lyricist and performer whose songs have been recorded by Helen Reddy, Nick Lowe, Prudence Johnson. In 2010, he was a Minnesota Music Hall of Fame inductee.

Rue said he's particularly excited to be performing in Northfield because he and his musician wife Laura Mackenzie lived here for six years. Some may know him for his work with FAB 6, Nip and Tuck, and the Sensational Sleepers, as well as his 50 year career as a songwriter for national and international artists.

Sabien, who plays guitar, violin, mando, piano and voice, is a jazz violinist of the Stéphane Grappelli school, also plays hot club, blues and western swing. From the Allman Brothers, to Duke Ellington to the Grateful Dead, Sabien has toured the world playing in different styles and with many greats of the music world.

Rue said that he and Sabien, who met during a 1998 performance at the Minnesota State Fair, are also devoted fly fishing buddies. They bonded over a shared sense of humor and love for a limitless variety of music.

Music writer Charles Bunbury described a Rue/Sabien performance as "an ad lib, rapid-fire affair, riddled with a melodic cascade of personal favorites peppered with musical ideas (occasionally interrupted by an errant thought: they sometimes feel the need to explain the process), duologues on inspiration (and what does not inspire), oblique social commentary, and comic highs and lows (when good things happen to bad people), all thoroughly plumbed from the musical depths of piano, guitar, violin, mando and voices that soar, growl and bubble within a sardonic Robin Williams/Noel Coward sense of humor."