Written by Shea Roney | Photos by Mattes Brown

Rug is nothing new to the Columbus scene, having been frequent participants in their local live show circuits for some time now. But just recently they became the latest in the cities calvary of creatives with the release of their new self-titled EP back in October. Made up of members Alice Wagoner (guitar, vocals), Jenna King (guitar), Elliott Hogue (bass, production, mixing) and Jonah Silverman (drums), Rug also brought in Abel’s Isaac Kauffman to help record and mix these tracks, laying it all out within their type of midwestern rock n roll fluency, where the blend of dynamic noise and earnest storytelling find revelries in the caricatures that foster life in the middle country.

These songs are reluctant for any immediacy, each track wholeheartedly animating the tiny yet tricky grievances of growing up, dragging its feet towards any concrete answers before lost to false memory or arbitrary nostalgia. “What’s this for, being so sore and so tired? Do I really feel this way or just or is it comfortable?” opens both the EP and the song ‘2%” with a blank space; a moment to revel and resent, to formulate and to sabotage, to break and to heal in your own time, at your own pace. Throughout it all, Wagoner’s voice drips from the tracks like blood from a freshly scrapped knee; the combination of rumbling distortion and sincere melodies both holding a place of fondness for rebellion and self-determination in the loathing territory between young adulthood and foolhardy youth.

We recently got to ask Rug about their self-titled EP and how the project came to be.

This EP has been a long time coming for you all. How does it feel to get this project out?

It feels really great to get this project out. These songs are what really catapulted Rug into a project so they mean a lot to us as a band. We wrote these songs back in 2023 and have been sitting on them since so it’s been a long time coming. 

I know this group has gone through some changes since the initial formation, making the move from Athens, OH and joining the Columbus scene, as well as a few lineup changes. How did you embrace these shifts in the project, and did they have an effect on the way you approached making and releasing this EP?

Yeah we have had a lot of changes since the start! In 2024, our drummer moved out of state, and Elliott, who played bass, switched to drums. I knew our new bassist through her solo project, Coralilly, and it all just kind of worked out. When we first switched up the lineup we were worried things wouldn’t mesh the same as they did before, but any worries we had really faded away when Cora joined, she’s the best.  

Joining the Columbus scene has been really great– everyone we’ve met has been super supportive and we’re really happy to be a part of this community. We honestly got super lucky with meeting some great people who really try to lift us up, so it’s been a really smooth transition. 

Joining the Columbus scene really helped push us to put out the EP. Like I said, we had been sitting on the songs/recordings for a while. Athens is a college town which means a lot of the bands around here are temporary, so it’s really easy to get caught up in playing shows all of the time instead of recording and giving more longevity to your work. I think since the move we’ve really been prioritizing taking a step back from shows to hone in our skills and songwriting, as well as put out the EP and beginning to record future releases. 

You included a lot of big players from the Columbus area to help bring this record to life. What was your introduction to that scene and what influences did you bring from those you worked with into this EP. 

I think the people we can give the most credit to are our friends from Villagerrr and Abel. We recorded the EP with Isaac from Abel and he mixed it as well– so he is to credit for that whole process and we can’t thank him enough. We had played a couple shows with Abel in Athens when we first started playing out, and thought their recordings sounded great. He reached out and asked about recording a single for us, that being 2%, and then we later recorded the EP at his house because we were really happy with the way things turned out. All of their recorded stuff is fantastic, and they were really our first leg into the Columbus scene. 

As for Villagerrr, we had all been huge fans of them for years. We ended up playing a couple shows with them in Athens and just built a relationship with them over time. Eventually, we ended up doing a weekend run of Ohio shows with Villagerrr back in March, and that was a great experience. We also had some mutual friends from another Columbus band, A-Go-Go. So we all just kind of ended up quickly building this community of all of these talented people pretty quickly. 

You have been playing shows for quite awhile now, both full band and as a solo acoustic outfit. Where did these songs live in the live shows you played and did the back and forth of full band and solo influence the way you sit with these songs now? 

We’ve been playing shows for a couple years now, which is crazy to think about. Most of our shows are plugged in with distortion and loud drums and the whole thing, but the root of all of our songwriting comes from just playing on an acoustic guitar. I think that’s why we love playing the occasional stripped back and all acoustic show– it allows us to return to the origin of the songs in a collaborative way. A lot of our inspiration in songwriting comes from folk and country music, so it’s really exciting to reimagine our songs in a new way each time we play an acoustic set. 

What has putting this EP out meant to you all? Has it offered new things to explore in your lives as individuals and as a creative group? What are you looking forward to as Rug continues to grow?

Releasing this EP means a lot. Although we have been sitting on these songs for a long time, they are the first songs we wrote and performed for Rug and it’s cool to put that out into the world. We’re all at a very different place now then we were when these songs were written and recorded and our songwriting has developed so much as a band, so I think we’re just excited to keep moving forward. I think this has offered new opportunities in a way that we have something to show for ourselves now. Even though these songs were written a long time ago, we all think it’s important to have a physical record of the progress we’ve made over time.  It’s also been rewarding to complete and release old Rug songs so we can move on to recording our new stuff. I know we’re all really interested in touring and playing more shows out of state as well, and are really excited to get back into playing shows in 2026!

You can listen to Rug out now everywhere.