In August of 2018, I went with a friend to Fortune Fest, a music festival in its second year at Rose Music Hall. I was among a smattering of sweaty people who arrived early to catch a buzz before headliner Black Joe Lewis, buy from vendors or merely hang around and see what’s what. Most of us occupied picnic tables.

My friend and I had come to see Black Joe Lewis, a modern blues rocker and living throwback to a past era. As we sipped our beers, we people-watched. I noticed one concertgoer. She wore a skintight red jumpsuit and gaudy jewelry and talked with friends at a full picnic table. Her golden-blond hair reached to her waist. She was slender, her arms like drawstrings, and diminutive, standing barely over 5 feet. I found the dichotomy between her showy get-up and that of the casual shorts, tank tops and summer dresses around her stark.

Soon, she was on stage, and I understood. Her hair blew back behind her like a mane. And when the music started, urgent guitars and percussion stormed out from massive stand-up speakers, and her voice, the sheer embodiment of power, roared from her and out over the crowd. She was a rock star. She is Columbia native Ruth Acuff.

Five young girls lined up against the railing in front of the stage, dancing and hula-hooping as close as they could to the singer and her band.

“One little girl, I sang something or screamed something, and I saw her, and she was making this face at me,” Acuff recalls. “Just in disbelief, I guess of what I was doing, and I was like, ‘Yes!’ That’s exactly the face I was looking for,” Acuff says. “After the show, she came up to me with her mom and was like, ‘Can I have your autograph?’” Emboldening people, girls and women especially, to feel like they can be rock ’n’ rollers motivates Acuff. “‘Oh, there’s a woman playing rock music. I can do that, too.’”

Origin story

Of course, the term “rock star” is relative, especially for someone who used to live a fairly quiet life in a home on the west side of Columbia. Up until January, when she moved to Brooklyn, New York, with her husband, the 34-year-old Acuff had lived and played music in Columbia her whole life. She is respected by peers and fans alike. But she is perpetually dealing with the uncertainty of being an artist.

Her music career started in coffeehouses around town when Acuff was 17, but her first musical memories are singing with her sister when she was 4 or 5. Then guitar at age 15. Her best friend suggested they learn because a boy whom she liked played it, too. Acuff’s initial performances consisted of original solo songs with her guitar, which prompted men with little interest in her craft but much interest in her relationship status to ask her to play with them. A 2009 Vox article noted Acuff more for her famous relative, country singer and distant cousin Roy Acuff, than for her prodigious and eclectic talents. Since then, she has constructed a successful singer-songwriter and harpist career that has brought her on long North American tours.

In 2014, she became the lead singer of local psychedelic-rock band The Royal Furs. “I feel like it’s kind of my dream band from the time I was in high school,” Acuff says. “It’s definitely in me, and it’s definitely a part of me, that kind of energetic and somewhat aggressive singing, so it feels really natural.”

Parts to a whole

Trinity. This is how Acuff represents herself. Three parts. One whole. Introspection can be considered one corner of her triangle. Her inward songwriting is at its most devastating on her 2014 EP To The Moon, which honors the memory of her best friend, the one who convinced her to pick up a guitar and who died at 28 from a drug overdose. This is Acuff’s solo side, the one with her harp and her own lyrics.Then there is The Royal Furs side, where Acuff can “let loose” and “dress like a queen,” she says. And with Interstellar Overdrive, a Pink Floyd cover band, it’s “a big show with lights and video, and I’m a backup singer, and I get to dance like a backup singer.” She calls these three outlets her “tri-force,” reflecting distinct types of music that all fuel one another.

And you can see it in her wardrobe for each role. She dresses the diva for The Royal Furs, outlandishly for Interstellar Overdrive and in elegant, flowing dresses for her solo harp shows.

Going from a predominantly folk background sitting behind a harp and singing sweetly to being the frontwoman of a frenetic rock ’n’ roll band seems drastic. But The Royal Furs and its singer were both looking for something special. When the members asked Acuff to join, she asked, “Have you heard me sing? I sing pretty.” They tried it anyway, with results as surprising as the voice emanating from Acuff. The singer is not very big and says she is often confused for a teenager. But being in The Royal Furs gave her the chance to be wild and let go, Acuff says.

Mike Hagan, a longtime KOPN radio host and quasi-arbiter of taste within Columbia’s music landscape speaks to the genesis of The Royal Furs and his role in it. He says he got to know Acuff and the other band members 10 to 12 years ago at The Blue Fugue, a now-defunct live music club where, Hagan says, a lot of the people in the scene these days actually cut their teeth.

“I was doing radio, and I would go down there to this open mic night that they would have once a week, and I would scout the place for new and upcoming talent, and Ruth was obviously somebody when I first saw her that I was like, ‘Holy shit, who is this girl?’” Hagan says. Josh Wright, The Royal Furs’ bassist, and Mike Marshall, the band’s songwriter and lead guitarist, were playing in a band called Lunar Mansion that split up when their lead singer left town. Hagan remembers the night Lunar Mansion ended. He says everyone was at his house, it was in June of maybe 2013, and they were discussing what was going to happen to the band. “I said, ‘You guys should get Ruth.’”

“She has her harp thing going, then she has the alter-ego rock goddess,” Hagan adds. “She’s always had a real rocker side, but she’s also had a beautiful, soft side as well.”

When Lunar Mansion disbanded, they hoped to change up their abrasive garage-rock style. Acuff’s first memory of Wright was him drunkenly playing the banjo and singing in front of a crowd — an act that he says represented 95 percent of his life between the ages of 19 and 24. When Wright originally approached Acuff about a new band, his request resembled Hugh Grant’s rambling romantic comedy monologues: “Well, you know, like, you should join, and you can tell me to fuck right off…” She ultimately agreed.

A pitch-perfect fit

The move to join the band was a shrewd one. In October 2018, The Royal Furs were awarded pop-rock band of the year for the Mid-Missouri Rock awards during a ceremony at The Blue Note. The group doesn’t love being classified as “pop,” but it also is not interested in turning people away from its music, and it’s certainly not against popular appeal. And consider this: The band of the year hadn’t released an album in two years. A frequent performing presence and impressive debut album likely helped. Marshall’s brash and clever songwriting didn’t hurt. Acuff’s rendering of Marshall’s words — the delivery just as cocksure and charming as the content — is arresting, and the band’s lively rhythm section of Wright on bass and Noel Feldman on drums keeps the enterprise together.

“Ruth brings a whole lot to the Furs — her stage presence and showmanship were big factors in us wanting to work with her,” Marshall says. “Plus she sounds like nothing you’ve ever heard before.”

The four musicians are working on a new album, even with Acuff’s move to Brooklyn. Acuff says she will return home for the occasional live performance. To an outside observer, though, the band’s long-term future is uncertain. “I think maintaining a live presence is difficult when you’re separated by that much distance,” Hagan says. “My gut is that Ruth’s got so much ambition and so much get-up-and-go … I have a hard time thinking that she’s not going to get deeply involved in the New York scene, and I don’t think it’s going to take too long.”

Acuff is trying to find her niche in Brooklyn, and she recently booked her first live gig. The rush of the city is in turns intoxicating and overwhelming.

The Royal Furs occasionally perform outside Missouri, and they once headlined a small festival, Hong Kong Pizza Party, outside Chicago. Before Acuff became a Royal Fur, though, she was doing everything she says she wants for the band — traveling throughout the country for 30-plus show tours, accruing thousands of listeners in her genre’s community, expressing herself in a genuine way and finding a pocket to excel in.

So why, then? Why reinvent herself? Do more networking? Conduct extra business? She has a good thing going already. Again, why?

“Because it’s fun,” Acuff says.

An uncharted path

The temperament of an artist is a peculiar thing. Many Americans lead lives they’ve been conditioned to lead, but artists like Acuff do what they want for the sake of it. It can be naive and idealistic, but it’s pure. That doesn’t mean there aren’t consequences or ramifications for choosing a way of life and a profession with no set path. “It has not been easy,” Acuff confesses, “and I still feel like I’m reaching for something more than I have musically.” Marshall says The Royal Furs do not “prioritize success over making excellent music.”

She has long been a full-time artist, with her harp, her rock band and her background singing and dancing, but among other engagements, she’s had to work a number of odd jobs in the past, such as nannying, freelance writing and hosting guests through Airbnb. She labored for a long time in order to raise money and buy her harp, which, when she purchased it, cost more than her Ford Focus Wagon. Money is always a looming issue, and Acuff notes, “I can’t keep playing music if I can’t eat.” So she’ll play her harp at a funeral or a wedding, and she’s “not gonna play that gig for 50 bucks” anymore because it isn’t worth it.

Toward the end of 2016, Acuff had a harp gig at a Northern Missouri theater — she didn’t want to name it. Her husband, Jeff Mueller, and a percussionist friend, Drew Lance, were with her to play the stand-up bass and the drums. “I just assumed for this specific show … that they would have a cover charge.” They didn’t. After the show, Acuff went up to take her cut. There was no contract, she thought she’d be paid, but she was told that nobody was collecting money at the door. She walked out, grabbed a stool at a nearby bar and, flanked by her compatriots, proceeded to question her life choices: “That was definitely a point where I’m like, ‘What am I doing wrong?’”

How did she get through this reevaluation of her career? “A few shots!” Acuff remarks jokingly before crediting her husband and Lance for consoling her. “Being any kind of artist, it’s natural to doubt your ability and your worth … so having other people support you is pretty huge,” Acuff says. “Otherwise, I would still be playing music, but I’d probably just be playing in my house and not performing in public.”

Mueller also recognizes the mental toll of being a musician: “Sometimes the work doesn’t seem to be worth it,” he says. “There are good memes out there about the roller coaster of being an artist that are pretty spot-on.”

Still, Acuff is happy with her career choice, in part because it wasn’t a choice at all. She was immediately infatuated with the instrument when she strummed a harp in a pawnshop one day and decided she had to learn to play. It was not too long after that she quit her nannying job. Acuff’s priority is to affect the listener: “I’ve heard that music is supposed to make you feel comfortable if you’re uncomfortable in your life, or if you are comfortable in your life, music is supposed to make you feel uncomfortable,” she says. She wrote a song called “Queen Ann’s Lace” about how she can flourish under all conditions in hopes that she could comfort the uncomfortable.

Ambition, of course, is a part of what pushes Acuff. She says she wants to do something that hasn’t been done before musically. Mostly, though, it’s people that make it worth it, Acuff says.

Play like a girl

Until two years ago, Acuff hadn’t really thought about being a woman in rock ’n’ roll. Then she performed with a female rock orchestra called the Jane Doe Revue, which is made up of more than 50 women based mostly in the Columbia and Kansas City areas.

“Going to rehearsals for that felt so different than going to a rehearsal where … I’m the only lady,” Acuff says. “I didn’t realize until I was in a room with all-women musicians … Is this what it feels like when all guys play together? There’s this sense of, I’m accepted in sisterhood.” Now, Acuff bristles when sound technicians or bookers at venues communicate through her Royal Furs bandmates rather than her, and she observes the apparent tension between which genre of music you’re performing as a woman and how acceptable it is.

Acuff says she went over a decade without thinking about her gender in the context of her work before having this revelation. “You’re used to living a certain life, and you don’t realize, ‘Oh, maybe I shouldn’t be getting catcalled.’” The reason she said no to her husband when he first asked her if she’d play music with him was because of the other men who had approached her and didn’t actually want to play music. “If you want to take me on a date, just ask me on a date,” she says.

In 2003, after she denied him, he jumped on stage in the middle of her set during an open mic night. A drum kit was already set up for the next act, and he grabbed his electric bass and began playing along flawlessly with her original songs. It was presumptuous, arrogant and downright genius. They played music together for a year before dating, and they’ve been collaborators since. They married in 2008.

Acuff adds that the majority of the male musicians she’s been involved with in Columbia have been supportive and inclusive. “I wouldn’t stay in a musical relationship if I wasn’t considered an equal or my opinion wasn’t listened to,” she says.

For the last two decades, Columbia has primarily been a rock and country city, encompassing the various subgenres that go with them. Wright, Marshall and Acuff all agree that the platform for live, local music has shrunk because there are fewer venues now, especially because the rambunctious Royal Furs are not a coffeehouse band. However, they pointed to several acts they think of when they think music in Columbia: the Hooten Hallers, Don’t Mind Dying, The Many Colored Death, The Flood Brothers and The Cotton Mollies, for example.

Hagan says a lack of venues has made live performance around town a bit of a struggle, but also notes some new live venues are popping up. “I think the scene is really healthy. It may be a little tighter than it was back then, but I also think it’s evolved, much more high-quality music is coming out of it,” he says.

Acuff calls Columbia’s music scene “a pretty tight-knit community.” Wright and Feldman both play in another band called The Ridgerunners, and she plays in other groups around the area, so “it’s kind of a family in the sense that a lot of people play music with each other.” And Acuff doesn’t want it to be a contest. She wants everyone to think they have a place, for people to root for one another. Still, she notes there is inevitably competition. Acuff says, for example, as a band that might be playing a gig with Black Joe Lewis, they obviously hope to get the opening spot.

Harmony of the Heart

To say this is merely music, or only a profession, is to lie, because Acuff is music, and music is she. Now, one would be forgiven for thinking that her answer to the musicians who have influenced her — Joanna Newsom, Counting Crows and The Distillers — is camp because that in itself is a perfect triangle and directly related to Acuff’s musicianship. But the reason she is a rock star is because Acuff is self-actualized; she knows who she is and becomes who she’s supposed to be.

Being a normal Columbian who regularly plays pool at Billiards and who goes to the same shows as everyone else doesn’t preclude Acuff from being a rock star. Neither does a new start in Brooklyn. Neither does the love she has for her dogs. According to Marshall, she’s a beast at board games, loves soap operas and eats mostly potato chips. Does rock star mean wealth and opulence? Parties and notoriety? Ludicrous record sales? Depending on which definition you’re adhering to, yes and no. Acuff is a struggling artist, at once two hours away from major cities like St. Louis and Kansas City, seemingly years away from the rest of the country, and now in New York where, in a sense, she’s beginning anew. She came to this point in her life and career consciously. The only part she didn’t control was when music seduced and eventually hexed her.

At a 2016 Folk Alliance International conference in Kansas City that went all night, Acuff wanted to keep people awake for her 3:30 a.m. harp show, so she wore one of her Royal Furs outfits. “You have a six-foot harp coming through and a five-foot person that’s dressed like David Bowie or Prince,” Acuff says. And everyone else is “wearing a nice embroidered dress with flowers on it … I think the folk world just couldn’t handle the combination.” ￼

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