All together now: bommela-say, bommela-ah.
Or how about "boba dee say, boba dee yon," or maybe "Bob'll-a say, will ya drop in."The phrase in Rusted Root's biggest single, "Send Me on My Way," has fans straining for interpretations, but words usually serve as mere window dressing for the band, which concentrates more on creating a fanny-shaking vibe than a solid lyrical message.
Analysis of the group's lyrics can be futile.
For "Send Me on My Way," guitarist Michael Glabicki just made up a string of syllables that sounded good with a happy riff. He never replaced them with dictionary-approved words, as he intended.
It was the latest entry in a mishmash song book. "Cat Turned Blue" lifts four lines directly from Bob Dylan's "All Along the Watchtower." Still another song begins with a Buddhist mantra.
The message - or lack of it - clearly appeals to someone out there.
"Send Me on My Way," which is upbeat enough to play on an ice cream truck, enjoyed heavy air play on both MTV and VH-1. Rusted Root's version of Santana's "Evil Ways" can be heard over the credits in Jodie Foster's movie "Home for the Holidays," and Robert Plant put the band on his tour with Jimmy Page.
Five of Rusted Root's six members play percussion, including a washboard; the tabla, a set of two small drums; and the shekere, a dried squash rigged with beads and a net.
The songs, pulling in influences from the Talking Heads to African drummers, reflect the band's mix-and-match makeup. Singer Liz Berlin has roots in Pennsylvania Dutch country. Glabicki spent some of his teenage years in Nicaragua. They're all believers in what percussionist Jim Dispirito, who studied music in India, calls "the healing power of music."
"You can't ignore it. People really get up for a concert. They've been working all day at a 9-to-5 job, and we try to create an environment where they are comfortable expressing themselves," he said recently in an interview from Park City, Utah, during Rusted Root's tour.
Sometimes the audience goes too far. The band is known to stop a song and ask everyone to take three steps backward and calm down. Rusted Root discourages "moshing," the aggressive dancing in which a person passed over the heads of others to the stage dives back into a pit of twirling bodies.
"It's no fun getting clocked in the head with someone's boot," Dispirito said. "Some crazy stuff happens. When we were in Cleveland, this guy climbed all the way up the lighting truss. It was swinging out over the band, and I thought it was going to fall."
Like the bands Phish and God Street Wine, Rusted Root is trying to convert Deadheads who want new outlets after the death of Grateful Dead's Jerry Garcia. Dead fans are known for free-form dancing in the aisles, something Root enthusiasts do well.
Fans describe Rusted Root concerts, going back to the first shows at an old city factory, like something out of a Baptist church revival.
The band took a big risk on its first major-label compact disk, "When I Woke," by opening with a long percussion solo. "Drum Trip" suggests the excesses of 1970s art rockers such as Yes, but Dispirito said the Mercury record label had no objections.
"When I Woke" went on to sell more than 500,000 copies.