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Rookie Card: no longer rookies, but still playing
New album Us and Them is the band's first in almost 20 years
Don't call it the Q: Rookie Card playing the Music Box
San Diego’s premier group of baseball-adjacent rockers Rookie Card is back with their its full-length album in close to 20 years. Led by singer/guitarist Adam Gimbel, the band was part of a collection of alt-country acts (Convoy, Bartenders Bible, Billy Midnight) that played around town in the late '90s to mid-2000s. During their initial run, they released an EP (First Day of Class), and two full length LPs (Near Mint and What’s On Second) before calling it a day in 2006.
“I think I was ready for a break,” Gimbel explains. “We had gone through a little lineup change and thought that maybe we might do this later, but we had a good run and had a good time and I was happy to take a break. Then it was a few years before we got together again to play on Leap Day, which we would do every four years. I think we didn’t really play for six or seven years. I can’t remember why we started playing again, but eventually we did. We would play every year, sometimes every two years, and that’s kind of how it’s been. That way, we don’t lose our love of it.”
The catalyst for the new album was a random one-off song that Gimbel wrote to coincide with a show at the Music Box in 2023. They were opening for The Baseball Project, an underground supergroup made up of members of REM, The Dream Syndicate, and Young Fresh Fellows that played original songs about baseball. “We thought, 'What better reason to write a new song?' — which I really hadn’t done for the band in about fifteen years,” Gimbel says. “I’ve always had this thing about not calling Jack Murphy Stadium ‘The Q,’ and I came up with a song, ‘The Murph,’ that sounds like something The Baseball Project would have come up with. When we played it, we got this incredible response and thought that we should record it because we were so proud of it. Once we got going, we thought we might as well do this or that, and then the next thing you know, we had a ten-song album.”
Video:
Love Vigilantes (New Order cover) by Rookie Card downtown San Diego
The album, which is made up of five original songs and five covers, is appropriately titled Us and Them. Also appropriate, since the name references a Pink Floyd song: the album sleeve art is a recreation of the Dark Side of the Moon cover, with the famous prism replaced by a pencil drawing of Dave Winfield that Gimbel created in his youth. The core of band (Gimbel/Dylan Martinez/Kevin Gossett, and Andrew McNally) is augmented on these songs by guests such San Diego Padres organist Bobby Cressey, Robert Lopez (El Vez), Andrew Bernhardt (Swedish Models), and John Meeks. The covers on the back half of the album include slightly country-fried stabs at songs such as “Only the Lonely” (The Motels), “Back on the Chain Gang” (The Pretenders), and “Hells Bells” (AC/DC).
Gimbel is no stranger to performing covers in his other bands (Geezer and Cover Me Badd), and takes particular pride in making sure those covers have their own unique appeal. “I’m super-picky about recording a cover, because what’s the point if you are doing it pretty much like the original? Because I’ve done so many cover projects over the years, my quality meter is higher than most. ‘Love Vigilantes’ is a New Order cover, and it’s the first cover we ever played. I always loved our arrangement, and those words are like a great folk song from 100 years ago. They are timeless. They mean more now than ever.”
Video:
Back In The USSR (The Beatles) by Rookie Card
The band has four gigs lined up to coincide with the new album’s release, including the Casbah on March 17, where Shawn Rohlf and Ypsitucky will also appear. Gimbel hopes the band can stay somewhat active, even though careers and other projects make that trickier these days. Perhaps at some point, they can try to recreate their legendary recreation of a Beatles classic at The Casbah, which featured a perfect assist from San Diego International Airport. “We took everyone outside to play on the corner, and we had an idea that if a plane flew overhead, we would play ‘Back in The USSR’ by The Beatles,” he explains. “Sure enough, it did and so we played it, and then at the exact right moment at the end of the song another plane flew over, just like the song! A friend of ours filmed it because no one else would have believed it otherwise. Our crowning achievement was getting in good with air traffic control.”
Here's something you might be interested in.
Rookie Card: no longer rookies, but still playing
New album Us and Them is the band's first in almost 20 years
Rookie Card: no longer rookies, but still playing
New album Us and Them is the band's first in almost 20 years
Don't call it the Q: Rookie Card playing the Music Box
San Diego’s premier group of baseball-adjacent rockers Rookie Card is back with their its full-length album in close to 20 years. Led by singer/guitarist Adam Gimbel, the band was part of a collection of alt-country acts (Convoy, Bartenders Bible, Billy Midnight) that played around town in the late '90s to mid-2000s. During their initial run, they released an EP (First Day of Class), and two full length LPs (Near Mint and What’s On Second) before calling it a day in 2006.
“I think I was ready for a break,” Gimbel explains. “We had gone through a little lineup change and thought that maybe we might do this later, but we had a good run and had a good time and I was happy to take a break. Then it was a few years before we got together again to play on Leap Day, which we would do every four years. I think we didn’t really play for six or seven years. I can’t remember why we started playing again, but eventually we did. We would play every year, sometimes every two years, and that’s kind of how it’s been. That way, we don’t lose our love of it.”
The catalyst for the new album was a random one-off song that Gimbel wrote to coincide with a show at the Music Box in 2023. They were opening for The Baseball Project, an underground supergroup made up of members of REM, The Dream Syndicate, and Young Fresh Fellows that played original songs about baseball. “We thought, 'What better reason to write a new song?' — which I really hadn’t done for the band in about fifteen years,” Gimbel says. “I’ve always had this thing about not calling Jack Murphy Stadium ‘The Q,’ and I came up with a song, ‘The Murph,’ that sounds like something The Baseball Project would have come up with. When we played it, we got this incredible response and thought that we should record it because we were so proud of it. Once we got going, we thought we might as well do this or that, and then the next thing you know, we had a ten-song album.”
Video:
Love Vigilantes (New Order cover) by Rookie Card downtown San Diego
The album, which is made up of five original songs and five covers, is appropriately titled Us and Them. Also appropriate, since the name references a Pink Floyd song: the album sleeve art is a recreation of the Dark Side of the Moon cover, with the famous prism replaced by a pencil drawing of Dave Winfield that Gimbel created in his youth. The core of band (Gimbel/Dylan Martinez/Kevin Gossett, and Andrew McNally) is augmented on these songs by guests such San Diego Padres organist Bobby Cressey, Robert Lopez (El Vez), Andrew Bernhardt (Swedish Models), and John Meeks. The covers on the back half of the album include slightly country-fried stabs at songs such as “Only the Lonely” (The Motels), “Back on the Chain Gang” (The Pretenders), and “Hells Bells” (AC/DC).
Gimbel is no stranger to performing covers in his other bands (Geezer and Cover Me Badd), and takes particular pride in making sure those covers have their own unique appeal. “I’m super-picky about recording a cover, because what’s the point if you are doing it pretty much like the original? Because I’ve done so many cover projects over the years, my quality meter is higher than most. ‘Love Vigilantes’ is a New Order cover, and it’s the first cover we ever played. I always loved our arrangement, and those words are like a great folk song from 100 years ago. They are timeless. They mean more now than ever.”
Video:
Back In The USSR (The Beatles) by Rookie Card
The band has four gigs lined up to coincide with the new album’s release, including the Casbah on March 17, where Shawn Rohlf and Ypsitucky will also appear. Gimbel hopes the band can stay somewhat active, even though careers and other projects make that trickier these days. Perhaps at some point, they can try to recreate their legendary recreation of a Beatles classic at The Casbah, which featured a perfect assist from San Diego International Airport. “We took everyone outside to play on the corner, and we had an idea that if a plane flew overhead, we would play ‘Back in The USSR’ by The Beatles,” he explains. “Sure enough, it did and so we played it, and then at the exact right moment at the end of the song another plane flew over, just like the song! A friend of ours filmed it because no one else would have believed it otherwise. Our crowning achievement was getting in good with air traffic control.”
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