Rust Project carries on tradition of Neil Young, other hall of famers
Sometimes brother knows best.
While listening to the radio one day in her Indiana Township home, young Suzy Wargo heard a song she didn’t recognize.
“I was sitting on the floor with my stereo on, and my mouth, you had to pick my jaw up off the floor,” she said. “I loved it.”
After the deejay identified the tune as Neil Young’s “Like a Hurricane,” she called her brother, Joe, and told him about her discovery. The Canadian-born Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee was among his favorite artists, and he had been trying to convince Suzy to listen to Young’s music for quite some time.
Her appreciation of Young eventually prompted her to adapt another of his titles for the name of the band she formed with Murrysville resident Tim Bazzone: the Rust Project, after the classic 1979 album “Rust Never Sleeps.”
Unfortunately, Joe Wargo had passed away before the Rust Project was launched in 2016. But his sister continues to honor his memory in many ways, including playing his Gibson electric guitar in the band’s four-piece configuration.
She and Bazzone often perform as a duo, both playing Martin acoustic guitars. And when the venue is right to add a rhythm section, they’re complemented by Jim Ferrick on bass and Darrin Rathgeb on drums.
Along with Young’s material, the Rust Project’s repertoire features favorites from the 1960s and early ’70s — the Beatles, Rolling Stones and Creedence Clearwater Revival and the like, including a touch of Grateful Dead — through the 21st century, including some well-crafted originals.
Now a resident of Richland, Suzy started taking guitar lessons while attending Fox Chapel Area High School.
“My brother helped me buy my first guitar. I remember him teaching me the first half of ‘Over the Hills and Far Away,’” she said about the often-attempted acoustic introduction to the 1973 Led Zeppelin song.
“I didn’t know anything about guitar, and I remember him telling me, ‘This is a hammer-on, and this is a pull-off.’ He gave me a tab book for ‘Stairway to Heaven’” — Led Zeppelin, too, of course — “and explained to me how you read a tab.”
Despite that and formal lessons, Suzy gave up the guitar for other pursuits within a year or so, and it took quite a while for her to take it up again. Her interest, as it turned out, was rekindled when her older daughter, Megan, started playing.
“I thought, oh my gosh. This is really cool. I really miss this. I love the guitar. I think I want to take lessons again. Why not?” Suzy said. “So I started taking lessons again, just for fun.”
Meanwhile, Megan participated in a “rock school” at Waddell’s Music Center in Pine, with students having the opportunity to perform on the stage of the nearby Jergel’s Rhythm Grille.
“All the kids did their sets,” her mother said, “and she did her set. And I said, ‘Well, there’s one more band. These kids work hard. Let’s watch ’em.’ Well, they weren’t kids. They were people my age.
“In that minute, I’m like, I want to be in a band. I want to do this. I’m going to do this. Whatever I have to do, I’m going to do it. So I started going to open stages, acoustic guitar, by myself. And I started meeting a whole bunch of people and making friends with people.”
One of them was Bazzone, when Suzy sat in with the band he was a member of at the time.
“Right after she did,” he said, “I leaned over to my singer and told him, ‘I think I’d rather have her up here singing than you.’”
When Bazzone decided to leave that group, he requested of a mutual acquaintance:
“Hey, get ahold of Suzy and see if she wants to start a Neil Young tribute band.”
Since then, the Rust Project has been entertaining audiences throughout southwestern Pennsylvania, with the same-as-everyone exception of the height of the covid-19 pandemic.
“The day we went ‘green,’” Suzy said about the change in status that allowed for businesses to reopen fully, “we were booked somewhere. And we’ve played like crazy ever since.”
In 2021, that amounted to about 130 gigs. With Suzy working full-time, the schedule has been scaled back a bit this year, but there still are plenty of opportunities to catch the Rust Project.
Upcoming performances include:
• Acoustic duo, 4 to 7 p.m. June 25, Truss Brewing, 42 Old Clairton Road , Pleasant Hills
• Acoustic duo, 3 to 6 p.m. June 26, Helltown Taproom, 13 Henry C. Frick St., Mt. Pleasant
• Electric band, 7 to 10 p.m. June 2, Sport Grille Cranberry, 1294 Freedom Road
• Acoustic duo, 9 to 11:55 p.m. July 8, Yough Roadhouse, 7966 Kingwood Road, Confluence
• Acoustic duo, 7 to 10 p.m. July 16, Arsenal Cider House, 2905 W. Liberty Ave., Dormont
• Electric band, 4 to 7 p.m. July 23, Mindful Brewing, 1001 Washington Ave., Scott Township
Regarding Suzy’s musical preferences, her brother, a professional journalist and onetime Penn Hills Progress reporter who was a decade and a half older than her, had a pronounced influence.
“He’d sit in his room and have music playing all the time, his albums,” she said. “I’d just go sit there and kind of hang out. I’d look at all his album covers.”
Apparently, she was none too impressed with the ones featuring Young, telling her brother, “I don’t want to listen to him. He’s ugly. He’s gross.”
“So I had no idea what he sounded like, and then I heard him.”
As far as her reaction, to paraphrase an oldie but goodie: Joe said she would.
For more information, visit therustproject.com.
Harry Funk is a TribLive news editor, specifically serving as editor of the Hampton, North Allegheny, North Hills, Pine Creek and Bethel Park journals. A professional journalist since 1985, he joined TribLive in 2022. You can contact Harry at hfunk@triblive.com.
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