Rusted Root's Liz Berlin evolved into wife, mother, businesswoman

She knew.

Success -- at least her version of it -- would come. It was inevitable, destined.

Even though she was barely out of high school, Liz Berlin recognized something unique was happening when she started writing music with Michael Glabicki, whom she had met at a rally for students against racism and apartheid. When other members joined the band and rehearsals started, she realized a lot of people eventually would hear the music of Rusted Root.

"We were confident," Berlin says. "That's the thing that marked us as a group from the beginning: extreme confidence in what we were doing. We knew it was really special."

Of course, all nascent bands have an unstinting belief in their music. But Berlin's confidence comes without a scintilla of ego. She seems blissfully unaware of her achievements, as a performer and entrepreneur, as a mother and wife.

"She is one the most positive people I've ever known," says Jenn Wertz, her longtime bandmate in Rusted Root. "Positive, bright, opening, welcoming. ... (When we play together), we sign autographs, and I am certainly not a curmudgeon, but I'm really a lot more committed to how I feel for the day. But Liz will give everything to fans. She is very much about offering them a good experience in meeting her."

That might sum up how Liz Berlin's life has gone so far: a good experience as ...

• a member of Rusted Root, one of the most successful bands to emerge from Western Pennsylvania during the past 20 years.

• a partner, with her husband, Mike Speranzo, in Mr. Small's Funhouse Theatre and Skatepark, both in Millvale, and a new studio on the North Side.

• the guru behind Mr. Small's Creative Life Support non-profit programs, which attempt to give aspiring artists opportunities and access to media arts and recording technology.

• an increasingly confident musician.

• a mother of a son, Jordan, who turns 11 in a few weeks.

The family business

Mary Berlin says that she made a pact with her husband, Rick, when they had children

"We used to joke, 'If they can't sing, they're going back,' " she says. "We meant it as a joke, but Liz would take us seriously. She was scared to death she wasn't going to be able to sing."

When she was young, Liz Berlin had reason to be scared.

"She sang flat," says Mary Berlin, laughing.

The Berlins had moved to Pittsburgh from Newport News, Va., in 1979 to sing in the Mendelssohn Choir. Classically trained vocalists, they were intent on providing Liz and her twin sister, Katie, with opportunities, which included establishing the Children's Festival Chorus of Pittsburgh so their daughters would have a forum in which to perform. Liz -- who quickly outgrew her vocal deficiencies -- and Katie performed with conductor Michael Tilson Thomas and actress and singer Shirley Jones, experiences that would be especially helpful when Rusted Root was in its formative stage.

Choral arrangements, Liz Berlin says, taught her to "sing in the best interest of the music, not in the best interest of you, the vocalist. To a certain extent, it was a strength, and also a weakness, because I had to learn over the years how to become an individual, musically."

After graduating from Schenley High School in 1988, Berlin enrolled at the University of Pittsburgh. She woule meet Glabicki on campus and exchange cassette tapes of song demos. At an African-drumming course, she met Patrick Norman and Jim Donovan, who would join the group.

One of her instructors was Pittsburgh jazz legend Nathan Davis.

"First of all, she had confidence in what she was doing," Davis recalls. "You could hear she had a special voice."

After a year-and-a-half at Pitt, with Rusted Root becoming popular on a regional level, Berlin decided to stop attending college full-time. She took an independent-study course with Davis, who told her not to let Rusted Root's sound be compromised.

"I told her she had to figure out and understand that there are a lot of great artists being pushed by the major record companies," he says. "But there is also an audience out there for you. I told her not to worry about catering to an audience or a label; somebody in the crowd is going to like you for what you do. There is an audience for you."

Before she could pursue music, however, she had to convince her parents it was the right thing to do. That turned out to be surprisingly easy. Rick and Mary Berlin attended the group's second show -- at the Graffiti Rock Challenge in 1991 -- and realized Rusted Root was not a whim or indulgence.

"It was the first time we heard the band, and they'd only been together a week or so," Mary Berlin says. "Sometimes you know something is special. I knew Rusted Root was going to make it. I just knew it. I had that intuition."

"She was absolutely right in dropping out," Rick Berlin says.

So inspired was Berlin by his daughter's success -- he calls Liz "my hero" -- that he decided to change his career.

"It was because of her willingness to take a chance that I decided to take my risk in 1996," says Rick Berlin, who shut down a business to attend the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York to become an ordained cantor. "There were risks, and it wasn't easy, but her success was one of the things that made me take that chance."

Group effort

Liz Berlin cannot remember exactly where the gig was, or the year. She knows it was early in Rusted Root's tenure, perhaps somewhere in Virginia. By that time, Wertz and guitarist John Buynak had joined the group, as well as percussionist Jim DiSpirito.

It had the earmarks of a scheduling disaster, booking a band with a peace-and-harmony vibe at a bar during a biker rally. In front of an audience clad in black leather, the band set up its array of congas, drums, acoustic guitars and tambourines.

Berlin calls it Rusted Root's "most intimidating gig."

Of course, the bikers dug it. And if they hadn't, well ... that wasn't possible.

"We had the confidence the music would touch anybody," Berlin says. "When we played in a situation like that, where you're not sure the audience would get excited about it, we would envelop into ourselves and excite ourselves as an organism, and it would bubble over into the crowd. Whereas other bands would be trying to connect with the crowd."

Rusted Root performed in front of a different type of audience at Undercurrents, a record-industry showcase in Cleveland in 1992.

"It was the type of music convention that nobody really goes to," says Jill Goehringer, who was then working as an A&R (artist and repertoire) representative for Mercury Records.

But Goehringer went anyway and immediately knew she wanted to sign the band.

"I'd never seen anything like them," she says

Negotiations were not easy. There were numerous trips to Mercury's New York offices in 1993 to ensure that the label understood the band's music. Finally, they agreed to terms during a conference call.

"When we signed, we all took a deep breath and jumped off this cliff," Berlin says. "That's how it felt. We went around the table and everyone signed. I don't think we celebrated. It was just 'OK, Jill, here we are.' "

Goehringer spent so much time with Rusted Root that they suggested she was the band's eighth member. Noting that she wasn't a "typical A&R rep," she would occasionally perform odd jobs, such as sending Berlin's breast milk via Federal Express to Speranzo in Pittsburgh when he was home tending to Jordan.

She also witnessed Berlin's growth as an artist.

"She really blossomed and came into her own; really understood, at least I think, where all of her talents became natural to her," Goehringer says. "Obviously, her vocals and songwriting, her personality and her looks, just came together and she became very confident. The more they toured, the more they performed. It grew."

Finding her voice

Rusted Root's commitment to their ideals would see them through the highs and lows any successful touring band experiences. But with success came a common side effect: Berlin and her bandmates yearned for more opportunities to express their creativity. The situation came to a head during recording of the band's self-titled third album in 1998, when Glabicki decided to tinker with Rusted Root's sound.

The album's producer, Susan Rogers, recalls the sessions being a "tough one" to navigate and was worried the new direction would not be well-received.

"Fans enjoy something that is the result of a real careful, calculated plan," says Rogers, who worked on albums by Prince, the Barenaked Ladies, Laurie Anderson and David Byrne. "A transition album is where a band goes in and tries something new, and it may or may not work. This was one of those things."

While there was some internal dissent, Rogers was heartened that creative disagreements didn't affect performances. She also encouraged Berlin, telling her that her talents eventually would find an outlet.

"Susan told us, 'This is not the only music you will ever create,' " Berlin says. "I personally, and the whole room, took a huge breath and landed on the ground. It was so true, and it was such a relief. (Rusted Root) had spiraled and spiraled into this great and successful thing. You feel like you have to be a part of that for your life to be successful ... But Susan made us realize life is really long; music is infinite; creativity is infinite. Your creativity doesn't have to be all in Rusted Root. It was at that moment I started taking my own music seriously."

Berlin released her first solo studio album, "Autobiographical," in 2005. Rogers is not surprised that Berlin has emerged as a solo performer, noting that she urged Berlin to find the limits of her talent.

"Sometimes, the wrong note played with gusto sounds better than the right note played timidly," Rogers says. "She was willing to do that as a musician, and she was also willing to step back and let others have their piece. But she was also strong enough to say, 'I want at least this much of this song.' "

And now, a trio

It is a snowy January morning, and Jordan Speranzo is the only one who's wide awake in his parents' East End home. He's amazingly bright-eyed and alert for a 10-year old at 6:30 a.m., as he debates the merits of an egg salad sandwich for breakfast, noting that, without relish, it's not really an egg salad sandwich.

"I'll put a pickle on it," says his mother, just a bit droopy-eyed.

"That's not really relish," Jordan responds, reciting a list of ingredients that would make the pickle relish.

Shortly thereafter, Berlin sees her son off to school. Normally, she would go back to sleep for a few hours before heading over to Mr. Small's to work, but today there's a reporter to account for and some other tasks that demand her attention.

"I've always been a night owl," she says as she makes tea and is joined by her husband, Mike Speranzo. "I've always worked until late at night."

She has to work harder than ever now. A typical day finds Berlin at the new studio on the North Side for administrative work or working on her music. When Rusted Root is touring, there are rehearsals and more time away from her family, occasional gigs with Wertz and a band camp she runs at Mr. Small's every summer.

Sometimes she wonders what it would be like to have a traditional, 9-to-5 existence.

"It would be nice to have a salaried job, have dinner with my family every night, go to the movies every night," she says. "But would I trade what I have for that• I don't think so."

Berlin and Speranzo have been together for 15 years. Their relationship is one of the few things in her life she did not approach with complete confidence. When she met Speranzo, a former professional skateboarder, he was in the band Out of the Blue. It was not, at least for her, love at first sight.

"I'm a never-say-die type, and she didn't want to have anything to do with me," says Speranzo, who, in addition to his duties at Mr. Small's, also oversees programs at Camp Woodward, one of the East Coast's premiere skateboard parks in Woodward, Clearfield County. "She had her career and everything she wanted in her life, and I wasn't in the equation. I had to put myself in that equation."

How did he do that?

"Persistence," Speranzo says. "The same as with everything."

To prove his devotion, he would drive from his home in State College to Pittsburgh to hang out for a few hours after a gig. Once Speranzo drove to Pittsburgh, left a card and a daisy on her doorstep, then returned home. Eventually, Berlin gave in. Goehringer says she always felt the pair were suited for each other.

"I think they really complement one another other," she says. "He's taught her about the business side ... running the skate park and the club and those kinds of things. And she's -- I hate to say this word; I don't use it a lot -- had him tap into a more spiritual side of himself. I'm absolutely in awe of what they've done."

Five years ago, Berlin and Speranzo decided to get married. They flew to the Bahamas and Speranzo enlisted Jordan, then 5, as his best man.

It was not a typical ceremony. But as with so many other things in her life, Berlin recognized that it was the right time, the right place, the right people.

She knew.

"I know it's not the Christian thing or the religious thing, according to standard religious practices, as far as the dynamics of the family, to do it that way," she says. "But I think it's pretty rare a child would get to witness that moment of commitment between his parents. The wedding itself was really a wedding of the three of us. It was really special that way."