Early years of the pandemic were full of “COVID albums,” in which musicians — from high-profile artists like Taylor Swift to indie bands like the Mountain Goats — recorded new songs at home and in studios by themselves. Last fall, Brooklyn-based musician Dave Ruder coined a new format when he released a “Long COVID album,” shaped by his experience with the disease.
The album, called Lil Ol Davy Ru Ru, is Ruder’s first in which he does not play instruments. For Ruder, Long COVID has worsened hand and wrist problems, among other symptoms, which have severely curtailed his ability to play the guitar, bass, keyboard, clarinet, and other instruments. This change impacted Ruder’s composition process, too, as he was used to developing new songs “with an instrument in my hand.”
Lil Ol Davy Ru Ru also discusses themes of chronic illness in its lyrics, reflecting on what it’s like to still live “in COVID” when much of the broader world has moved on. Betsy Ladyzhets, an (amateur) musician herself, talked to Ruder about these themes, how Long COVID has impacted his ability to write and perform music, finding community with other disabled musicians, and more. This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Betsy Ladyzhets: To start off, I wanted to ask you to introduce yourself and the album. What would you like The Sick Times’ readers to know about it?
Dave Ruder: I am a musician in my 40s who has been based in New York for 20 years, and I have been a jack of all trades, master of none in that time, artistically. I have historically been a multi-instrumentalist and a vocalist… I have pretty much worn all the hats that you can wear: as a performer, as a writer, as an arts administrator. I’ve been running a record label for the last 12 years, that this album is on.
This has been a pretty different album for me than anything I’ve ever made … This [new album] is really my first real Long COVID album. I started having Long COVID symptoms as I was making [my previous] album, which was called, “Not Great,” which had, lyrically, more to do with that feeling of having a body that had already, to that point, been not necessarily working great for about 10 years, but was really declining.
[To illustrate this:] the first instrument that I stopped being able to play was the guitar. On the last album, I played most of the guitar, but I would have to record it in these smaller and smaller attempts where I could play for half an hour at a time, then 20 minutes, then 15 minutes, then 10 minutes, and then it was like, “I can’t actually record this,” so there’s one track where I had to have a friend play the guitar.
And over subsequent years and subsequent [SARS-CoV-2] reinfections, despite being a pretty careful person — the most recent one was about two years ago, and that one really made it so I just couldn’t play any instruments anymore, period. I’ve gone from having albums that I am playing all the instruments on, or most of them, [to none of the instruments]. It’s just a very different way that you have to approach it. I can still write everything, I can still arrange everything, I can still produce everything, I can still sing everything. But I need to rely on other people to be able to articulate what I’m trying to do.
I can still write everything, I can still arrange everything, I can still produce everything, I can still sing everything. But I need to rely on other people to be able to articulate what I’m trying to do.
Dave Ruder
BL: What was that like, to find people who would do that and work with them and have other people be playing instruments on your behalf?
DR: Part of it is very familiar, because I love arranging, by which, in this musical way, I mean, orchestrating. I make, for lack of a better descriptor, art music, art pop. I make these odd little pop songs, but I love having different kinds of sonic instrumental color on them … [On the last album, for string instruments that I don’t play myself], I wrote parts out in notation and sent them to my friends who played them in their homes, and then sent them to me.
But for instruments that I would normally play, like the electric guitar or the bass or the keyboards or clarinet … There’s a way that contemporary recording technology lets you compose something by just recording it. You don’t have to have any training in writing notes on paper.
I was trained in a way where I usually had an instrument in my hand when I was writing something, and when you can’t do that anymore, you’re like, “Wait, how do I write anything?” [My last album,] I wrote everything with an instrument in my hand. This album, it’s 11 songs, I think seven of them I wrote with an instrument in my hand. But gradually that dwindled, and so a few of the final few songs that I wrote, they just have a different character and a different feel.
It’s a really different way of operating, and I’m not used to it yet.
BL: I know in the band that I play with, we have people who are visual learners, who want to sightread sheet music, and we have people who learn by hearing other people and playing with other people. And it seems very challenging to have to transition your method of learning, or writing even more.
DR: Absolutely. The metaphor that I have come up with for this is, it’s like selective linguistic aphasia. Like my native language is English, but also historically, I speak Tamil and German and Swahili — and for weird reasons, [suddenly] I can no longer speak English, and I can still kind-of express myself in Tamil in this way, or in Swahili in this way. It’s this alienation from your brain and your body of, why can I not do the thing that historically I do?
BL: I wanted to ask also about the process of managing symptoms while writing and producing the album, because I know that’s something that has come up in a lot of the other arts coverage that we’ve done — people have to figure out very specifically what works for them.
DR: My main symptoms are musculoskeletal things. I have had hand and wrist problems for 21 years, which got a lot worse in 2009, and then I found some ways to manage that. My immune system started being really weird in 2009, also. And the subsequent infections that I had, the hand and wrist pain got worse every time, and the function got worse.
But I feel fortunate compared to my other friends, colleagues, comrades, who have Long COVID, in that I’m not prone to a lot of the other classic [symptoms]. I do have fatigue, but I generally can predict that. … [So I could prepare for the studio session that I booked to record this album, I was proactive about not getting reinfected,] and then it was just a matter of doing the one part of the performance that I have to do, which is singing. That took me a little time back in my apartment, and was something I could finish over the course of a month.
BL: You mentioned this being a Long COVID album. I wanted to ask how that comes up in the lyrics or the instrumentation. I’m not a music critic by any means, but I definitely noticed as I was listening to it, themes of absurdity, themes of dealing with contradictions, trying to ask people for help. What would you want readers to be thinking about or connecting with as they’re listening?
DR: I think if there’s a theme to this album, it is about being a small entity in the face of larger entities. And maybe the last track is the clearest articulation of this, which is called “don’t touch me.”
BL: I really liked the, “I am just a little goddamn guy” at the end of the song. That really hit.
DR: I don’t necessarily set out trying to foreground being funny, but it’s the main color in my palette sometimes. [“Don’t touch me” is] a funny song, but it’s also very serious. The bridge is like, “Please don’t burgle my turkey. I’m honestly asking you. I’m just a little guy, please leave me alone.”
That’s definitely a theme that comes in a few different ways throughout the album: “I am this small entity. I am this vulnerable entity, and I need your help.”… There’s [also] a track called, “seltzer to a bee,” which is a little self-flagellating or masochistic, [the narrator] is thinking about how useless they are, but in a colorful way.
BL: I almost read it as the absurdity of having to continue operating in this world that seems to have everything against you.
DR: I think you are very much on the nose. Absurdity is a great tool in the face of diminished ability, diminished capacity, diminished horizons.
Between 2021 and maybe the end of 2022, performing was so important [to me] that I was putting myself in riskier situations than I would in a non-performance situation, COVID-wise, and I got to a point where I was just like, “What am I doing? This is so silly.” And so that means I [now] don’t perform as much, which is one of the most important parts of my life. … [I have found] affirming ways of performing in the last two years, where I realized, “Yes, I can put on mask-required shows, I can set up these outdoor performances,” which makes me feel really good.
Something about the absurdity of these tracks maybe comes, a little bit, from the fact that they’re not performed as much or performable, or I don’t quite know how or when I will perform them.
BL: How do you feel that your work is in conversation with other collaborators or other disabled and chronically ill artists?
DR: I’m excited to be forming more community around this. Anna RG has been a great collaborator. I got to work on the piece of hers earlier this year [spring 2025] … and she’s currently assembling a disabled musicians study group.
It’s really been this year that I have started to find community around this. Like so many people who have had Long COVID, [I’ve had] this sort of slow realization in the last five, six years: unsure if something is temporary or permanent… It took me a long time to feel comfortable saying that [I am disabled].
As long as this is just the reality that I’m in, I would like people to know that this is where I am, and I am trying to not get worse. I’m trying to not get anybody else sick. I don’t want anyone else to lose their own abilities to do the things that they care about and make art with in the way that I have.
I’m trying to not get anybody else sick. I don’t want anyone else to lose their own abilities to do the things that they care about and make art with in the way that I have.
Dave Ruder
BL: It’s sort of like present needs, but also future needs of, “I would like to try to reduce the number of times I get this virus.”
DR: It’s also annoying to be the one collaborator that’s always harping on airborne pathogens, and sometimes I have more gumption to do it than other times.
BL: I feel that. In terms of that type of future work, what would you like to see more from the Long COVID and arts community, from other disabled and chronically ill folks who are making art, making music?
DR: Part of the thing that I said at the beginning about the difference between a COVID album and a Long COVID album — I think the reality is that a lot of Long COVID albums mean, you don’t make the album in the first place. You are not able to have the energy, the focus, the physical wherewithal to do it.
I think that albums present an interesting avenue: anybody who is able to speak into a microphone, make sounds into a microphone, at some point, can potentially make an album. A lot of work that I do in the record label that I’ve run has been — my day job is in social services and I really see the parallel of, the work that I do for the label is a different kind of social work, and almost like case management. There’s a way that, I think, particularly for sick artists, for disabled artists, having that feeling of someone taking you seriously and not being alone in your illness and in your ailment is one of the best things that we can provide.
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