photo - Rusted Root’s founding lead singer Michael Glabicki and guitarist Dirk Miller play in Kula. Courtesy photo

Rusted Root’s founding lead singer Michael Glabicki and guitarist Dirk Miller have been touring festivals and theaters, and after dates at Oahu’s Blue Note, they will head to Maui to play a special “Farm Dinner” event May 2 at the Ocean Organic Farm and Distillery.

Performing Rusted Root favorites along with new material, they have re-envisioned versions of their classics for intimate settings.

“We go into the crevices of the songs and expand them out and open up the music to whatever happens in the moment,” Glabicki explained. “It’s completely improvisational to the point where we surprise ourselves a lot. It’s like we’ve never heard it sound like that before. We have a great time with it, and the audience seems to enjoy the musical exploration too.”

Formed in 1990, when the acoustic duo of high school friends Glabicki and Liz Berlin teamed with University of Pittsburgh-trained drummer Jim Donovan and bassist Patrick Norman, they soon attracted a following with what they described as “body moving music.”

With an exuberant mix of Latin and African music, soul and rock, and traditional American music, their first major label release, the platinum-selling “When I Woke” featured the hit “Send Me On My Way,” along with Root standards such as “Ecstasy,” “Martr” and “Drum Trip,” with influences ranging from Peter Gabriel and Paul Simon’s “Graceland” to South Africa’s Johnny Clegg and David Byrne in their songs.

“One of the things I learned from Carlos Santana is that music is really about evolving along the journey and that’s always been important to me,” Glabicki reported in Music n’ Other Drugs. “The best songs, for me, are those that focus on being creative, revealing and honest. My lyrics are positive. I think they’ve always come from a universal spot. I try to speak the truth to our collective consciousness and the end result is always from the heart.”

The band’s self-titled third album featured another potent mix of musical styles with popular tracks like the lively “Magenta Radio,” the uplifting “Rising Sun,” the tribal drum piece “Agbadza,” the rousing “Moon,” and a riveting cover of the Stones classic “You Can’t Always Get What You Want,” with members of Hot Tuna.

Along the way, they opened for Santana, the Grateful Dead, the Dave Matthews Band, the Allman Brothers Band, and Jimmy Page and Robert Plant’s reunion tour in 1995.

“It’s kind of cool to be out there, just playing with Jimmy Page and Robert Plant, the Allman Brothers and the Grateful Dead,” Glabicki told National Public Radio. “It’s kind of a trip … to see these people you grew up with and you’re having conversations and jamming with.”

Believing that music can change the world, Glabicki told the South Bend Tribune, “I think, for the most part, music has been devalued overall. In the past, people would come out and expect to witness something that will potentially change their lives. Now, they are coming out and not necessarily expecting that. So you’ve got to prove that to them. You’ve got to make them feel that.”

Glabicki and Miller perform at a “Farm Dinner” event at the Ocean Organic Farm and Distillery on May 2, with early dinner entertainment by Tempa and Naor. There will be three partner farms sampling what they grow, and the award-winning chef team from the Fairmont Kea Lani will create a special dish for the evening. Dinner reservations are available at bit.ly/3RDa4PR. Admission is $45, and the $200 VIP package includes a meet and greet. Gates open for dinner at 3:30 p.m. Music runs from 4:15 to 7:45 p.m.