John Roseboro Interview

[Transcript is the direct interview, not the episode script]

John Roseboro Interview

Absent Sounds: I think today I'm gonna just start off by asking you: if you could write a song, or if you had a song in your discography that you'd give to a past version of yourself that you think would be handy, what would it be and why?

John Roseboro: Good question. Well, there are a lot of good ones. I feel like that's what I have done. And that's what the songs are. I don't know. I feel like the songs are like notes to my future self.

Absent Sounds: Yeah. At the same time, a lot of your music starts to feel like, well, I'll pose this as the question instead. Do you feel like you're more of the offering when you're performing? Or do you feel like you're more of the altar itself? Like, are you giving yourself? Or are you the offering, in that you are the thing that is being given?

John Roseboro: No, the song is the offering, right?

Absent Sounds: The song is the offering. So you are the altar.

John Roseboro: Sometimes I'm the offering. But if that's the case, the song isn't to the human audience.

Absent Sounds: So the difference is the audience.

John Roseboro: Yeah, sometimes. Sometimes it's an audience of one and then sometimes it's the masses.

Absent Sounds: That's interesting. And how does that correlate to when you do collaborations? For example, with your first track, which is "Johnny."

John Roseboro: I think that might be a song to, with and for Mei. So she's the audience.

Absent Sounds: She's the audience. That's an interesting shift. Do you feel that throughout the album? Is it only with the first track or is that the same with the other features as well?

John Roseboro: No.

Absent Sounds: Well, jumping off of that to go to the second track, it feels like it breaches this boundary that I noticed within a lot of music that I like. So, for example, Sufjan, or even artists or bands like Relient K, they do this interesting thing where it's hard to tell where the line is between spiritual reverence versus erotic love. And I think that is kind of what I was curious about with "80 Summers" as well.

John Roseboro: A lot of times with music and art, you are addressing more than one audience at the same time. That's why it's art. With "80 Summers," this is a really nuanced song. I'm really happy with the way it came out. "80 Summers" is about the woman's intuition. There's a particular trope in history and it's a real thing. It's just women having dreams about something and it's true. So Pontius Pilate's wife has a dream that Jesus is an innocent man, a good man, and that they should leave him alone and he shouldn't be crucified. Many, many women, they'll have a dream like, "Oh, I had a dream you cheated on me with a girl with pink hair," and then lo and behold, that is exactly what happened. This sort of thing, this was a familiar trope. And so the song is about that.

Absent Sounds: Yeah, my sister also has a similar way where she will have dreams. I think the one that was right on point was in high school, she had a dream about a mark she got on a test and then the next day, the exact thing. Which, not as consequential, but it was kind of similar.

John Roseboro: It all adds up.

Absent Sounds: We'll switch to the next track then, which is "Psycho Moment."

John Roseboro: I didn't write that song.

Absent Sounds: You didn't? Well, tell me about the song first. Tell me about it.

John Roseboro: Song called "Psycho Moment." It was a song written by my friend Ron D. He sent me a long message with this song he wrote that doesn't fit his discography. He makes rock music. We went on tour together, friend of mine, and he wrote this song and wanted to know if I might find a place for it. And I was immediately offended. I don't like people sending me stuff like that. I make my own songs and I also don't wanna finish your song. Make your own song. Am I here to do your homework?

Absent Sounds: Pick up the pieces.

John Roseboro: Yeah. Don't give me homework. At least historically this is how I feel. But yeah, he sent me the song, I liked it and I just kind of did my own thing.

John Roseboro: His original was a little rocky. But it had this vibe to it, and I found the song is meaningful. It's a good song.

Absent Sounds: Yeah.

John Roseboro: And so I performed it, put it on the record.

Absent Sounds: Is there a specific thing that you felt connected to, that pushed you to keep going with it, even despite your initial hesitation?

John Roseboro: It's a good song. It's just a good song. I would've never written this song, but I think that it's a song that I love. I can relate to it, and I think it's a song that a lot of people would want me to do, that people would expect to hear from me.

Absent Sounds: Yeah, no, it definitely does sound like the themes of it really tie with something that you've kind of been talking about.

John Roseboro: It sounds like something someone thinks I would make. It's a good song. I'm not taking that away at all, but I'm saying if there was another person trying to write a John Roseboro song, that's the song that they would make.

Absent Sounds: Yeah.

John Roseboro: But I know that is not the song I would make.

Absent Sounds: Okay. Do you care to talk about the difference, like where you think the difference lies?

John Roseboro: A lot of things. I don't use the word "I" that much. I don't overthink that much. So I don't suffer from some of the things that are in that song in that way, and I wouldn't tell about them that way. I don't cuss in my songs like that. You know, there's things about that song that aren't me.

Absent Sounds: Yeah.

John Roseboro: But I can pull that off. And I try to.

Absent Sounds: Yeah. No, that's really interesting. Well, with artists, when you just mentioned that you don't use "I" in your songs.

John Roseboro: It's intentional. I don't use certain words all the time.

Absent Sounds: Why?

John Roseboro: Because I'm a professional.

Absent Sounds: That's a difference between professional...

John Roseboro: Yes, it's the difference between a professional and an amateur.

Absent Sounds:Really?

John Roseboro:Yeah. Don't abuse certain words when your craft is words. You make a love song, don't use the word "love" unless you know how to use it in a certain way. You don't rhyme "girl" and "world," you don't abuse the word "running" or "drowning." These are amateur moves. There are many good songs that use the word "love." I'm not saying don't use it, I'm saying that's how you do these things. And I'm not saying that's a bad song or an amateur song. I'm saying that I'm a professional and this is what I do.

Absent Sounds: Yeah.

John Roseboro: This is the difference.

Absent Sounds: Okay

John Roseboro: Yeah. Or one of the differences.

Absent Sounds: Yeah. I feel like that pretty much covers that song.

John Roseboro: Thanks for caring too. Thanks for listening and thanks for these insightful, thoughtful questions.

Absent Sounds: Thank you. So I've kind of been trying to get into Richard Rohr. I'm not sure if you're familiar with him. He can often be described as a priest. He has a book called Falling Upward and in it he has a quote that says "The way to fall up is the way down," or "The way up is the way down." Which I think is an interesting thing that I wanted to tie in with another question. I think it was, it might have been "Hit." Is this the next song on the record?

John Roseboro: That is the next song. That's a crazy one as well.

Absent Sounds: I just thought that the way "Hit" goes, it feels playful, but it also has this underlying, almost apocalyptic thematic theme that goes through it.

John Roseboro: I have a landlady who, she's so old, she doesn't drive anymore but she likes to have a car. So to get the car approved for inspection, the car has to go through a certain number of cycles, and the car needs to be driven a certain amount of time. So once a year I'll take her car out for a ride, on her behalf. That way it helps her so her car gets approved. I was doing that and it was raining and I just drove for like five hours to the end of Long Island and back. Took all day and I was so angry, like all the way there and all the way back. I think I wanted to, or not even die, I wanted to be dead. To go home and dye all my clothes black. And then these pants I had on, I tried to dye them, they came out brown.

Absent Sounds: What were they starting off?

John Roseboro: They were orange. Aren't they cool now?

Absent Sounds: I know. People would get that done professionally.

John Roseboro: Yeah. Another clothing company, dear friend of mine. I mostly wear his stuff. But anyways yeah, that song is about a hard time, about wanting to kill yourself.

Absent Sounds: Yeah. Especially the line where you say, "If you wanna know if life's worth living, well find the tallest building" and then you trail off. It definitely felt like there was a little bit of space for the listener or the audience, or whoever it is.

John Roseboro: Yeah. I try to have good judgment and I like that cool guitar line right there.

Absent Sounds: For sure. I'll speak for myself when I feel like I'm going through a period of depression and I'm coming out, something has to be shed to get out, but I don't really know what it is half the time. But it's like the shaking part, you know, the internal shaking. Whatever remains afterwards. Something does need to die. It's not literal, not literally you.

John Roseboro: Might be like your childhood or something. Your relationship with some other thing.

Absent Sounds: When you were driving around, did you realize at that point, what had to die for you?

John Roseboro: Oh, I don't remember.

Absent Sounds: Yeah, that's okay.

John Roseboro: Yeah. Desire.

Absent Sounds: Desire. Hm. I think the last question I had about this track was, in general, the play between heaven and hell always feels like this really urgent thing, right? People make it feel like there is a sense of urgency with it. But even within your music, there doesn't seem like it correlates directly. So whenever you play with things that are eschatology-based, like Hades to Shangri-La, it doesn't carry the same urgency. Do you live with that sense outside of music?

John Roseboro: Come on, this is real.

Absent Sounds: I just mean, you know, in music. I almost feel like sometimes it's like maybe a performance, there are a lot...

John Roseboro: There are a lot of performers. There's a lot of people, yeah, who aren't even musicians, they're actors. But this is something that I don't think you could fake. Maybe someone, but I don't know.

Absent Sounds: Yeah. Going down to "This Is My Home."

John Roseboro: It's the most important song. It's a good song. But this song took my whole life to make. That's a really good song. The song is a love song, but it's about, oh, that song was so hard to write. "This Is My Home" was a song about how the cathedrals took 400 generations to make. So that means that the person who designed it, they only saw a hole being dug in the ground, and then their child only saw some sticks in the ground. And people going through wars or religious upheavals, this and that, up and down, left and right. 400 years to build a building and only their children's children's children saw the end of it at the end of their life and said, "We're done." And those are the beautiful things, to plant a tree that you don't get to eat the fruit.

Absent Sounds: Like the shade you'll never see.

John Roseboro: You'll never see. You drop the sequoia plant. I hope this works. And that kind of thing is releasing faith and that kind of thing is releasing love, having hope. The world's literally always been like this. It's always been so bad. The government has always been oppressive. It's always been so bad. So when you go and dare to do that, that's so transgressive. You go and dare to do that. You are releasing faith and love into the world and if you do a good job, then maybe the hope is somebody down the line gets to see the cathedral and enjoy it. Somebody down the line gets to enjoy some food from the tree. Somebody down the line gets to see, find, experience real love. Maybe you don't, but it's still worth taking your place. And what else is there?

Absent Sounds: Yeah, what else is there?

John Roseboro: I'm gonna put it in the AI, I'm gonna put my chips on

Absent Sounds: Put your brain in a freezer.

John Roseboro: Right, come on. Like, dude. It's stupid.

Absent Sounds: Yeah. No, I think that's really interesting. Is that something that you feel like you're working on as well within yourself? Especially where you say, "working it out." What does that look like for you?

John Roseboro: Yeah. I mean, just remembering and forgetting.

Absent Sounds: Remembering...

John Roseboro: Yeah. And forgetting.

Absent Sounds: What do you think is, how do you balance what's worth remembering and forgetting?

John Roseboro: I dunno.

Absent Sounds: Some people do the death cleaning where they say, "Whatever I haven't used in this amount of time, I'm gonna throw it out." Or even with personal stuff, like whatever things don't serve me. I don't know. What is that line for you?

John Roseboro: I dunno. Vibes.

Absent Sounds: Vibes.

Absent Sounds: I mean, if it's like intuitive.

John Roseboro: I unfollow, I follow. But yeah, no shame, I mute. I'm on, I'm off. I unfollow, like whatever makes sense.

Absent Sounds: Yeah. The day passes, you'll figure it out.

John Roseboro: Yeah, you're right. Yeah. Exactly. Doesn't matter.

Absent Sounds: That's for sure. And then with "Charm", "Charm" is a track that I think kind of relates to the last track you had, which was "Fourth Seal." I had a question mostly about the timing of things. Like how much do you put weight in fate or calling in your life? Like every day, how much of it feels guided?

John Roseboro: I believe in God's sovereignty. I am sometimes strongly reminded of how watched I am. That gives me a lot of love and a lot of fear. And "The Charm" is a waltz.

John Roseboro: So it's a two-step in three-four time.

Absent Sounds: Yeah.

John Roseboro: And that's why it's felt that way. 'Cause third time's the charm.

Absent Sounds: Third time's the charm. . How do you-do you spend lots of time looking for symbols and signs as well?

John Roseboro: No.

Absent Sounds: Okay. So for someone, for a friend who is like that, who ends up looking for a lot of symbols and signs, what would you say?

John Roseboro: Don't do that. God's not dumb. Angels aren't dumb. Devils are smart. I'm saying that if a message is meant to get to you, it'll get to you. Even if you are dumb, even if you're so, so dumb, it'll get to you.

Absent Sounds: It'll get there.

John Roseboro: Knock you off your horse. You don't gotta divine any cards or astrology, numerology, you're good. Just have a hearing heart and an obedient heart. 'Cause also, I wanna say, a lot of people think they want God to talk to them. No, you don't.

Absent Sounds: I know.

John Roseboro: No, you don't. Because everybody wants direction. And then guess what you're gonna get? First of all, the first call is gonna be to knock off some other stuff right away. That way you can actually receive the instruction. I'm saying you don't want the instruction because you aren't going to listen. You have a horrible heart, you have an evil heart, and then you're not gonna listen. And then you're gonna have to be punished or judged or something because you have such an evil heart. It will be better for God to not even talk to you.

Absent Sounds: Gonna say yeah.

John Roseboro: You're better off, and then you go and keep making the world a worse place consciously.

Absent Sounds: No, exactly.

John Roseboro: So yeah, you just wanna have a hearing and obedient heart and let the signs come to you.

Absent Sounds: Support. Okay, I'm going down to "I Did the Math." This one, I'll start off with a poem. It's one of my favorite poems that I guess almost directly-indirectly touches on what you talk about. It's called "What You Missed That Day You Were Absent from Fourth Grade" by Brad Aaron Modlin. And it says, this is the last section: "And just before the afternoon bell, she made the math equation look easy. The one that proves that hundreds of questions and feeling cold and all those nights spent looking for whatever it was you lost and one person adds up to something." There's no necessarily direct question from this, but what I wanted to bring up was sometimes it feels like there's an equation of your life, even though you don't have the numbers. What do you do when you feel like the numbers aren't coming out clean or when the things aren't really adding up? Do you revisit the equation for yourself? Do you change the variables?

John Roseboro: You gotta have an open and trusting heart. I don't know anything, man, about anything. But I know that the same person who put all the atoms together and made them so, you know, my blood could flow, my heart can beat, and I can breathe air, and the air is good. And the same person,He dropped the sun and moon in the sky and the earth a perfect distance away so that the sun and moon are the same size there. Like, come on. Just little stuff. I'm saying on the small scale and on all the big scale, there's clearly attention to detail. On the small scale of how the little bugs eat everything in the rainforest and then it gets into the soil, then it grows the tree. There's been attention to the small things. There's been attention to the big things, the sun and how Jupiter has the perfect gravity and all that. Little things like that. So if we have attention to the small and the big, and I'm somewhere in the middle, I can trust that I'm not being overlooked. So I don't need all of the answers.

Absent Sounds: Yeah, you don't really need the equation.

John Roseboro: Fortunately that's not my job. My job is to chill out and inspire the people around me.

Absent Sounds: In that sense, do you have anything specific that allows you to surrender more? Like, do you wake up and read the Bible?

John Roseboro: I try to do that, but my practices can sometimes be, you know, routines can be knocked out by other things, tour. But yeah. Praise God. Prayer is the minimum. A grateful heart.

Absent Sounds: Yeah. Gratitude. That's it. I'm gonna skip "Crumb" and go to "Alter Ego" or "Altar Ego."

John Roseboro: Why skip "Crumb"?

Absent Sounds: Mostly 'cause I don't wanna take too much of your time.

John Roseboro: I wanna say one thing about "Crumb." The song is based off of a meditation where you imagine, like a great-great-great-great-grandchild, with their child, that's like 14 generations. And so this person...

John Roseboro: Obviously, but probably doesn't look like you, probably is just a random...

Absent Sounds: You know, in some cultures they'd be grateful for that.

John Roseboro: Yeah, yeah. All I'm saying is then you imagine that person thinking of you. And in the future, whatever they have, they want to reach out to you. They wanna get into some kind of connection with you, ask for your advice. They build an altar and they put something on the altar that somehow symbolically represents you. A tooth, a crumb, something up there. And to kind of speak to you. And the meditation is, or the next question is, what are they putting on the altar?

Absent Sounds: Yeah.

John Roseboro: That represents you and your life. This person's kind of removed. But they're trying to connect here and ask you about some guidance. That's what inspired that song.

Absent Sounds: Did you have an answer for that question for yourself?

John Roseboro: Yeah, but that's not on the song.

Absent Sounds: That's okay. I was curious. Well, I appreciate you adding some additional information on that.

John Roseboro: I just wanted to say that 'cause that helps.

Absent Sounds: No, thank you.

Absent Sounds: With "Altar Ego" though, I think it's like the same kind of altar thing that you're mentioning, where it's like setting, letting it down, but it's a little different. It started making me think of stripping yourself so bare that you're letting yourself, everything out and there's only all that's left of you is just an empty vessel.Do you feel more of yourself when you're emptied or when there is more of you inside? Like do you feel like you're reaching the center of John when you are emptied, or do you feel like you have reached the center of John when you're filled? Whether it's filled with inspiration or filled with maybe...

John Roseboro: So whatever it is, I'm interpreting the question as like, do I feel most myself sober or drunk?

Absent Sounds: I guess that can be an interpretation.

John Roseboro: Do I feel myself more when I'm hungry or full? I guess so. I think, I mean, the answer is, I feel like I'm myself more when I'm full, but I think I'm actually more myself when I'm hungry. I think I feel more myself when I'm sober.

Absent Sounds: Yeah.

John Roseboro: But I actually am more myself when I'm drunk.

Absent Sounds: Okay. I'm just thinking on that. And even in the same sense of that dichotomy, do you feel more like yourself when you're hidden away from people when you're alone? Or do you feel like you're more yourself when you are around people?

John Roseboro: I think I'm more myself when I'm alone.

Absent Sounds: Yeah.

John Roseboro: But even when you're with people, you're alone.

Absent Sounds: That's true. Was there anything else you wanted to say about this track before we move on?

John Roseboro: I guess all I wanna say is that, in earnest, between you and me and everybody, the song is not about anybody that you can name. So it's like a nice song. And I think that there are people walking the earth right now who think this song is about them. And like, nope. That's kind of funny. Not even inspiration. They're not.

Absent Sounds: Well, they're the main character in their own story.

John Roseboro: So here's the thing I did. The song ain't about anybody real. But it absolutely is my intention for them to think that it is about them, because that's how I know it's good. That's how I know it works.

Absent Sounds: Yeah.

John Roseboro: Cool. It is the everyman.

Absent Sounds: Thanks.

John Roseboro: Thanks. That's awesome. You're blocked.

Absent Sounds: Yeah. But it's actually funny though. This is like a complete tangent. But based off of what you're saying, I started realizing, it's the same thing I would do to some people where I'd be like, "Watch how much I don't care, how you think I care. Like watch, I'm literally gonna block you." But it was actually, at the same time, I realized I'm acting this way because there's something inside me that's either hurting so much that it's pretending that it doesn't care. But if you reach the nirvana or a place that you're like, "I really don't care," that's power though.

John Roseboro: I don't know. There's a small and big difference between apathy and enlightenment. I think somebody who is so thrown by their passions can't tell the difference, but there's a difference between being numb and being something else.

Absent Sounds: Yeah. That takes us down to the last track, which is "Fourth Seal."

John Roseboro: Yeah.

Absent Sounds: With "Fourth Seal," the last one, this one I thought, I think like I already mentioned, pairing it with "Charm," but coming back to recognizing, I felt like my interpretation was a lot of it was recognizing the divine presence in ordinary life, like when Jesus is within you, or just the idea that the modernity of life has so much spiritual significance in the sense that you don't need to look for signs. Because the fact that the grass is green and the trees are growing is in itself a testament. And the question I had for that is, in your life, what do you find is a revelation for you? Like outside of the spectacle, what are the small things? I'm not sure if this is the first line, but there's a line, the lines I have written down here are "In a wink, in a twinkling of the eye, Jesus Christ, around and inside." And that was kind of what I was referencing, like Luke 17, kind of the idea of Jesus, the kingdom. And then also the next one I had was, no "Fourth Seal" or fire from heaven, we don't need another sign. And that was when I was referring back to "Charm."

John Roseboro: That's right. Yeah. Those are the lyrics I remember too. But curious to know the start of the song

Absent Sounds: I was just asking if there were certain things that give you the revelation without needing the same significance or the fire.

John Roseboro: My next breath. My next breath. I'm so hyped up that sometimes I'll take 200 breaths. Gosh, just gotta, dang. That's crazy. That is still happening. Look up the lyrics: "Waiting for the day of reckoning, staring fate in her lazy eye." That's great. Cool song.

Absent Sounds: Yeah. And with that, do you have any last words, thoughts?

John Roseboro: Any aspects concerning anything?

Absent Sounds: Concerning anything or all of the above?

John Roseboro: Joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer.

Absent Sounds: That's it. Well, thank you, John.

John Roseboro: Thank you.

Absent Sounds: Yeah, what a great way to spend the afternoon to sit out here. I appreciate your time, honestly.