Catching up with John Roseboro
We got up to speed with Brooklyn’s resident bossa nova musician.
Photo: Press
Where are you at right now?
I’m in Brooklyn, New York, in my room. It’s junky right now ‘cause I’m getting ready for tour. Got boxes for shirts, records, luggage out. It’s an in-between kind of space.
I feel you, I can’t judge because my room is the same. Were you jamming just before we hopped on?
Yeah, it’s something I’m excited about. Trying to work out this one song that’s a bit jazzy. How do I make it better?
You reminded me of when we were hanging out a few years ago, and you were playing this tune on the guitar, trying to figure it out. You said you were going to develop it into both a long and short piece. Was that the tune that ended up becoming This My Home? I love that song.
Definitely not. I know when and where This My Home was written. I think I know what you’re talking about. That song hasn’t been released. It’s called St. John’s Wort. Maybe it’ll end up on the next record. St. John’s Wort is a flower, sometimes crushed into a natural antidepressant. My sister used to take it, and it works. In large doses, I think it can be a psychedelic, but it’s not one of the popular psychedelics. Nobody does St. John’s Wort recreationally. It’s just something to help take the edge off.
I saw your friend and collaborator, Mei Semones, recently at her first headline show in London. She was great! Lots of people were singing along and, funnily enough, mostly dudes, which was quite sweet in a way.
That’s cool. I’ve noticed that at festivals. The crowd rotates, and I’ve seen all the girls come when I play. Or when a woman plays, there are always dudes in the audience. It’s weird, but not weird. I don’t have a whole psychoanalytic cosmology around it. I just observe, and it makes me feel good when the girls come out.
Yeah, I think there’s some anima, animus thing going on, externalising the feminine within you, or the masculine for the ladies. When you see someone on stage, you idealise them, see them as an ideal version of that masculinity or femininity.
Well, yeah, Mei and I were talking about that yesterday. I still don’t know. I think about this, not all the time but, as I understand it, artists and celebrities are a bit of a lightning rod culturally. The artist represents a latent part of the soul. Dionysus and revelry or hedonism. Every generation gets updated, so thousands of years later, we have Playboi Carti. You like Playboi Carti but, really, you like a part of yourself that’s a hedonist, a darker energy. Or Aphrodite, then Venus, then thousands of years later, Kim Kardashian. Now she’s ageing out, so who’s next? Maybe Bella Hadid. That’s an overarching culture, but in subcultures too, like indie alt culture. My point is, I don’t know where I fit in the schema of those gods, archetypes, stars. I don’t know what people are coming to see or hear. I don’t know how to give it to them, and they don’t know how to tell me. I just have to figure it out. All I know is myself.
That’s funny, ‘cause I wrote a few questions just in case, and one was: if every soul is unique but connected to an archetype, what would you be?
No idea. I wish I did. I’d probably be better at my job. I’m serious.
Mystery is interesting too, but I know what you mean. I think it’s about knowing yourself. From my eyes, you come across as reflective and strong. You’re a tall guy, so you have this strong presence, but you’re very reflective. I felt that when we spent time together that summer. Your strength comes from a vulnerable place. You’re direct, but honest, and honesty brings vulnerability, even though it’s a light that shines.
No, that helps. I’m holding that in my heart. I’m gonna make some notes later, take that into consideration, along with other people’s. I definitely felt that when I spent time with you that summer. I could relate to you a lot on those levels.
Yeah, definitely. There’s something real about your voice, too, which I wanted to ask about. You mentioned living with the Amish influenced your guitar playing, those riffs and chords. But your voice is super unique, delicate but strong. How did you find your musical voice? Where does your vocal style come from?
I’ve never thought about it, except I know that I didn’t want to sing. I didn’t want to sing the songs. I just wanted the songs to be made, so I’d have to write them ‘cause somebody has to. Then I’d have other people come to sing them. But they were like “singers”, and I feel like they were singing them wrong. They’re singing them like singers, and most people aren’t singers. So I want to be the worst singer. I’m singing, but I want to be the most approachable of voices, like the fan could out-sing me or anybody else could out-sing me. It invites you to sing the song, like a guy and a guitar at a campfire. You have permission to sing. If the songwriting is good, the music is good, the lyrics are good, then I don’t have to be the best singer. I’m not the best singer. I’ll never be the best singer. So I’ll put all the attention into the final product, the song and the user experience of the audience listening to the song. I tried to work with other people, but they were singing too well.
It’s funny because, like you say, you’re not the best singer, but your voice is hard to imitate. It’s so ‘you’, because you’re not trying to sing so much. You don’t lean into that projected singing style. You go for this earnest, true-to-who-you-are vibe, like you’re speaking it out with the natural melody of your voice. I think that’s maybe why you and Mei work so well together. Her style’ has got this spokenness to it, too. You guys are doing really cool collabs. I wanted to ask about that.
I don’t know what’s planned yet, but maybe something might come out of the tour? We’re gonna be hanging out for like a month, so we’ll probably play guitar and sing together. I know we talked about it – not for a while, if at all – but it was actually somebody from Mei’s label, Evan Welsh, God bless him. He proposed that Mei and I make a record of just jazz standards, a bunch of jazz standards, put it up, and it would introduce people to songs they might not have heard. The songs are already written, so it’s easier on us. You write new solos, change some stuff around, sing, make a couple videos, be cute. It’s like an album already written, and we just do our thing. Probably in the future, between albums, when we’re in a writing period, but can still put something out. They’re standards, they stand the test of time. They’re all bangers. Put out a record, everybody gets paid, the money goes crazy. Then we can focus on other stuff, play more songs, and perform more songs.
That’s a really good idea. It makes sense. Waters of March was really good. A lot of people tuned in to both of you through that tune. I took a friend to see Mei who didn’t know her music, but had heard the Waters of March cover and was like, ‘That’s all I’ve heard, but I’d love to go see more’. How did you guys start collaborating? How’d you come across each other?
A long time ago, Mei found me inside a cow pie. I was just a little baby inside, and she picked me up, brushed the dirt off, and we started making some songs. Nah, she said she wanted to make some songs, but I was like, ‘let’s do this Waters of March thing first’, ‘cause everybody’s already making us the ‘bossa nova people’. It’s like the best song ever, but there’s no English version [that] I love. For the record, I do not like the Simon and Garfunkel version. No swag in it at all. It’s the worst. When people like that version, they don’t like the version, they like the song. It’s just a version in English, ‘cause some people, if the song’s in another language, they’re not listening.
So, we had to make an English version of the [Antônio Carlos] Jobim song. We wrote one of the verses, ‘cause Jobim wrote the English version, but it’s shorter. We built the music off the Brazilian version, which has an extra verse, so we had to write a new verse for that one. We were friends before either of us lived in New York. We both moved to New York independently. I was in Atlanta and California before New York. She went to music school, I was at mortuary school. I think she had a demo on the internet, and I had one or two songs, like Love and Woman.
I remember when I first saw you come up on Instagram. I think it was a clip of Woman – and I loved it. I’m a big fan of bossa nova, but Brazilian Portuguese has its own rhythm, so English translations can sound clunky at times. But your writing style flows beautifully to the sound of bossa.
Yeah, it’s kind of corny. Everybody wants to go, “Inspiration, inspiration.” I can tell you, but you’re not gonna like the answer. You look at Da Vinci and say, “I want to be a great artist like Da Vinci, I’m gonna study Da Vinci”. That’s not how you get to be Da Vinci. You have to study anatomy, light, colour theory, botany, rock formation, all the stuff you didn’t think was related. That’s what I’m doing, at least.
What would your desert island disc look like?
Like a mixtape? I don’t know how many songs I have. I don’t really listen to a whole lot of music. I would love a big thing of brown noise, that low-end white noise, like on an aeroplane.
So, what inspired the Close to You cover?
I’ve always wanted to do that song. Everybody thinks that song is so beautiful. I think it is. But the best version is the original. There are a lot of versions, and everybody’s version is fine ‘cause it’s a good song. It’s hard to mess up a good song, the same way it’s hard to mess up a cheeseburger. McDonald’s makes the worst cheeseburger, a billion-dollar corporation, objectively the worst cheeseburger. But they’re a billion-dollar corporation. Why? ‘Cause it’s a good product. You can’t mess up French fries. So, you can’t mess up a good song, or it’s very difficult to.
My point is, I felt like I had something to offer. What my version does that none of the other versions do is that it’s guitar-based. All the versions are piano-based, except this one by The Cranberries, and their version is like strumming, a campfire kind of song. Close to You is the most sensitive and tender love song there is, and love is meant for all of us, not just anybody you might see as higher than you. The guitar is the people’s instrument. The piano is an aristocracy, an oligarchical instrument. Before you have a piano, you have to have a room that can fit a piano: a house. It’s a classist instrument. The guitar, you don’t even need a house. You don’t need to know where you’re sleeping tonight to have a guitar and be brilliant at it. That’s a dichotomy.
So, we have the Close to You version, not just with guitar, a nylon string acoustic guitar played sensitively, but also my voice. All the versions of Close to You are the best singers, like Frank Sinatra. Even Frank Ocean could have done it, could have pulled it off. I love all the versions. Frank Ocean and Stevie Wonder both could have pulled this off, but they chose to modulate their vocals in their versions, and that communicates something else. They’re doing something else artistically. The song in itself possesses a lot of soul that we all need, that we all have. Black people are better at communicating it. There’s one Black woman, Phyllis [Dillon], who has a version, and she does a great job, but she’s still a singer, a big vocal diaphragm singer.
I thought it would be much more tender to perform the song as a weaker singer, ‘cause it’s a love song. All the versions pretty much sound like you’re watching a performance of somebody proposing to someone else. None of the versions actually sound like they’re close to you. So that’s why I made this version, where it’s quiet, tender, and sensitive.
It reminds me of your version of It’s You I Like. Both songs have a really sweet, loving, intimate sentiment. Your voice and style capture that.
Did you prefer the solo or band version? I think I just wanted to give the option for a movie to scoop it up.
They’re both great. Even in the non-solo one, the other instruments aren’t that prominent. They add a niceness, but they’re both beautiful. I don’t know if I prefer one over the other. Maybe it depends on how I’m feeling on the day. If I had to pick, probably the solo one – it leans into the intimacy even more. I wanted to ask a similar question about Juna. What’s the background to that?
People like Juna. I like Juna. Clairo probably lives in a few places: Chicago, New York. A lot of people have Clairo stories in New York, like how she came into a restaurant. I’ve got friends who know her very well, played in her band, who I’ve met her through. I’m not her friend. I’m not her enemy. I don’t want to listen to her music. I’ve heard a couple of songs that I like, but mostly a lot of stuff that doesn’t excite me. This is all contextual.
I had already announced I was putting out this record called The Charm; I put out artwork and a poster. Then I wake up one day to all these messages flooding my phone, telling me Clairo just announced this record called Charm, and they’re showing me the artwork, and it’s the same. Not just the name, but the marketing stuff. It was crazy, unbelievable. We know some of the same people. I’m not saying she necessarily stole my swag, or maybe somebody on her team did. Either way, it derailed my whole thing. I had to make a new name, new artwork for everything, last minute, ‘cause I already had the stuff.
When her record came out, I listened to it ‘cause it felt like my job. Honestly, most of the time I’m listening to music, it’s ‘cause it feels like that’s my job. I have to hear this to know what’s going on, what band I’m performing with. I listened to the record, like, “Let’s hear this dump record that messed up my stuff”. I think I liked one or two of the songs, but I really liked Juna. It had a whole moment on TikTok, and people appreciated that song, but it wasn’t a single. I don’t think I really liked the singles that much.
I messaged Claire, ‘I’m gonna cover this song’. The song was out for a day, and I had heard it 24 times. I listened to it a hundred more times, covered the whole thing. I would have put it out the next day, but she had to approve it, and that took three days. Then it came out. She didn’t really acknowledge it, but I don’t care. I don’t care about the song that much. I don’t even know if I know how to play it anymore. After I made it, I forgot. I put it up and never listened to it again. It’s like you eat a bunch of hot Cheetos and you’re done. I would delete it, even. I don’t care that much, unless she becomes a friend of mine.
I put out Hit a week later, so I put out Juna to promote it, but it messed up even that promotion ‘cause she took three days to approve it. On Spotify, it looks like I put out this song, and nobody listened to it for three days. That tells the algorithms, “Oh, John fell off. He put out a song, and zero people listened for three days”. So they don’t pump my next thing ‘cause people don’t like me. She messed up my stuff two times.
I do like the song, and I wanted to make a boy’s version of it. Like with Close to You, you gotta make a boy version. There’s a line where it’s like, “You make me wanna put on a dress,” or something. Her line goes, “You make me wanna buy a new dress, you make me wanna try on feminine, you make me wanna something, you make me wanna slip off a new dress.” I changed it to, “You make me wanna go all in and become the man that makes you wanna buy a new dress, that makes you wanna slip off a new dress.”
That’s a hard line! When I heard that, I was like, ‘Yo, that’s nice’. I was curious ‘cause I didn’t see you share Juna loads. That’s really interesting with the album stuff. I always wondered if that kind of thing happens, and now to hear this is crazy.
It’s happened to me a couple of times. People say it doesn’t happen to a lot of people. It actually doesn’t happen that often, but it’s happened to me, and it’s really annoying. Everybody’s like, “This doesn’t really happen.” It’s like, “Bro, no, it doesn’t happen ‘cause y’all don’t make music. You go on the computer, and your music is fake. You don’t even make anything anybody would want to take or, if they took it, no one would know.” You can’t steal a power chord progression. But if I show you something, it’s like, “Nope, you never played that chord in your life. You’ve never played those five chords, especially in that order. I taught you that.” It’s not even that. It’s when you sample the whole thing and sing your stupid song. It’s like I just built a house, and there’s graffiti on the wall.
Are there any current or historical figures you resonate with?
I like all the greats, but I don’t think of myself as any kind of reincarnation of anybody. I try to learn from their mistakes.
It’s a basic one, but what’s been your favourite gig to play or go see, whichever way you want to answer?
I like Mei’s shows ‘cause I know the songs, so that’ll be fun. I like performing in Louisville, Kentucky, at a place called The Burrell. It’s a random place in the United States. People do not play there. It’s a place you play between other places. I love playing there ‘cause when you play in a place like Lexington that nobody plays, and you play good music, everybody comes out. It’s the biggest deal in the whole world – like aliens, ascended gods have come and visited us. The only people who perform are somebody’s bluegrass plant uncle. But some cool people from New York come, playing music you could not imagine existed, saying things nobody’s ever said before. They make you the mayor! You get everything for 24 hours. It’s like, “Here, please come back”. You don’t get that in Los Angeles or New York.
I like playing in the middle of nowhere, and people lose their minds. Coming into a place where they don’t have much music is interesting. Nobody lives there. They feed you, and the food is so good. I had one burger out there in Kentucky, at The Burl. It was a magic sandwich, like a clamshell. You open the clamshell, and you have this big burger. You’re eating it, so full, so delicious, and you’re confused ‘cause it’s so big and delicious. You’re like, “Wow, I’m full, that was great”. You put it back in the clamshell, close it. Then you’re like, “Man, it was pretty good, let me get one or two more bites”. You open it, and it grows. It’s bigger. You eat it, it’s delicious. You close it, and it keeps growing. It’s crazy. It’s probably still there.
Sounds like the never-ending Krabby Patty. I’ve got two more questions. What’s the best and worst comments you’ve heard from a listener?
I’ve heard a lot of jaw-dropping things on both ends of the spectrum. What comes to mind is funny because they’re so similar. When someone says, “I love your shit,” the conversation is over. I don’t make shit. Also, why are you talking to me like I’m one of your little friends? You’re way too comfortable. I don’t like cussing, especially with a stranger, an older person, a woman, or a child. Watch your mouth, man. No respect.
Likewise, someone in Los Angeles, this girl – Lily or something – said one word differently: “I love your work.” I love you. Yeah, I work. This is hard. You couldn’t do this. I was a carpenter; I worked in the trades with electricians, plumbers, everything. No disrespect to plumbers – they save the world, save lives. We’d all be covered in poop if it wasn’t for them. They save more lives than doctors. Doctors kill people. Plumbers are amazing and deserve all the millions. That said, I believe I could be a plumber. Most people could. Most plumbers could not do what I’m doing. I could be wrong, but it’s not even like somebody’s better.
The value of a person isn’t in what I’m talking about. When someone says, “I love your work,” they recognise, maybe without all this context, and they respect the music. They understand we’re really going for it; financially, the investment, taking care of the lyrics, the guitar part, the saxophone part, the drums, the cover art, the music video. Maybe you’re not even shooting, you gotta do the colour, the graphic design, the poster. There’s a lot that goes into it. I appreciate that. One word difference: “I love your shit” and “I love your work”. Completely different vibe. Also, when somebody tells me their favourite song of mine is a cover, Waters of March doesn’t count, I’m like, “Nah, you haven’t heard the songs. Either you haven’t heard them, or shut up”. We got some songs. There are some good songs here. Have you heard them? Did you hear a song? Did you hear it, though?
You’ve got the tour coming up, hitting the UK and Europe. Anything you’re looking forward to? Anything you want us to know?
I need a place to stay. I don’t know how I’m getting to any of these shows. I don’t know where the shows are. I’m just gonna try not to die. I don’t even know what guitar I’m playing. The acoustic guitar is obviously what the songs are written on, but the electric guitar travels better, like on a plane. I have a backpacking kind of thing, so you can travel like that. But the acoustic, I have a hard shell, where you have to hold it in your hand. I don’t want to do that. You get this big clunky metal thing or this backpack, hands-free. I haven’t made a decision yet.