Jean Rohe Interview

Below is the transcript of my interview with Jean Rohe from December 2024. You’ll find the Podcast and Video versions, along with the show notes with the link, directly on the button below.

Jean Rohe  is an acclaimed song-writer and singer, as well as a devoted  mentor, working with incarcerated song-writers,as well as at the New School and privately. She writes powerful narrative songs, and is widely known for her National Anthem: Arise! Arise! an aspirational alternative which has been performed extensively across the US. She shared with me her perspectives on love, grief, identity, community and creativity.   One of her beautiful collaborations is the wonderful album Beautalina with the band Eureka Shoes, with Skye Soto Steele,  Charlie Burnham and Rashaan Carter. We are featuring music from that project as well as with  Robinson & Rohe. 

Jean Rohe (00:00:00):

I didn't think that would be something I would enjoy teaching songwriting. There was so much interest and I enjoyed it so much. It made me realize how much I really loved hearing the early embryonic forms of songs. There's something very exciting about even other people's creative process.

Leah Roseman (00:00:23):

Hi, you’re listening to Conversations with Musicians, with Leah Roseman, which I hope inspires you through the personal stories of a diversity of musicians, with in-depth conversations and great music, that reveal the depth and breadth to a life in music. Jean Rohe is an acclaimed song-writer and singer, as well as a devoted mentor, working with incarcerated song-writers,as well as at the New School and privately. She writes powerful narrative songs, and is widely known for her National Anthem: Arise!Arise! an aspirational alternative which has been performed extensively across the US, by choirs and many musicians. She shared with me her perspectives on love, grief, identity, community and creativity. One of her beautiful collaborations is the wonderful album Beautalina with the band Eureka Shoes, with Skye Soto Steele, Charlie Burnham and Rashaan Carter. We are featuring music from that project, as well as with Robinson & Rohe. Like all my episodes, you can watch this on my YouTube or listen to the podcast on all the podcast platforms, and I’ve also linked the transcript to my website Leahroseman.com .This weekly podcast is in Season 5 and I send out an email newsletter where you can get access to exclusive information about upcoming guests. Have a look at the description of this episode, where you’ll find all the links, including detailed timestamps, and ways to support this series, for which I do all the many jobs myself.

(00:01:48):

Hey Jean, thanks so much for joining me here today.

Jean Rohe (00:01:50):

Oh, my pleasure. Good to be here.

Leah Roseman (00:01:53):

I absolutely love this album you have put together with Eureka Shoes. So first of all, the band name

Jean Rohe (00:02:03):

Everybody wants to know!

Leah Roseman (00:02:05):

Have to ask.

Jean Rohe (00:02:06):

Yeah. Well, the band name has a lot to do with the origins of this band as such. The band is Charlie Burnham Skye Soto Steele, Rashaan Carter, and myself. And we started hanging out Charlie and Sky, and I mean Sky and I are old friends. Charlie and Sky had a duo project for a long time, but sort of in the early post vaccination days here in Brooklyn, I was going over to Charlie's house and just playing songs I'd been writing and that Sky and Charlie had been writing together and hanging out. And at some point that summer, Charlie had a recording residency that he was awarded at Looking Glass Arts in upstate New York. And we went up there and recorded with Rashaan a bunch of the songs that we'd been kicking around and really had an amazing time working on that. Our band had a variety of names when we came back and started playing some little shows around town, none of which lasted very long.

(00:03:14):

And somehow Eureka Shoes is the one that floated to the top. I think we were sitting around in Charlie's kitchen talking about band names and we were thinking about the forces that had brought us together. One of whom is Marika Hughes, who is the curator and director of Looking Glass Arts. And I said something like, I think it was me. I said something like, oh, I think we have a lot to be grateful for, is something that rhymes with Eureka shoes. And so we have this band name that rhymes with our recording residency benefactors name.

Leah Roseman (00:03:56):

Yeah, I was looking at their website this morning. It seems like a beautiful place and they do wonderful things,

Jean Rohe (00:04:01):

Incredible place. I really recommend it to any of your listeners who are artists who are interested in music, which I'm sure if they're listening, they are. There's just so much fresh work coming out of that space every year that they're running residencies and it's fairly new. It's maybe only a handful of years old, so I'm sure there's a lot more exciting stuff in the pipeline for that residency space.

Leah Roseman (00:04:28):

So before we dive into your songwriting and the album, I was interested to find out you had a family band growing up.

Jean Rohe (00:04:35):

Oh yeah, I did. I grew up in a family that was really musical, but in a really, I don't know, I want to say humble and non-professional way. It was a real revelation to me at some point in my childhood that people, I don't know, there was some connection between what we were doing and people on MTV. It just felt like a whole other world we would sing around the house. I mean, I don't want to paint too cheesy a picture of it, but it really was just like music was woven into our lives from a really young age. My mom is one of those harmony singers who just intuits the sort of the most pleasing path at every moment. And my dad was a self-taught guitar player with a wide appetite of interest, but when my brother and I were growing up, we spent a lot of time singing everything from, I don't know, Americana music and trad stuff from around the States to show tunes with my grandma and my dad had a real love of jazz.

(00:05:58):

And so that was woven in there and at some point we started performing out just really locally in New Jersey where I grew up, and I guess I just never really stopped. I mean, the music has evolved and the family band really just convenes when we're hanging out together these days. But all of us are still making music and I'm doing it professionally. I mean, my father has since passed away, but my brother is a teacher, he's a history teacher, but he brings music into his class all the time. My mom's life is infused with music in every realm. So I feel really fortunate in that way that I grew up with a music in my life and not some of the pressure that I have noticed that some of my peers have come up with, whether it's because they were taking violin lessons with a really strict teacher and had a very narrow path in that regard, which has its beautiful pros and its cons or people who were really aspiring to some kind of pop stardom, greatness and weren't getting a lot of the satisfaction of just making music for whoever was around. Yeah.

Leah Roseman (00:07:19):

Well, that actually brings me, I picked a few of the tracks I particularly loved on this album, but the whole thing's fantastic! Linked in the description, I encourage people to click on that. So "Go Easy".

Jean Rohe (00:07:30):

Oh yeah,

Leah Roseman (00:07:32):

Which really reflects what you're talking about. Did you write that tune or was it a co-write?

Jean Rohe (00:07:36):

That was mine, and I was really glad to bring it to the group. It felt kind of like a weird egg shaped kind of song in some ways. There's just a lot of metric shifting that came organically to it as I was writing, and it really wasn't until I tried to kind of jot it down for the band that I realized what was going on there. And Charlie and Skye just brought, I don't know, so much texture and shape to it through their contributions. I guess I just, that's how I would say it. It was a real, let's see, I probably wrote that at the beginning of 2021. Yeah, just feeling the way that the kind of drastic shift in so many of our lives because of the pandemic was affecting the joy and wellbeing for many people around me and myself. So many of my songs just lyrically, it's a reminder to me as much as anything else go easy on yourself, nobody else will probably do that for you. So it's so important to be kind. And yeah, it was just a really beautiful thing to share that with Charlie and Skye. Charlie's playing a mandola with a slide, and so there's this really beautiful texture that comes in there and then some spare, but I think really powerful three-part harmony that happens in that song.

(00:09:16):

I'm glad you like it.

Leah Roseman (00:09:19):

This is "Go Easy" from the album Beautalina with Eureka Shoes. Check the link in the show notes (music)

(00:12:42):

So this pandemic summer 2021, I've talked to many people. For me it's still fresh. And I'm wondering for you, did you think it wouldn't last so long or how did it affect you? You said you were creating able to write

Jean Rohe (00:12:59):

In fits and starts though. I think, what can I say? That period of time felt like a real opening, starting to play in the spring with Charlie and Skye and to be at Looking Glass Arts and to be outside in the summer that year. I think so much of that era for me was really weighted with anxiety and worry and just the practicalities of caring for my households and our wellbeing. We lived in New York City and the beginning stages of the pandemic were particularly rough here. Our dear neighbor died a couple of weeks in right on our block, and it just felt very heavy. And I was doing some, I mean, I have to say a lot of the writing that I did in that period of time was not great. I mean, I was writing songs and most of 'em haven't seen the light of day. And then there were some unrelated huge health emergencies in my family that really brought me into a heavy caretaking role for a period of a few months, and I'm glad I was able to be around for that.

(00:14:22):

And then of course, yes, who can forget the period of time in 2020 after George Floyd's murder and this sudden kind of arousal and being in the street, which was also hugely resonant in my physical reality in New York City too. So yeah, I guess I know some people find their most creatively fertile moments in the times of greatest distress or anguish or sorrow. And I think what I've noticed about myself is that I can reflect on those moments, but I need a little bit more space for some kind of meaning to take shape about what's happening. Music is always there for me to lean on, thank goodness, but in those moments of deepest anguish, it's helpful to sing things that I feel like I know rather than trying to find something brand new and investigate it is just something I've observed about myself. So it felt amazing to get together in the spring in 2021 and say, here are a handful of things that have come from this period that do feel really, there's possibly some life in them, but I don't even know if I know anymore. And to bring them to Charlie and Skye and discover, I don't know how much it means to play music together with other people again, and that the songs really need to live in that space of togetherness. That's where I found out that they had a heartbeat.

(00:16:08):

I don't know if they feel differently about the songs that they wrote for the record, but certainly that was true for me.

Leah Roseman (00:16:18):

Now Skye's really earthy, wonderful singing is on this very affecting track, "Everyone Is Dying" and you have that acapella opening. Was that song his, or did you guys co-write that?

Jean Rohe (00:16:31):

That song was Skye's and I had sung that with him. I mean, as I mentioned earlier, Skye and I go way back. He was a part of an early trio that I led and I've sung back up in his bands over time and just is really a dear friend and collaborator, incredible musician. "Everyone Is Dying", had a brief life in a band that maybe played a couple gigs, Skye was sort of working out. Some new music came to a screeching halt I think in February, 2020 or something like that. But so I had seen that song go through some iterations of lyrics, and I think there's maybe a verse in that song that is somewhat inspired by Skye's observing me, grieving my dad's death. And so it's not a co-write, but in some way I really feel myself in that song, which is a very incredible experience. I don't know that I've had that much in my life, Incredible and rare. And yeah, I love that song. There's something beautiful about the sobriety and honesty of the lyric and a certain amount of buoyancy. That's part of the sort of musical expression of that. I mean, it's not a bouncy, upbeat song, but it isn't a dirge either, and that feels just true to the reality of that statement. Everyone is dying, everyone is vividly alive and we're all going the same place.

Leah Roseman (00:18:29):

Yeah, this is an excerpt from Everyone Is Dying from Beautalina, with Eureka Shoes (music)

(00:19:38):

Well, if we could talk, I was curious about your musical education. You attended the New School?

Jean Rohe (00:19:43):

I did, yeah.

Leah Roseman (00:19:44):

Was that for jazz?

Jean Rohe (00:19:46):

Yeah, I was in the jazz vocal performance program there. I didn't graduate from high school. I had a kind of wacky road. I went to Smith College for a year, which is a women's college in Massachusetts and had a lot of good experiences there, but realized I really wanted to be immersed in a music school and in a musical culture. I mean, it felt important to me to be in a city. So I moved back home with my parents in New Jersey and commuted to the New School and joined the jazz program there, which if you can imagine a certain amount of whiplash being at a women's college for a year and then coming to this jazz program, which was mostly men at that time, and being sometimes the only femme person and a lot of my classes. But it was a really good move for me and really helpful.

(00:20:44):

And at some point I joined the double degree program that they have there with the undergrad liberal arts college. So I was kind of like, whoa, wait, too much music. I want to read books again too. So I got a little bit of all of that. One thing that's really beautiful about the program at the New School at that time was that even though I was a jazz vocal performance major and really got a good grounding in the American songbook and a lot of just important skills about theory and harmony, ear training, there was a lot of space for me to design my own path. And so at that time, I was really trying to learn a lot of Brazilian music. I was studying with some Brazilian musicians in town. I took a bunch of lessons with a fabulous singer who's no longer with us, Alexandra Montano, who had been part of Philip Glass's ensemble and was really interested in the Voice as an instrument.

(00:21:43):

And I wasn't doing so much songwriting back then, or I should say that a lot of the writing I was doing writing of songs was really for myself, like journaling in some way. And I was not a proficient guitar player or pianist. I mean, I could invent some things for myself to play at that time, but a lot of the writing that I was doing for the public as it were, was just studies. I mean, trying to learn how to arrange something for saxophone quartet or what would it be like to write a soli section for this song. I mean, I was doing some of my own writing, and it was a very different aesthetic and different kind of lyrical approach I think, than what I've grown into now.

Leah Roseman (00:22:43):

Well, maybe we could jump back to Eureka Shoes, actually, the "Barn Hymn", the final

Jean Rohe (00:22:49):

Tune

Leah Roseman (00:22:49):

On that.

Jean Rohe (00:22:51):

That is amazing. But I'm glad that she wanted to talk about that song. Let me think back. So I wrote that song while we were at Looking Glass Arts. Let me see if I can paint a little picture of this place. I mean, it's in an incredibly rural part of upstate New York. There's a house where everybody who's in residence has a bedroom and hot meals coming with snacks and little wine in the evening, but then across this little country road is a big barn. And we recorded this record in the barn. I mean, you can hear the birds roosting in the rafters and the crickets at night, and the birds chirping outside in the day in the quieter moments on the record. They're just coming in through the slats, which we really welcomed. Rashaan Carter, who's playing bass on this album was also the house engineer at Looking Glass Arts, and he was spending the whole summer and early fall up there.

(00:24:11):

And one of the evenings when we were talking at dinner, he was expressing his appreciation for the healing qualities of that place. And the way I remember our conversation, it was just like this is a place to repair and reset coming from the city environment. And so, I don't know, just one morning this melody kind of surfaced for me, and while everybody was finishing lunch, I took myself across the street and sat in that space and teased out this really simple little hymn that we ended up recording that night. And what was so beautiful about it too is just getting to teach this song that was so fresh to me, to the people, to the band, but also to Marika, our host, who also plays cello on the album. And Willa who was working there as well, close partner with Marika on this project. And then also Kyle Sanna who happened to be traveling through incredible guitar player treasure who contributed to that too. So it felt like it was a real community gathering that evening when we recorded it. And since then, I think I sent Marika a copy of the lyrics and a little lead sheet for the song so that she could have it. I mean, there is really no way to compensate these people and places who allow us to have time and space to create and sink into the music. And so it just felt like here's a tangible object representing this piece of music that represents something approximating the gratitude that I have for that time and space.

Leah Roseman (00:26:13):

Beautiful. Thanks Jean.

Jean Rohe (00:26:15):

Oh yeah.

Leah Roseman (00:26:17):

You're about to hear "Barn Hymn" from Beautalina with Eureka Shoes. (music)

(00:28:30):

Yeah, yeah. I was curious, do you have this 2014 album, the End of the World Show, which I think reflects some of the early touring you were doing, including Brazil? Do you want to talk to any of those experiences?

Jean Rohe (00:28:41):

Yeah, gosh. Okay, let's think back. That record is incredible. I mean, I say incredible. I cannot believe that that album came together. It just really represents a special moment of my life where a group of nine of us were playing music together pretty regularly in my home. I don't even understand how we all fit. And I mean, we're talking like drummer, percussionist, vibraphone, rhythm section. I mean, it was just a whole thing and playing my music, and I'm so indebted to the loyalty of those folks in that group and trust the trust that they gave me. There were a number of us in that band who had connections to various forms of Brazilian music and Afro Peruvian music styles among other sort of Latin American strands. And though many of us were from the United States, not everybody in that group. And so there was a real interest in these songs that I was writing, which were, most of them are in English, some of them are a little bit in Spanish or Portuguese, but we're drawing on a lot of rhythms from those parts of the world.

(00:30:15):

I love that New York City is full of people from all over the place. I mean, I've done a lot of traveling compared to most people, but also, I mean, I went to Brazil one time for a month and spent a lot of time immersed in the various music scenes in Rio and then also in Recife, which is in the northeast, learning about Maracatu music and Faja. But I guess I can say that the people who got me interested in that in the first place and the communities where I was able to find that, again, were mostly in New York City, which is really amazing and special. So that album took shape when we, all nine of us, spent the better part of a week in edit a residential recording studio upstate and recorded most of it live. I mean, it's amazing that we were able to do it the way that we did, but people's hearts were really in it, and we really knew that music so well and some very just incredible collaborative things came out of that project. I wonder if I could ever do something like that again. It was really, really special.

Leah Roseman (00:31:42):

Hi, just a quick break from the episode.You may be also interested in these episodes, which I’ve linked directly in the show notes: Kavisha Mazzella, Ceara Conway, Renée Yoxon, Sophie Lukacs, Shakura S’Aida, Diane Nalini, and Megan Jerome, among so many. It’s a joy to be able to bring these meaningful conversations to you, but this project costs me quite a bit of money and lots of time; please support this series through either my merchandise store or on my Ko-fi page; you’ll find the links in the show notes. For the merch, it features a unique design by artist Steffi Kelly and everything is printed on demand. On my Ko-fi page you can buy me one coffee, or every month. You’ll also find the links to sign up for my newsletter where you’ll get access to exclusive information about upcoming guests. Now back to Jean Rohe!

(00:32:29):

And did you also travel to the Republic of Georgia?

Jean Rohe (00:32:32):

I did. Yeah. I was there twice. I had a partner for a long stretch of time who's also a brilliant musician guitar player from the Republic of Georgia.

(00:32:48):

We met in New Jersey. He came when he was a young person with his family. And I'll just say briefly, his musical journey is really incredible, but part of it involves reconnecting with his Georgian culture and learning a lot of the traditional music forms there and kind of allowing them to meld with his backgrounds in improvised music and American music traditions. And we had the opportunity to bring some of that music back to Tbilisi in 2010 and 2011, something around there. And I mean, if you can imagine the Georgian public was really glad to receive one of their own from the diaspora who was really getting deeply back in touch with the culture that they could have easily left behind.

Leah Roseman (00:33:55):

They have quite a rich vocal culture, right? A cappella songs?

Jean Rohe (00:33:58):

Yes. Yes. And I think that that's a little bit better known. I mean, to the extent that people are familiar with Georgian music, it is really rich and really special, and there's a lot of realms of the vocal music varying by region and sort of the secular versus deep liturgical music from the Christian, the Orthodox Georgian Church. One of the things that Ilyusha was getting really interested in is this maybe lesser known instrumental traditions and the folklore traditions, singing traditions that are instrumental accompaniment for maybe a solo singer or smaller group as opposed to these a cappella vocal things that are quite striking.

Leah Roseman (00:34:50):

If we could jump over to your coaching of other songwriters, I was curious if you'd be willing to share a bit of your creative practice map and some of your ways of generating.

Jean Rohe (00:35:00):

Oh yeah. So let's see. I teach songwriting to undergraduates at the New School right now. I also work in a program with Carnegie Hall called Musical Connections that happens at Sing Sing, which is a maximum security men's prison up in Ossining in New York. And then periodically I have private students and also run some workshops. And yeah, all the info about that is on my website if any listeners are interested. I didn't, that would be something I would enjoy teaching songwriting. But actually also during the pandemic, someone who was on my email list misread something that I had written in one of my newsletters and said like, wait a second, how did I not know about the songwriting workshop? And I wrote back What Songwriting workshop, and we started this dialogue that where this person had really imagined the outlines of something that I could lead, and I decided to give it a shot thinking maybe I won't like this, but there was so much interest and I enjoyed it so much. It made me realize how much I really love hearing the early embryonic forms of songs. There's something very exciting about even other people's creative process.

(00:36:29):

So that's just a little bit of background. One of the gifts of starting to teach songwriting was that it's made me think about how do I think about songwriting and how have I learned how to do this? I never took a songwriting class. I've been a student through observation and trial and error and sort of learning what's in my own toolbox. I created a tool called the Creative Practice Map in 2020 for the people in the workshop at musical Connections at Sing Sing who had been accustomed to every Saturday getting together, playing music, having access to their instruments in the music room. And now because of the pandemic, we're not allowed to leave their cells or their dwellings. And I was just trying to picture that and think about how isolating that could be and what could I offer that could allow be a little bridge for folks to continue being in music or at least some kind of creative space during this very difficult moment.

(00:37:36):

I'm sure it was really fun to develop this, and I collaborated a little bit with some folks I knew who were formerly incarcerated to help me imagine the way this could be received. But the premise of this tool, it's just a PDF. I mean, you can find it on my website if you're interested, and I've been updating it over time too. But the premise of it is that we learn how to write songs by writing songs. And this is incredibly vexing to so many people who want me to give them a step-by-step guide to songwriting. But I really resist that because I think that between listening to great songs, six songs that we love, and thinking about what are the parts of them that make it work, and I think this is where a teacher can be really helpful to help draw your curiosity or your attention to certain elements within a song that you love.

(00:38:38):

But then using that, building that awareness simultaneously with exploring and experimenting. And so the invitation and the Creative Practice Map is spend 30 minutes in your day just making something. It doesn't really matter how you start. It's important to dedicate at least 30 minutes. I find at some point, even if things are really kind of rough and not just don't feel like they're going anywhere, if I spend time with something, there will be a revelation that comes. And then there's a series of, I mean, the idea is to just encourage people like the way that you practice scales or the way that you practice long tones or whatever it is. That's what a writing practice is too. It looks really different. There's not a method book, but here are some ideas for how you can start to write. And so there's just a list in no particular order, and certainly not an exhaustive list of ways in. Some of them have to do with melodic ideas. Some of them have to do with just lifting chord changes from a song that you like and seeing how to change other parameters about them to inspire something new. Some of them are lyrical prompts. In the packet that I made, there are some reproductions of photographs and artwork and some questions to spark people's curiosity for writing or improvising in response to those. Also some poetry that could be set to music, but also could be the springboard for other lyrical ideas.

(00:40:41):

But I really feel like I think being generative is instructive in itself. We start to learn what tools we readily have access to, which are so different for each of us. The things that come naturally to me might feel really foreign into someone else and vice versa. And why is it important to do? I think it's really important to do this because we learn about ourselves through the act of creation, and we discover what we have to give to other people, which is so important and valuable. Why else are we here on this planet, if not to contribute in some way to reflecting the world back at itself. I think it's something humans really can do, and it's what happens when we give ourselves the time to explore that.

Leah Roseman (00:41:38):

Yeah. Are there particular songs or experiences working with the incarcerated people that really stayed with you?

Jean Rohe (00:41:48):

Oh, yeah. That work is some of the most inspiring that I've done. It's really challenging just because of the parameters of this space and the difficulty communicating between classes and just, there's a lot of logistical things that you can imagine that would make it challenging. I guess every time I'm there, I'm struck by the dedication of all of our participants, how hard people really work sometimes with always with suboptimal conditions for that work and how, I mean, I don't want to overstate the fact of their incarceration to these people's identities. I think different people really consider that differently. But I have had really profound experiences watching people come to terms with what they've done.

(00:43:00):

People are there for all different kinds of reasons, and some people for no reason at all, but for those who've done some real harm and many of whom have also had harm done to them, the songwriting space can be a really important place to process that and acknowledge that and share it in a way that can be contained and where we can witness them, which I think is really important. I think also just the program is so great because it exposes folks to lots of different kinds of music. There are guest artists who've come in like Arturo O'Farrill come in recent years to work with folks, and just really, that's had a huge impact on the participants in our program and other people who are living at Sing Sing.

(00:43:55):

I guess I can share one recent thing that happened was someone who's incarcerated there wrote a song for his daughter who was young, but starting to process the fact that he's inside. And he had a lot of feelings of guilt about not being there for her and wrote a really beautiful song expressing that and laying out the scene. But one of the things that came up as we were working on, he brought it to me and we were workshopping some things about it, and we talked about the chord changes and the melody and the form. And then there's always this little piece that I find so powerful for anybody who's writing song, which is like, okay, you've blurted this out, but now what's really at the heart of this? Now that you're looking at all these feelings you have, what's really at the heart of this, at the heart of this is you are there for your daughter. You're not there the way you want it to be. You have regrets about that. You're trying to make it right, but what's really true is that you are showing up. So is there a way that you can give yourself some love for that in the context of this song while acknowledging the things that you've screwed up?

(00:45:22):

And I think that makes the song better because it's more true. It's more true in the sense of not factual, true, but the truth of this piece of art. And we feel that as listeners, but also I think I've had the experience myself, and I don't know about others, but where writing a song has really changed me. I want that from my experience, and I want that for other people. So I don't know what will come of this for this person, but I think really refining those concepts and emotional qualities of the music and lyrics is critical for the quality of the song and for what it can do for the writer.

Leah Roseman (00:46:10):

Yeah. Okay. And you also mentioned your teaching at the New School where you had gone to school, so it must have changed in all that time, the institution.

Jean Rohe (00:46:19):

Yeah. Yeah, it has changed a lot. The thing I can say about that is there was not a songwriting class to speak of there when I was a student. And now there is, and I mean, I think it's okay to take credit for originating some of the structures around that, and there's a real desire for that program to continue to grow. And some of my students there are writing really great stuff and are really hard workers and are taking full advantage of the fact that this songwriting concentration is embedded within the jazz program. So there are lots of players there, other students who can contribute to their vision in really creative and interesting ways, and I always find that really fun to watch.

Leah Roseman (00:47:13):

That's great. Yeah. I find I do a little teaching. I mostly play violin, but I find on the days when maybe my playing isn't feeling so good, I feel like as a teacher, at least I know I'm helping somebody and I can sort things out of my own head a bit.

Jean Rohe (00:47:28):

Absolutely.

Leah Roseman (00:47:29):

Yeah.

Jean Rohe (00:47:31):

Yeah. And it's so cool to witness somebody doing, I dunno, it just reminds me, I had a student last week who just really took on some suggestions I had made and really explored them deeply and then made some new choices about her song, which she then performed in a concert. And I just felt like, oh, well that's great. I can do that too. It's such a reminder when you see your students doing something kind of heroic like that, I think.

Leah Roseman (00:48:03):

Yeah. So back to Eureka Shoes, there was one more song I wanted to touch on. This is one of your songs I Wanna Be

Jean Rohe (00:48:11):

Oh, yeah, yeah. I love that song. And Where the heck did that come from? I love how playful and sweet that song is, and so great. That was one of the first things I actually brought to Charlie and Skye, and they just dug in with some just really lush fiddling that it doesn't sound anything like it, but I do remember having this distinct thought. I don't know if you've ever heard some of these Scandinavian fiddle music that's just really floating and flying and everybody's playing together. It didn't sound like that, but it had that feeling to me that made me so happy. Yeah, I mean, I wrote that song for my partner. I haven't written a lot of songs that are uncomplicated, but I was just really reflecting on how much it means to feel loved and how, for me, the effect of that is not just this dyadic experience with the other person, but that it makes me feel good and makes me able to live in the world and not give up and share with other people.

(00:49:36):

And that was the impetus for writing the song. It has come to feel important in other friendships and stuff that I've had too. I don't know. It's a thing I always find with my songs that there's a reason I wrote it. But then as time goes by, just sort of other experiences feel like they can be encapsulated in the song. I can draw on them while I'm singing it. It's funny that when I first wrote that song, I sent it to a friend, songwriting mentor of mine who I often share work with when it's fresh. And he got back to me with some comments about it. It is always really helpful to have a sounding board like that. But then he went on to tell me all the things that he thought were problematic about polyamory, and I was like, where are you getting this from, man? I mean, fine, this song can be about whatever you want it to be, but that's not what I'm trying to direct people's attention to here. So sometimes when we play it live, I introduce it like that. It is very funny to me.

Leah Roseman (00:50:49):

This is a clip of "I Wanna Be" from Eureka Shoe's album,Beautalina. (Music)

(00:52:58):

Yeah. I've talked to other songwriters on this series about do you present the meaning of the song before? It's usually, I think, thought it's better to talk about it maybe afterwards so people can have their own experience of it.

Jean Rohe (00:53:11):

Yeah, I don't know. I think different songs require different things and sometimes, I dunno, it's one of the really fun things about touring and playing night after night after night is you can kind of experiment with what happens or what do I perceive happens for the audience when I set a song up one way or another. I dunno. Sometimes I find an introduction that's a little bit of a red herring can be cool. Yeah. Telling a story that misdirects and then maybe the song can land in a different way. I dunno. I do get very geeky about the sort of theatricality of performance, not in the sense of, I dunno, big dance numbers and light shows, but sort of the fact that in performance, and especially songs with lyrics that are narrative or description, not super abstract the way that my writing is, it can be so fun to think about what's the spoken connected tissue, connective tissue or unspoken that allows the listener to really experience these songs in a special way because they're happening in performance.

Leah Roseman (00:54:31):

Do you have any touring strategies for your mental and physical health being on the road a lot?

Jean Rohe (00:54:37):

Ooh, that's a good question. I think sleep where you can, I try not to take red eye flights anymore. They wreck me. I have a little apothecary that I take with me that's got some Chinese herbs and zinc lozenges and vitamin C and oregano oil, some things like that that just, if I find myself in some backwater wasteland and I'm not feeling great, I know I at least have those things to tide me over. But, and eating well is so hard to do on the road, but getting some fruits and vegetables at the grocery store and just stashing them away, really important. Loving that peanut butter jar. I think car touring is a little bit easier for those sorts of things. It can be a little more self-contained. But yeah, it's not easy. It's not for the faint of heart, I think. I don't tour as much as some people do, and because I'm an independent artist and and all that, there are definite drawbacks to that in terms of the amount of labor that I'm doing. But there's also a lot of discretion that I have about how I tour and how many dates I'm out and what kind of insane drives I need to do. So I think I've learned to take care of myself by making good choices about what I can really do, what I can really sustain.

Leah Roseman (00:56:24):

Yeah, that's super interesting. And I've certainly talked to people where it was the opposite, where they're part of this whole machine and they have to go along with that.

Jean Rohe (00:56:35):

Yeah. I mean, there's a part of me that really desires to know what that experience is like and another part that recognizes that, yeah, I'm a control freak, and there are some real benefits to being in charge of my destiny.

Leah Roseman (00:56:56):

So if we could talk about your collaborations with Liam Robinson?

Jean Rohe (00:57:00):

Yeah, Liam Robinson is my partner in life and in music, I mean in life for maybe the last 10 years. And musical collaborator for, we've known each other for 20 years. Liam is a party to almost everything that I make. And I think the reverse is also true. We have a duo together called Robinson& Rohe

Leah Roseman (00:57:31):

And a new album Into the Night.

Jean Rohe (00:57:33):

Yes, Into the Night. I love that record. Yeah. Liam is a pianist and accordion player, banjo player, songwriter, really gorgeous singer. Also grew up in a vocationally musical family. So we just share a lot of intuition around community singing. He's also the music director and vocal arranger for the Broadway show, Hadestown, which is still running up here in New York and various places around the globe at the moment. And so that keeps him busy. And he's also co-produced some of my records with me. He's writing some string arrangements for a new solo album that I'm working on right now and is the first listener for most songs that I have written.

(00:58:35):

And a really careful and really good listener. So yeah, Robinson & Rohe, our duo, started out as a sort of song leading outfit. We were doing a lot of traditional music and leading groups, singing in various places, busing in the subway, and then we started writing together or writing separately for the duo in this kind of Americana acoustic vein. And so we have a couple records out, Into the Night is the newest, and then also Hunger, which is a little more of a string band kind of sounding record. And yeah, it's so great working with Liam. I think there's something special about a duo configuration. It's like less responsibility than being a solo performer, a bigger palette of sound, but also not the kind of bombastic unwieldiness of a bigger group. And so fun to perform on stage with him. And really interesting. I mean, Liam's background is in many backgrounds.

(00:59:47):

I mean, jazz, piano, folk singing, but also he went to college for composition at the Manhattan School of Music, and he brings a real sort of orchestrational ear to everything that he does. I mean, a lot of his other work life is collaborating with other artists on their projects in various orchestrationally minded ways. So to bring that to a duo where the elements that we're working with are very few, but the details can get pretty specific. It's just really fun having his sensibilities there. We learn a lot from each other, I think through that duo process.

Leah Roseman (01:00:33):

One of the songs Into the Night, which I found that the lyrics were so powerful "Where I'm Coming From".

Jean Rohe (01:00:39):

Oh yeah, that's one of my tunes that I wrote with that duo in mind. And we recorded that on the record with a great fiddler Duncan Wickel and bass player that we both collaborate with a lot, Chris Tordini. Yeah, I wrote that song at the Blue Mountain Center, also in upstate New York. Also a great treasure of time and space. It traces well. I was thinking of a lot of things. I was thinking about Woody Guthrie and the way that Woody Guthrie, his body of work among many other things, really managed to encapsulate moments of American history. There are minor strikes that I know about because of Woody Guthrie's songs. I dunno, that feels like a real treasure. So I was thinking about that and his writing style.

(01:01:45):

And then I was thinking about what is the white culture of the United States right now, and how did it come to be this way? I am the fruit of that lineage in some part. And so I try to tell this composite story of European immigration to the United States is sort of like the tale that we sometimes like to tell about how we're a country of immigrants or something like that. But how those same people, some generations later, are bought into a really reactionary, xenophobic sensibility about the United States, and how did that transformation happen from being an excluded underclass of laborers who are exploited and spit on to gatekeepers, I guess. Anyway, it's really interesting to me. And so just sadly feels more and more relevant to the state of the world with each passing year. But yeah, I really labored over the lyrics of that song for a long time and really felt held up by Woody Guthrie's spirit and others like him who just really tried to tell the truth about who we are.

Leah Roseman (01:03:39):

You're about to hear "Where I'm Coming From" with Robinson & Rohe from their album Into the Night. (Music; link in show notes)

(01:07:48):

So when you're writing, you play guitar and mandolin, do you have an instrument in your hand when you're composing

Jean Rohe (01:07:54):

Most of the time? Yeah. I'm not a person who sits with a piece of paper and writes a bunch of lyrics first. I mean, sometimes I dunno. Sometimes there's something I'm toying with, but it comes from an active improvisation. And actually sometimes I sit at piano too, I think better with a piano. And I'm a little more intuitive when I'm playing guitar or another string instrument. Sometimes I have ideas while I'm riding my bike. The words never come separate from the music for me. I mean, they get refined separately. But actually a lot of the songs that I wrote for the End of the World Show, my philosophy at that time was like, if I can't remember the lyrics, they weren't any good. And so I wasn't really writing things down until the song was pretty complete, which is weird to me. I don't really do that anymore, but it was all kind of in my mind and my hands and my singing while I was writing a lot of those songs.

Leah Roseman (01:09:07):

Yeah. We've talked a lot about your writing, Jean, but I have to say, your voice is so beautiful. I absolutely love your voice.

Jean Rohe (01:09:14):

Oh, thank you.

Leah Roseman (01:09:16):

Thank you. I was wondering, when you were studying jazz as a student, was there pressure from anyone to kind of change the nature of your voice to fit that style more?

Jean Rohe (01:09:26):

I didn't experience it as pressure, but I definitely heard desires from certain people that it didn't sound like that music, I guess, to them. But no, I think by and large, if anything, I got some really good guidance and my singing upbringing and my intuitive way with singing was really informed by Appalachian singer, just a very specific kind of vocal placement and sound. That still is what comes most naturally to me and is an amazing and beautiful sound that I love. I also got a lot of encouragement and guidance about how to expand timberly, what was possible, and just things about smoothing out my break and expanding my range and having equal power and balance through all my registers.

(01:10:34):

And as I get older, my voice continues to change. And it's just so interesting feeling how those different lessons are in my awareness and body or not the ways that I want to keep getting some refreshers about the voice and staying interested in the voice as an instrument. I think that's another thing too, as I became more interested in playing guitar, and really, I've never really taken guitar lessons. I've had people show me some things here and there, but I really like so many things. I really want to figure things out myself. And similarly with songwriting, just immersing myself in that craft and practice, I noticed a couple years ago, I'm not as interested in the voice as an instrument anymore, and I want to relocate that curiosity again. And so that's been a piece of my practice and awareness more recently is like what's exciting and interesting about my voice. About the voice as an instrument.

Leah Roseman (01:11:38):

Yeah. A couple of months ago I spoke for the series, the opera singer, Omo Bello, and we talked about that whole idea of the voice, and she said, it's very much separate from you. It's the instrument. And as a violinist, I find that very interesting.

Jean Rohe (01:11:53):

Wait, because the violin is physically separate from

Leah Roseman (01:11:57):

It is, I mean, you feel super connected to your instrument, but it's not me. But she said it's that way for her as a singer that the voice is not her. It's the voice.

Jean Rohe (01:12:08):

Yeah. That's so interesting. See, these are the kinds of high level philosophical questions and conversations I want to have with other people who are really thinking about the voice or their voice. I mean, I guess depending on who they are. And it's interesting, I think for a lot of people listening to music, the first things they hear are the vocal quality of the singer. If there's a singer and the production elements like, oh, I love how intense the drums feel, or that guitar solo. I notice that so much with talking about music with my students, for example. And of course, I can appreciate a beautiful voice. And sometimes it's hard to take in music when, whatever. I don't know if someone's intonation is so wild in an unpleasing way. But besides that, I think that is not my first focal point, is the vocal acrobatics of a singer and maybe more the emotion of it, which is so hard to put your finger on. But when it's there, it's there.

Leah Roseman (01:13:32):

Although that's subjective too, right?

Jean Rohe (01:13:33):

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Totally. All of this stuff, I think it's so important. Well, to not hurt yourself with your vocal technique or whatever instrument you're playing,

(01:13:49):

Longevity I think is important. But beyond that, it's like people are going to like what they're going to like and not like, what they're not going to like. And at the end of the day, you need to be able to please yourself and trust your own taste because that's what matters. So many of my songwriting students want me to tell them what to do, and I can suggest avenues for their own curiosity and exploration, but ultimately, I don't know what they are trying to do. So we can experiment together, but you always have to make that decision based on what you care about and love.

Leah Roseman (01:14:29):

Yeah. So Jean, to close this out, I thought it might be a fun to reflect on other creative outlets you have or that you'd be curious about exploring for yourself.

Jean Rohe (01:14:37):

Yeah. You're just thinking artistically outside of sound.

Leah Roseman (01:14:41):

Yeah.

Jean Rohe (01:14:42):

Or song. Oh my God, don't get me started. Okay. Well, in a hobbyist way, a friend of mine about a couple of years ago taught me how to do linoleum cut prints. And that's been really fun for me. And I've made some things that I sell at shows, and I want to keep doing that. I have been doing a lot of writing of text in prose, poetry form. I keep telling people I'm writing a book, but I'm not really sure what it's going to be. But that's a big part of my life. Kind of piggybacking off of some concepts I was exploring in a song called Animal and just extrapolating, I don't know, doing a lot of horticultural research and writing.

(01:15:38):

And then lastly, I mean, I think I was alluding to my interest in the theatricality part of performing. I have been working on a piece that's a performance memoir about my dad. It's very music oriented, but there's a lot of text and spoken performed stuff and sound collage. And so I've really been thinking about the full breadth of theater and what movement and visual information can convey together with sound. I mean, this is not new. That's what opera is. And musical theater certainly, and so many other kinds of performance art, Laurie Anderson's work and whatnot. But it's different. It's a new territory for me and something I'm really curious about. And that piece is called 74 Corridor,

Leah Roseman (01:16:38):

And so that's something you're working on or it's

Jean Rohe (01:16:41):

Yeah, it's something I'm working on. I've done a couple performances of iterations of it, and I'm continuing to write into that and look for collaboration from folks who are not musicians, which is, wow, what a world of trust and what a leap of faith.

Leah Roseman (01:17:06):

Wonderful. Well, thanks so much for this today. It's been great to talk to you.

Jean Rohe (01:17:10):

Yeah, right back at Leah. Thank you so much for having me.

Leah Roseman (01:17:15):

I hope you enjoyed this episode. Please share this with your friends and check out episodes you may have missed at LeahRoseman.com. If you could buy me a coffee to support this series, that would be wonderful. Or you can browse the collection of merch with a very cool, unique and expressive design from artist Steffi Kelly with notebooks, mugs, shirts, phone cases and more. I'm an independent podcaster and I really do need the help of my listeners. All the links are in the show notes. Have a wonderful week.