MacD on Music: H.B.Roe

In the music industry, long-discussed collaborations can sometimes take years or even decades to finally happen. Little Steven and Darlene Love had been talking about doing an album together since Bruce Springsteen’s The River tour in 1981 before finally making it happen with 2015’s ‘Introducing Darlene Love’. Dolly Parton, Linda Ronstadt and Emmylou Harris had been trying to get together from the mid-seventies before they finally made 1987’s ‘Trio’ (and it was another decade before they could do the follow-up).

This week, to kick off the new year, after four years of us both trying to make it happen, I’m talking to Roe. First arriving on the scene around 2017, Roe has been making a name for herself these past few years with the release of her debut album ‘That’s Where The Panic Sets In’ (available now in Cool Discs) and with her song ‘Etc Etc’ being featured on the soundtrack of Tig Notaro’s film ‘Am I Ok?’ on HBO Max.

I caught up with Roe recently to talk about her career up to this point:

“Whenever I was younger, my mum and dad were always really big advocates for music, so I started by doing a lot of grades for piano and cello. My dad would always play big rock bands about the house as well, like U2 and Thin Lizzy and Bon Jovi. We were very lucky as kids because we got to go to big concerts because of my mum and dad, so that was how I fell in love with it. I only really started writing when I was fourteen or fifteen. By then I saw myself doing it as a career.”

Speaking of her main influences: “It changes all the time, like year by year. At the moment it’s a lot of indie artists from North America, like Pine Grove, Phoebe Bridgers, Big Thief, Adrianne Lenker, they’re the main ones at the minute. Just a lot of guitar music. Back in the day, it was a lot of electropop and very, very pop musicians so it changes day to day.”

Following the release of her debut album, she tells me that the focus now is on singles: “I took a few months to just write and record, and me and Liam [Craig], he’s my manager but also my producer and best friend, so we kind of went back to it just being me and him working between ourselves and working in my house. It’s all very D.I.Y. and bedroom producer-y. I’ve just been writing and recording for ages and I forgot how fun it is just to focus on writing songs, just to regularly do that. I think I needed the break but when the time came I was really excited about releasing music again.

"I’ve just been really enjoying the process of coming up with concepts for each individual song, and there’s been this natural link between everything that I have been writing recently.”

“I’ve started writing a lot in third person and I find it’s really fun. I never used to do that. I used to only write about myself and the people around me and the experiences that I’ve had, so it was really nice going back to this kind of creative writing that I used to do in school, where it’s lots of storytelling, about building characters in that way.

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"These songs are a reflection of that. It feels like I’m this thirteen year old back in school, writing for the sake of writing. There’s no limit to [imagination]. There’s no restrictions where it can go. When you’re writing about your own experiences, I’ve only experienced a number of different things in my life. I haven’t experienced everything yet, so it’s nice creating these characters that can go off and do their own thing, live in their own world.”

Finally, I asked about her song ‘Etc Etc’ appearing in ‘Am I Ok?’, directed by Tig Notaro and starring Dakota Johnson: “That was crazy. It was a song that I’d written seven or eight years ago that I had completely forgotten about but they picked up on. It’s mad that something that you put out and think that’s the end of it’s life can have another life because somebody sees something in it that you don’t. It’s been the biggest song for me in the past couple of years because of that film.”

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And that’s it from Roe. Her latest single ‘New Year, New Me’ is out now on all good streaming services and her debut album ‘That’s Where The Panic Sets In’ can be found in Cool Discs.

Now, onto other business. This Thursday (8th January) will see the Millennium Forum play host to some of Derry’s finest musical talent when Declan McLaughlin, Marty Healy, Shaun McCafferty, Ciara McCafferty and Tommy Quigley take to the stage for a mix of original music and classics from the likes of Christy Moore, Luke Kelly, Mary Black and more.

The show is at 8pm and tickets are £20 plus booking fee. It’s almost sold out as of this writing so make sure you grab them while you still can.

Finally, time for the socials. Roe can be found on Instagram @roemusic.