AEM015 James William Roy

James William Roy has been mak­ing music since before I was born.  He picked up the bass in 1982 and the gui­tar shortly after­ward.  He began record­ing his own music at home on an 8-track long before it was con­sid­ered ‘retro’ to do so.  Over the years he’s been in more bands than one could com­fort­ably keep track of; Tin Honey Gold, Idiot Purge, and St. Bas­tard, to name a few.  If you’re look­ing for a few hours of enter­tain­ment, a full list­ing is avail­able at thejamesrocket.com.  Cur­rently Roy plays bass in A Bunch of Girls, which he describes lov­ingly as “the last rock band in NYC.” And in between gigs, he some­how finds the time to hold down a full time job, main­tain a healthy mar­riage, and to write and pro­duce some pretty fresh music.

Roy isn’t the hippest of rock­ers, if you couldn’t tell by his press photo.  He con­fesses that he’ll never be fea­tured on latfh.com “because I’m older and wiser and mar­ried and work and have some self-respect… but mainly because I’m older.” With his busy life, Roy likes to keep his music short and snappy.  No pre­ten­sion, no dead­weight, and no holds barred.

“I do my song­writ­ing and record­ing I gen­er­ally only have a few hours at a shot to get some­thing down in rudi­men­tary form, and any­thing there­after I have to add as I can. If the lyric, espe­cially, isn’t fin­ished quickly, a song can linger on unfin­ished for years; I’ll get sick of it, and get stuck unless I can move on to the next one. So it’s bet­ter for me to have a short lyric and a short tune that I can tie up quickly in an after­noon, then mix over the next week or so in lit­tle shots, and stick a fork in it and call it done.”

Roy’s lyrics are intel­li­gent and a bit off kil­ter.  They’re often edgy but he also has a sen­si­tive side, and isn’t afraid to appeal to it.  A-side “Shiny Dark Bar” concludes

You look like shit but you feel like a star
Get out of your head in the shiny dark bar
I accept you for who you are
So lay down your guard in the shiny dark bar
I’ll kiss your face if you lead me that far
Let’s keep it right here in the shiny dark bar
Give up your keys and for­get your car
And lay down your head on the shiny dark bar

Roy’s voice has just the right amount of atti­tude.  It’s whiny when it should be whiny, smooth when it should be smooth.  Vocals are sup­ported by crunchy gui­tars and drum machine.  The lush har­monies that come in at the extended cho­rus offer a nice repose from the heav­ier verse.

On B-side “The New Red Scare”, Roy demon­strates a pen­chant for sar­casm and rebel­lion rem­i­nis­cent of early punk, which per­haps isn’t so sur­pris­ing since he was a teenager at the time bands like The Ramones and The Clash were start­ing to blow up.

Hide your pis­tols and hide your grandma, Cen­sus bureau’s
Here comes another load of shit, stinks to heaven and it fills the streets
It com­mands our atten­tion and it keeps our asses in the seats
Or so they seem to think but
Someone’s scream­ing
That the com­mies are com­ing
That they’ll take all our money
And if you believe that, I got a bridge to sell ya…

“The New Red Scare” is a whop­ping one minute and twenty-two sec­onds long.  Per­haps that’s tak­ing the whole short and snappy thing a lit­tle too far.  But it leaves this lis­tener want­ing more, and when two lis­tens clock in at less than three min­utes, repeat lis­tens are easy to jus­tify.  Sim­ply while writ­ing the last two para­graphs, I made it through 5 con­sec­u­tive lis­tens.  I’m about to go for six.  Already I fear that I’ll be up all night singing along.

Accord­ing to Roy, both tracks are merely demos.  His great­est hit is prob­a­bly Paper Valen­tines which, inci­den­tally, is soon to become a play along chart on Rock Band.  But he chose “Shiny Dark Bar” and “The New Red Scare” over some of his more pol­ished mate­r­ial because they are what he’s work­ing on at the moment.  And per­haps that’s why Roy’s music seems so real.  After almost thirty years, he’s still liv­ing in the moment, always cre­at­ing some­thing new.

Nate Green­berg

Side A — Shiny Dark Bar Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (ver­sion 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Down­load the lat­est ver­sion here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Side B — The New Red Scare Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (ver­sion 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Down­load the lat­est ver­sion here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

[[[Down­load the 7-inch]]]

James William Roy also has 2 LPs in the Ampeater Catalog