Czech and Listen: Roy Robertson

Catchy melodies, pretty guitars, quirky lyrics, Midlothian musician, Roy Robertson makes the kind of songs that just won’t leave your head and maybe you don’t want them too. If you haven’t yet heard Robertson unique blend folk and whimsical pop then you can Czech it out at his MySpace page www.myspace.com/royrobertson . Robertson sat down talk with me about his music for what will hopefully become a regular feature here at Czech It Out where I, Yvonne, interview musicians worth your ears’ attention.

How would you describe the type of music you play?

Like a donkey chocking a waffle

How do you go about putting your songs together?

What usually happens is I’ll either be walking around and just start singing something like in a musical you know just like la la la and yeah that’s pretty much how it goes. I just record vocals done on my four-track and figure out what cords [to use] and go from there and once I get started it’s easy to build upon that.

You have a lot of side projects. Could you tell us about those?

Smitten Kittens? Yeah, I guess you could call that a band I play in usually for harder more electo-fied gigs. And I’m very proud of having I think four MySpace’s at this point in time. One of them is my brother’s Francis Lanier. The other one is my record label Clangorious Circle Entertainment and the other one is Smitten Kittens.

Planning on a fifth one any time soon?

I have one but I haven’t put any music on it yet. It sucks cause you can’t like put a lot of music on your MySpace page, so that’s why I do it.
So you live in Midlothian, not exactly a hot stop for music is it?
No, I wouldn’t say that. I really wouldn’t say that. What’s your point with that? Are you just rubbing it in?

No! How do you plan on changing that sir?

Well, I don’t really plan on changing it. I think sort of really good music comes out of really shitty places like The Beatles in Liverpool. They didn’t have a lot of shit going on in the beginning. And Cedric and Omar, I’ve read about them complaining about living in El Paso. Just there’s nothing to do and you sort of have to make your own entertainment and make your own fun. That’s why I like living in Midlothian or why I like living there and am able to write music.

So you’ve moved a lot…

Yeah, my dad worked for a company that worked for the military.

Do you think that affect your music in anyway?

I think it affected my personality… I saw a lot of other cultures and I was able to see other ways of life and I was able to see that America wasn’t the shit.
No, really moving around was a great thing. You know it’s really a hard to do that you know because you always have to a whole new group of friends and you have to know a whole different geography of a place and you don’t where to go or what to do, but I’m sort of used to it. I think it helped me out a lot with being independent and doing things by myself.

Where do you plan to go with your music? How far do you wanna take it?

I used to say that I would like to just make a living on it and I would really still like to do that but I think that’s sort of the base of what my goals are. I would really like to be rather successful and play big places.

Cover of Spin maybe?

No, not really that. I would like to be able to travel around the world and not worry about where I’d sleep and not like freeze in a van all the time. I want to do that in the beginning, but I want to get to the point where I can always have 100 percent control of my music but like you know sort of like The Mars Volta. I like the way they act and also Sufjan Stevens. I think he does a really good thing where he’ll only work with a major label if he gets to do what he wants to do and that’s what I would like.

Any upcoming dates the people should know about?

I’m going to put out another CD pretty soon, probably in the next couple months. I’m playing The Hydrant [Denton], Thursday, Feb. 12 and Banter[Denton] the day after and then there’s this thing in Mansfield. I don’t remember the date. You can check the MySpace, but I also play house parties, house warmings, funerals, divorces, vegan pot lucks.

Bar mitzvahs?

Actually, no, I’m part Jewish so it brings back bad memories. Adult circumcision… [He was joking… I hope.]