ARTIST SPOTLIGHT: The Blue Ribbons make their Portsmouth debut
Therese LaGamma: Tell me about growing up in New Mexico. Who were some of your musical influences?
James Rohr: First of all -Mariachi, I love Mariachi. One of my earliest influences was my Dad’s piano stylings. He’d play a little boogie-woogie, bluesy numbers and it made me happy. Also, as a young fella, I used to lay in bed with headphones on listening to KUNM, the college radio station in Albuquerque. That’s how I got hip to Big Star, Captain Beefheart, Ornette Coleman, Funkadelic, and all manner of other folks. I got really into Jazz around the age of 12 and played my first professional gig a couple of years later at a place called Roma Lee’s BBQ. I played solo piano there for a few weeks. Once and a while Gilbert, one of the cooks, would play tenor with me. They paid me in ribs.
TL: And who are you inspired by today?
JR: Right now, the music that Blake Mills is making is outstanding. A band out of Portland, OR called Blitzen Trapper is good fun. Look those guys up. Google ‘em. It is so hard to keep up with the kids these days that I just keep returning to the wells of Paul Bley, NRBQ, The Band, Ray Charles…there’s still so many vitamins and minerals left in that stuff.
TL: Describe your songwriting process?
JR: Usually it goes down like this: I do most of my writing in the car. I have a melodica with me which I use to figure out tunes with. Often I will get a lyrical idea as well and record it onto my micro-cassette, and if I don’t forget about it, I slowly uncover the tune over days or weeks…even years sometimes, like some archaeological dig. Sometimes I get a tin can or a chicken bone, sometimes I get a gold coin…it doesn’t matter, if it works – it goes into the song. By the way, this is much more dangerous than texting and driving. Kids, don’t do this.
TL: Tell us something about the members of the band?
JR: We have had a weekly residency every Tuesday at a great Cambridge bar called Toad for the last 5 years. That has been wonderful. The band has been in existence since around 2002. However, we never played regularly. Fits and starts. There were a few different line-ups. I met Mike Castellana, our guitar slinger, on the bandstand at one of our first shows at a place called The Choppin’ Block. After another year or so, we arrived at the current line-up of Mike on guitar, Jef Charland on bass…usually the upright kind, and Tauras Biskis plays the drums. Tauras lives on an island somewhere, so that’s fun.
TL: What can people who have yet to experience your music look forward to on Saturday, November 7?
JR: I can tell you this, we are all improvisers trying to come at the music in new ways every time we play it. Expect a little of everything. We’ve got fast songs, slow songs, dangerous songs, wild songs, sad songs…most of them are pretty good too. You will see music being made live and in person in front of your earballs. It’s a bit like a forest fire under the ocean. C’mon out to the show and let’s try to figure out what I just said together!