Let Me Introduce To You...
Posted by John
...the one and only, Steve Roehm, drummer for The Twilight Hours. Matt and I first met Steve Roehm when he was playing with the notorious Billy Goat. Billy Goat was truly a band that deserved to have “The Notorious” attached to their name, as we learned the first night that we played with them, at First Avenue in 1991.
...the one and only, Steve Roehm, drummer for The Twilight Hours. Matt and I first met Steve Roehm when he was playing with the notorious Billy Goat. Billy Goat was truly a band that deserved to have “The Notorious” attached to their name, as we learned the first night that we played with them, at First Avenue in 1991.
Tangent: by the time that show came around we had developed a lot of mean nicknames for the various bands that would open for us (sorry, but if you have an hour of enforced listening night after night for weeks on end, this sort of deriding can ensue). There were The Doorstoppers, there were The Gutbomb Scarecrows and there were other names that we can’t talk about. We had seen them all after three years of steady touring and had become pretty tough to impress. Jaded is the word that comes to mind.
Well, watching Billy Goat do their thing, instead of running away, we were blown away. And the first thing we noticed was the skinny (possibly malnourished? definitely seemed to have been on some sort of ugly road diet) drummer pounding out furious heaviness. The next thing we noticed was “what is the singer doing with his penis?” Playing the congas with it, of course. It was a simpler time.
After the show I remember tracking Steve down, telling him how great he was and comparing notes on Led Zeppelin, at that time a guilty pleasure for most rockers and whose drummer Jon Bonham was clearly a big influence on Steve. He was exactly the same guy who I now rehearse with three days a week in two different bands and who has been an absolute pleasure to be around and work with–even when he bites you with his wicked sense of humor and profound depth of schadenfreude. And I mean exactly… it’s actually weird how little time has touched Steve. He regularly cashes big checks from State Fair carnies trying to guess his age. It’s actually a third of his yearly income.
I know that a lot of long-time followers of Matt’s will recognize Steve from the “duo days” of Burnt White and Blue touring. The guys developed a very interesting vibraphone + fender rhodes + acoustic guitar sound with Steve taking many of the same flashy leads on vibraphone that he now performs with The New Standards, but the thing that really stood out about that configuration, to me at least, was the clockwork intricacies of the arrangements and parts and that’s due in large part to Steve’s great part writing. Many times he’s said to me, “I just love making up a great part and then delivering it exactly, night after night.” That’s a particular kind of musicianship and devotion that we’re really happy to have in The Twilight Hours.
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