Rocky Votolato über Hospital Handshakes

Den Musiker Rocky Votolato aus Seattle konntet ihr in den letzten Jahren immer nur alleine mit Gitarre auf der Bühne sehen, dabei begann er seine Karriere 1995 in der Folk-Punk Band Waxwing. Jetzt ist Rocky Votolato mit neuer Verstärkung unterwegs - und mit neuem Album!

Foto: Cathrin Höhn

Am 20. Mai spielt Rocky erstmals mit Band in Köln, am 12. Mai spielte er bereits ein kleines Akustik-Set im Café Hibiskus, gleich neben dem Underdog Recordstore. Wir haben mit ihm über sein neues Album gesprochen. Nachhören könnt ihr das Interview hier.

Rocky, it's been a long, long time ever since you've done "folk punk"... do you miss it?

Absolutely, yeah! I mean, i just like playing with other people and when you have loud music and there's a lot more going on and there's all that energy, that's what's fun.
You know, that's why i got into music in the first place, just having a good time with friends and making a big sound is a good time!

So what's the nice thing about doing music on your own, like you have done the last few years?

Yeah, i mean, there's pros and cons to each way of doing it.
The thing about being alone is that it's just so much more flexible. I mean, you can just pick up an acoustic guitar and go, you know, and i just did a tour in the US that was 34 shows and they were all in someone's living room.
That would be harder to do with a big band. But you know it's just, it's more intimate and more like the show that we'll have here at the Recordstore.
But, you know, i like to just play by myself and it can really connect with people on the acoustic, organic level.

Your songs on the new album are also very intimate. What are they about?

The themes that run through the record are healing and healing from trauma and overcoming depression and, you know, moving past something very dark and trying to make some sense of that.
That's really what all the songs are about for me. It came out of a period that i wasn't so sure if i was gonna keep playing music and so there's a real sense of finding a purpose.

Well, what made you decide that you're gonna keep playing music?

That's a good question... I feel like it was a combination of a lot of things, but in the end i feel like it was really just a shift in perspective. I think i was being way to hard on myself about the writing process and i was creatively blocked.

Leonid Pasternak - The Passion of creation

I was just not having fun anymore. I was kinda burned out and i wasn't letting myself just explore creativity. I had a lot of rules and i was very controlling and judgemental of my own process and anytime i made something i was like „Oh it's not good enough“. I was being a perfectionist about it and i think whenever we do that, we have internal critics and external critics. And when we listen to that too much, you stop being able to play.
So i think what turned it around for me was changing that perspective to just see it more like i did when i started, just to have fun with it and not be so controlling over the process and just a little bit more like: „well, whatever comes, you know, thats fine“ - like let it be a little bit more.
And of course, if you're an artist you have to craft what you're doing and edit and make decisions that make sense, but for me, it was much more about, at this point, just letting it happen or also it couldn't happen at all.

Rocky Votolato / No Sleep Records

And then you wrote 25 songs...

...in 2 months. I kind of think of it like a river. Since i was thirteen years old, that river was flowing. I've been writing like 100 songs every year, just writing and writing and writing. And then the last couple years it got to where it stopped, like maybe like a tree fell in the river and it was totally in a very trickle of creativity and it was very painful.
And so when that opened up it was like everything was new again. Just all these songs and ideas were flowing and it was kind of a crazy experience. I was writing for days just non-stop. But now it's calmed down a bit and im still writing, but im trying to keep writing, so i don't end up back in the other place again. But now it's just flowing a bit more.

Let's go through one of your songs, which one's your favourite of the album?

Well thats a really tough question. I feel like, more than a lot of records i've made, this album has a lot of songs that i really, really enjoy playing live. Like i'm noticing in reviews and in different radio stations: people are picking different songs, so there's not like one song that's just like "oh, this is obviosuly the focus". You know, there's a lot of different ones.
I think Hospital Handshakes is probably the most meaningful to me and that's why i chose it for the album title.

What is the title track Hospital Handshakes about?

Back to the themes i was mentioning, it's really about healing. It's a song about, you know, overcoming exercising demons and getting back to a place that feels redemptive. It's really a story of redemption. The chorus line is: „The current of this currency is painting me golden“ – and so it's kinda like about just if you've gone through something really traumatic, you eventually...
I think those things happen for a reason in life and when we come out on the other side, then we've learned something and grown up a bit. And so i want to believe that there's a good reason.
That's what music's always been for me, it's to try to sort that out and a place to put all of the madness of being alive.

You're gonna play in Cologne tomorrow. What do you wanna tell your fans - or people that have never heard of you?

Come out to the show at the Gebäude 9 on my 20th. This show is gonna be unlike anything i've done in Europe in the past, because it is a full band.
Some people have seen me at that club or in Cologne with just a solo project, all by myself, this show will be very different because i have a band backing me up and the new album has a lot of energy, but it's also singer singwriting music. Just with a, you know, an edge and a lot of energy and searching for some kind of meaning...

Rocky Votolato spielt am 20. Mai im Gebäude 9. Los gehts um 20:30, der Eintritt kostet 17€+Gebühren. Viel Spaß, ist ein toller Kerl!