New York-based Rock artist Des Rocs has been touring pretty steadily over 2023 and into 2024, and has recently announced a US Spring headline tour starting in April, with special guest Jigsaw Youth. These shows build on his autumn 2023 release of new album Dream Machine via Sumerian Records, a high-energy collection that reflects on his own journey as a musician in relatable ways. Having been a relentless touring performer for the past 15 years, opening for bands as diverse as The Rolling Stones and Muse, Des has observed the interesting contrasts involved in the life of a Rock musician and its most meaningful moments.
Channeling these ideas into Dream Machine, Des tells the story of a journey, a kind of road trip into a night-time landscape where the thrill of the ride is key, as well as the haunting feeling of being led towards your fate in a dream-like way. I spoke with Des Rocs about his recent European tour, the current state of Rock ‘n Roll, as well as its future, and why he’s not afraid to use the “I” in his songwriting and performances.
Hannah Means-Shannon: You’re just back from a tour in Europe, and you’ve got another leg of touring coming up in the USA. You probably don’t even want to think about playing right now! You were even playing back in November before Europe.
Des Rocs: No, I’m always thinking about playing. It’s my favorite thing in the world! We toured up until Thanksgiving, went right back in January, and did a crazy European tour. I get to be home for a few weeks and still for a few weeks now.
How was playing in Europe? Was there a particular venue that you really liked playing?
It was a dream come true. I always thought there would be a special connection with European fans and it was so cool to have that confirmed. We were doing a ton of tickets, selling out 96% of the tour. It was Paris, London, Berlin, Italy, and it exceeded all our expectations. We’d never headlined a show in Paris before. To get out there and have kids going nuts and screaming, and not only singing the words, but the bassline, and the guitar parts was really special.
I feel like European audiences really know how to appreciate Rock ‘n Roll. I’ve been to a few events over there, and I feel like the emotion is really high and the appreciation of Rock history and tradition is really there.
I think you’re hitting the nail on the head with the word “emotion.” My music is very emotional, it’s very intense, and it’s very Rock ‘n Roll. Sometimes in the USA, on a weeknight, people aren’t ready to open themselves up to that, but I feel like Europeans compartmentalize things in a way. They get to the venue on a Wednesday night, but they say, “Here we go! I’m just going to open myself up to it!” It’s so freeing.
I do feel like there’s an almost puritanical trend in American thinking that during the week you must work very hard and have no amusement at all. You can part hard on the weekend, but that’s it. Even in Britain, people go to the pub on a Wednesday.
Every day!
How was playing the new album?
Pretty much every song on the new record got played. It was so cool to see people singing along and screaming to track #8, even. There are tons of clips from those shows on my Instagram.
I follow Stevie Van Zandt on social media, Little Steven, and he often talks about the dangers facing Rock music and whether it can survive as more than a fringe aspect of popular music. As a dyed-in-the-wool Rock ‘n Roller, what do you think of that?
You know, when I was in high school, I interned at his Underground Garage radio station! I don’t know for sure. Maybe Rock as you knew it will never be the same. That I agree with. Not everybody can live in a loft in Soho for $180 dollars now and just have a community of artist. I think that was so integral to so many decades of Rock ‘ Roll. There are underpinnings that will stay the same, but nothing’s made to last forever.
That’s so true. How unusual do you think your choices have been in going towards Rock rather than going towards Pop, or Folk, or even Electronica?
I don’t think it was ever a choice. I’m writing what I know, and I think that’s important. I’m not consciously saying, “I want to be a Rock artist.” I’m doing the things that made me gravitate towards Rock in the first place. I’d be a terrible Folk artist! [Laughs]
So this is what attracts your ear and your emotions, so it’s naturally going to be what you do and create?
Yes, it’s what I fell in love with early on. In second grade, we had to make a lifesize cardboard cut-out of what we wanted to be when we grew up. Everyone said, “mailman” and “doctor”, and mine was literally a guy with blue jeans and a black t-shirt, and he was holding a microphone. It just said, “Rock”. That is a seven-year-old.
That is absolutely hilarious.
It was the mystique and the culture of Rock I was drawn to. And I haven’t looked back since.
Do you think growing up in the New York area related to your experience of Rock ‘n Roll at all? Did you go to venues in the city?
In a sense, yes. I grew up in Long Island, about 35 minutes outside the city, and the city was always at my back door. It loomed large over everything I did, and I would always go there on the weekends. I was just exposed to the hustle and bustle of seeing people loading into a club at 12pm when I was walking by. I was around that kind of energy a lot. On a more local, DIY scene, I was involved in people playing in bands in Long Island when I was pretty young, at 12 or 13 years old. It’s knowing that things are going on and there’s a whole current that you want to jump into. I played gigs even in high school.
Then, later, I would go outside clubs as they were letting out and hand out demos. That was the hustle I did for many years. It was a super DIY sort of mentality.
Some people are also worried that the small gigs, and the places to perform them, are going away, so that young people might not have the opportunity to go through those necessary phases in self-development.
I feel like I was the last generation to have a lot of that stuff. I was the last generation where there was a dude in Queens who would have like seven bands play from 12 to 4pm to like ten people. We’d just be giving it our all. Also, it was the experience of being treated like absolutely dogshit, and just being nobody, but having so much to prove. Now, kids have School of Rock and stuff like that. It’s formal and it’s so different. They get so much support emotionally and financially. I’m happy about that. Going back to what we were saying about Little Steven, it’s not going anywhere, it’s just very different now. The journey is different and the whole experience of Rock ‘n Roll is very different.
As it happens, your story and your experiences have a lot of continuity still with early Rock. Your story is pretty similar to The Rolling Stones, etc. That grind, that start, and the shitty venues is part of the DNA of early Rock. You’re in that tradition, so you probably naturally understand things about the music.
Rock ‘n Roll is really a lifestyle, not just a choice. It’s the sound, and it’s also the lifestyle you’ve lived. I definitely toiled for ten years in complete obscurity, playing in all those bars, and restaurants, and VF Halls, and weirdo gigs where you get stiffed on the payment. I’ve been in so many failed bands and learned all the hard lessons before I said, “Fuck it. I’m just going to take all those lessons I’ve learned and become Des Rocs. I will do everything myself having learned what I’ve learned.”
I think there’s a lot of focus to the album, Dream Machine, since the whole album kind of goes in with that nighttime journey feeling from beginning to end. There’s the idea of “What are our dreams in life?” and also the way that actual dreams affect us.
I used the idea of a “journey” for Dream Machine, so that’s on point. My whole life has been a marathon, a crazy journey, and Dream Machine is kind of the summation of that whole experience. It’s a vessel of escape, and that’s what Rock ‘n Roll has always been for me, an escape from the drudgery of daily life, from the job or whatever you’ve got going on. Then you just take the subway out to Brooklyn, and you get on stage, and you play a show. Then you sleep for four hours and go back to it. But those thirty minutes on stage were like a dream.
Rock ‘n Roll is so aspirational. For me, there was a certain motif around that I wanted to capture and really curate this Rock ‘n Roll adventure in a way that harkens back to all the things I love, but also thoroughly modernizes it. I filter it all through my very specific lens, life experiences, and stories.
It feels pretty personal, in a way, though it has a lot of universal motifs. You’re not afraid to use the “I”, the personal perspective, in these songs.
I’m definitely not afraid of using the “I”. My music is very personal and emotional. On stage, I love the contrast of being a larger-than-life Rock ‘n Roll character but having the music be uniquely modern, sentimental, and personal in that way. That contrast is something that I find so thrilling.
I think Rock ‘n Roll is sentimental. I don’t know if everyone would agree with that, because it’s a kind of paradox since there’s a toughness to Rock ‘n Roll as well, but there’s definitely emotion.
That’s so cool, though. Think of Freddie Mercury singing “Somebody To Love”, which is so sentimental, then singing, “Fat Bottomed Girls” with all that macho shtick. Having that complexity is what makes for a great film or even food, having complexity and dynamics. I think that’s something we have in Rock ‘n Roll that other genres don’t have.
I can tell that some of your songs represent a lot of hard work behind the recording since you all create all the music yourselves. They come off as very polished, but that has to be built on many hours of toil.
You can spend a whole day just working on a little snare sound that’s on one second of a song. I’m just sitting with headphones. So much of it is the stuff that no one sees!
The video for “Dream Machine”, of course, had to have cars, and the idea of machine and journey. It makes a great intro to the album. I did feel like the song was about glimpsing or seeing past versions of oneself, or other points in time. You mention “younger me” in the song, but it addresses another person, too. I like the ambiguity of that.
It’s very much a time-traveling record and the song introduces the whole thing. Here’s the inner journey, the inner monolog of 15 years of really trying to make it. I’m not a TikTok star, it’s just about me doing two hours of the sweatiest, most spiritual Rock ‘n Roll that you can experience in 2024. The song is about going for it.
Speaking of “spiritual” and “sweaty”, a crazy song is “I Am The Lightning”. Is that a big one on tour?
Oh, yes, everyone goes crazy on that one.
That is such an American song with the imagery of the South or the Old West in it, even. The vocal tone is almost like a Preacher man, too. There’s rust and there’s dirt. It’s American Gothic, but that’s early Rock ‘n Roll for you. Is this about inspiration, a force or energy that’s out there?
“I Am The Lightning” is a really a self-empowerment anthem. It’s about perseverance while navigating all the ups and downs of life. It uses the metaphor of the roadtrip, and the highway as the journey and painting that in an exciting way.
And there’s a lot of screaming.
Of course! Like any good Rock ‘n Roll record!
