Texas native Travis Roberts may not be the first, but is one of the best of a new generation of Gen Z Americana artists that have been able to deftly blend together traditional roots rock with the emo and punk bands they listened to throughout middle and high school.
“I dig a lot of roots rock and nostalgic Americana stuff like Bruce Springsteen (God, I love the telecaster), The Byrds, Bob Dylan, and the Dead, but I’ve never been able to kill the emo kid in me that listened to Dropkick Murphys, Jimmy Eat World, The Wonder Years, and The Front Bottoms either. Mix those and add a bit of West Texas trauma, and you get my record.”
You can’t argue with the results. Those Springsteen and Dylan influences come across pretty clearly throughout most of the record. Still, you can also hear the energy and bombast of The Murphys and Jimmy Eat World on a song like “Minefields” or in the searing guitars on the stellar opening track “Bellmarie.” Lyrically and musically, it’s the perfect song to open this collection, brilliantly setting up what unfolds. On “Bellmarie,” he sings about an old friend who used astrology to help decide the fate of her love life, while the title track focuses on drug addiction and bad choices made by the protagonist in the title.
Throughout Rebel Rose, Roberts manages to distill the gritty charm of the working man’s poet Steve Earle into songs that draw on relatable characters, like the old lovers in “Ink Ain’t Dry” trying to recapture their youth (that song boasts the unforgettable lyric: “And when you tug on my shirt, does it remind you of how it felt? When we were young and hungry, undoing the Bible Belt”). Then there’s “Hereford Blues,” a song about being stuck behind a train, which—thanks to a co-write with the legendary Ray Wylie Hubbard—becomes three minutes of pure, musical adrenaline.
From a military base in South Korea to the plains of Amarillo, TX, the 24-year-old has packed a lifetime of experiences into just two dozen years. Sober today, Roberts endured addiction, the loss of close friends, and even joined an underground fight club to pay for studio sessions (“Whoever won the fights took home the lion’s share of the money”). You can’t help but hear these experiences woven throughout these songs. The weight of those experiences echoes through every track on Rebel Rose.
