Roger Street Friedman

Sea Cliff, New York Roots Rock, Folk, Blues, R&B, Rock and Roll, Country Author Bram Stoker wrote his masterpiece, Dracula, when he was 50. Previous to that, he managed a theater and was an actor’s personal assistant. Frank McCourt had his first book, Angela’s Ashes, published when he was 66. McCourt’s debut skyrocketed him into the public eye, with him winning prestigious awards such as the Pulitzer, National Book Critics Circle Award, and the L.A. Times Book Award. Prior to authoring his milestone, he was a retired teacher. Singer-songwriter Roger Street Freidman is 54, a husband and a father of two, and about to release his masterwork, Shoot The Moon. It’s a full-emotional spectrum collection of vivacious and reflective vignettes from real life that recalls the pop-rock singer-songwriter tradition of Jackson Browne, Marc Cohn, Randy Newman, Colin Hay, Bruce Hornsby, and Mark Knopfler. Few artists make albums like this today. In an age of irony, few songwriters are this brave in their vulnerability, and possess Friedman’s gift for penning hook-laden, emotionally resonant, pop-rock. “When my dad passed away in 2004 it really hit me that this was not a dress rehearsal. When you turn 50, you start to hear about or lose people that are your own age. It gives me the sense that I’ve got a lot of work to do,” shares the Sea Cliff, New York-based artist. Friedman has garnered acclaim for his debut, The Waiting Sky. Champions for the album include No Depression, American Songwriter, Relix Magazine, MSN, The Alternate Route, Elmore Magazine and the New York Daily News. Friedman supported the effort with local gigs and regional touring, interspersed with opening slots for such venerated artists as Los Lobos and The Blind Boys of Alabama. Up until 2014, Friedman led a quaint life as a professional and a family man. As a kid he played music and even was a budding recording engineer. It was only after the loss of his father and mother in 2004 and 2006 respectively, and the birth of his daughter in 2006, that he was struck by the realization that his passion and talent for writing, performing and recording songs had not diminished. After his issuing his debut, Friedman made the bold decision to pursue music fulltime. “It was scary, but I had gotten to a point where, to be myself, I had to give music everything I had,” Friedman says. “You only get one shot in this life, you have to go for broke, no matter what it takes.” Shoot The Moon’s 13 masterfully crafted tracks snapshot the ephemeralness of life through revealing the poetry in the humble moments. Be it relationship struggles, pining for the innocent times of childhood, and self-growth after loss, Friedman crystalizes these feelings through deeply personal lyrics that resonate broadly in content and messaging. The tracks on Shoot The Moon boast sharp hooks, imaginative arrangements, telepathic real-time musical interplay, and vocals that hit a magical emotive spot through being sage, soulful, and sweet. The Shoot The Moon sessions were captured on vibey analog equipment with Friedman and longtime Felix McTeigue (the co-writer of Florida Georgia Line’s chart-topping “Anything Goes” and Lori McKenna’s Grammy nominated single “Wreck You”) in joint producer and engineer roles. The album boasts cameos by Ari Hest, The Masterson’s, Jason Crosby, and Amy Helm (Levon Helm Band, the Dirt Farmer Band, the Midnight Ramble Band, Ollabelle, and Amy Helm & The Handsome Strangers). It was mixed by Grammy Award winner Paul Q. Kolderie (Radiohead, Pixies, Dinosaur Jr.). Shoot The Moon exudes an album-oriented cohesion which is to say there is a broad spectrum of feelings and genres threaded together by Friedman’s well-developed aesthetic sense. His stylistic calling card is both earthy and urbane, spanning pastoral folk, euphoric New Orleans-style horn driven pop-rock, alt-country, blues and R&B. Album standouts include “Puffs Of Smoke,” “Everyday,” Shoot The Moon,” “Tomorrow”, and “Tidal Wave.” The slinky “Puffs Of Smoke” opens the album, and is a tango gumbo of horn-driven Crescent City funk and swampy roots rock. Friedman waxes autobiographical on the bluegrass-tinged “Everyday” and the infectious “Shoot The Moon” which brims with punchy horns and Friedman’s twangy vocals wonderfully complimented by Amy Helm’s soaring gospel-inflected singing. “‘Everyday’ is about me getting out my own way to let myself open up, and ‘Shoot The Moon’ is one of those ‘life is short, go for broke’ songs,’” shares Friedman. The bittersweet “Tomorrow,” about a relationship going through hard times, features a stunning duet between Helm and Friedman. The redemptive “Tidal Wave,” tinged with Hammond organ and a powerful Gospel Choir, promises a new day filled with unflinching optimism. Up next, Friedman will be sharing Shoot The Moon with audiences regionally, and through appearances at select festivals. He also currently has over an album’s worth of new material in the works. Reflecting on this era of fevered creativity and late-in-life self discovery, Friedman says: “You can’t rush the process. You can polish and chip away at the sculpture, but the evolution of the art takes the time it takes. For me, it feels fabulous to be where I’m at. I just have to stay open to the inspiration, and pour my heart and soul into the work. The rest is up to the universe.” At the start of his third album, RISE, in the song “Carry Me,” Roger Street Friedman confesses that, “You know a man just can’t change his stripes/I will ride this road the rest of my life...Mixing notes and words with piles of dust, One part obsession, one part sacred trust.” Translation: The man is a songwriter, singer and musician. It’s in his DNA, his blood, the very fiber of his being. Friedman knows, because he’s stepped away from it for a time -- and returned, even more passionate and committed than ever. And as he brings RISE, produced by fellow artist, Grammy winning producer, and longtime Levon Helm collaborator Larry Campbell, to the world, Friedman declares his status with pride and without apology. “That song is really about how this is who I am -- I’m a writer and a singer and a performer, and this is my calling,” Friedman acknowledges. “But, you know, coming back to this later in life, I have a family and a wife and responsibilities, so it’s a balancing act. I’m leaving home to tour, leaving home to write. Trying to balance that with staying connected to the home-front is tricky. But I know who I am, and music is something I have to do.” Friedman has, as he sings later in RISE, “learned that lesson well” -- and how to do it better than ever. RISE’s 12 songs, many co-written with an assembly of collaborators, are fully realized and cast so vividly we feel genuinely inside their characters -- whether it’s the Vietnam veteran “takin’ fire from Uncle Sam” upon his return, or the housewife questioning her life in “Over and Over.” There’s an honesty, immediacy and urgency to Friedman’s singing throughout the album, while the song arrangements are fat-free blends of Americana genre-splicing, from the twang of “Last Train to Babylon” to the rocking punch of “Outcasts of Love,” the Celtic anthemics of the title track and the Jimmy Buffett ebullience of “Tough Crowd.” “I think I took a lot more risks with the songs on this album,” Friedman says. “Not everything has a happy ending. Some of them make me almost uncomfortable to sing because of that. My voice is also way more out front than it’s been on the other records, which feels pretty vulnerable to me. I’m just trying to go deeper, really trying to get to the heart of the matter.” It helps, of course, that music is indeed the heart of Friedman’s matter. The New York native was bitten by the music bug early, learning to write songs and even developing his studio engineering skills. It was an avocation, however, as he worked his uncle’s retail display business for about 25 years. But a combination of events during the mid-’00s -- the deaths of his father and mother, marriage and, later, the births of his two children -- steered Friedman back to music, leading to the acclaimed 2014 debut THE WAITING SKY and 2017’s SHOOT THE MOON. “Those life events really kind of opened the floodgates for me to start writing again,” he notes. And while it may have taken longer than he anticipated, Friedman found himself better prepared for how to do what he so loved. “I think the writing’s gotten better, as you’d hope,” he says. “And one thing I know now, after working with Larry on this album, is how important the producer is, how recording is so much different than playing live and how important the process is, the vibe -- having the right players, how every element has a place and how one thing could be the straw that breaks the camel’s back if you’re not careful. And most of all, how important it is to serve the song. It’s a real balancing act, and I learn something every time I write a song or get in a studio.” Friedman met Campbell when the latter played on THE WAITING SKY. While Friedman was helping him carry some of his instruments to the car at the end of that session, Campbell told him that, “‘You write really good songs. I think you have something here.’ “That encouragement from someone I admired so much really stuck with me.” The two kept in touch, and after sifting through more than 30 songs that Friedman sent him to consider, Campbell readily agreed to produce RISE. “He wanted to showcase more of the singer-songwriter vibe, songs with that kind of sound,” says Friedman, who recorded RISE at his home studio in Sea Cliff, NY with a crew led by Campbell. The team included Friedman’s rhythm section of Jim Toscano and Matt Schneider, keyboard phenom Jason Crosby (Phil Lesh, John Mclaughlin), the producer’s wife, Teresa Williams, and Lucy Kaplansky on backing vocals. The album was mixed by Justin Guip at Milan Hill Studios in Milan, NY. “I think the creative mission was really to take the songs as far as they could go, with some compelling arrangements that highlight the songwriting as much as possible.” Friedman had more help in that regard than ever before, too. Seven of RISE’s tracks were co-written, working with Nashville guns such as Mike Grey, Steve Lester, Michael August, Matt Willis, Mark Baxter, Hunter Tynan Davis, Elliot Bronson, Alice Lankford and Jimbo Martin as well as Campbell, “The interesting thing for me about writing with other people is I go for the jugular and come up with songs most writers in Nashville wouldn’t write,” Friedman says. “They’re not gonna be on the next Blake Shelton album, exactly. I always get funny looks when I say things like, ‘Jesus said to love your brother/But we’re still killing each other.’ But in each instance the folks I worked with helped me take the songs to their logical conclusion and made ‘em even better.” There are plenty of complicated characters on RISE, from “Over and Over” to the proposition of “Runaway Girl.” At the same time you’ll be hard-pressed to find songs as whole-heartedly romantic as “The Strange Shape of Love” and “Waiting on the Moon.” But Friedman is “an avid kind of news junkie,” as well, and there was no escaping the state of world affairs as he was penning songs for the album, especially “Last Train to Babylon,” “Lessons,” the cinematic “The War is Already Over” -- about a 1919 post-World War I mission to Siberia -- and the title track. “We’re so divided,” he laments. “There’s so much ugliness coming back to the collective consciousness. I hate to bang people over the head with a message -- that’s not really my bag -- so I strive for more commentary with my sort of detailed observations and some internal thoughts or universal statements. The best writing, I think, is, really detailed, painting a picture and then making a comment on it. I don’t know if I’ve accomplished it in all cases, but I wouldn’t be honest if I didn’t write about that, too.” RISE is ultimately nothing less than a true expression, a singer-songwriter’s statement of purpose that resonates as a career milestone -- until, maybe, next time. “I’ve got another two albums already written,” Friedman reports. “It’s a continuum, for sure. I don’t feel like I’ve arrived anywhere, but I’m very proud of this work. I think it’s another level, and I’m more confident than I ever was. Hopefully I’ll feel the same way about the next one, and the next, and the next after that.”