Rafter

Lessons of Life, Love and Music

By Chris Sabbath

Photos by Lizeth Santos

"The traditional method of putting your record out and a couple months of touring is something I can't do," reveals Rafter Roberts from his San Diego abode. The Asthmatic Kitty imprint will release his second full length — Sex Death Cassette — this month, but the fiery-haired solo artist and recording engineer has no plans to embark across a wintry divide to support the album. For an independent-minded musician deeply rooted in the age-old, punk rock philosophy of "do-it-yourself," a decision like that could put quite a sizable dent, artistically and financially, in Roberts' career. But he shrugs it off, admitting that he’s more concerned about being a good stay-at-home dad and focusing on new projects than hitting the road anytime soon.

“I think there are two sides to music: there’s the performance side and then there’s the exploration and studio magic, songwriting side,” says Roberts. “I love that I have a studio and I love that every night I can go in there and have access to all my strange little toys and work on making new music. Instead of recreating recorded moments, I’m creating and imagining new ones all the time.” And Robert’s present-day bearings as an inexhaustible studio artist - creating his own heap of material, collaborating with artists such as Sufjan Stevens, Castanets and Liz James when producing their albums, and composing original music for commercials - afford him the ability to stay put.
It took Roberts a while to find his ideal niche though. Born and raised in a commune-like setting in Sebastopol, CA, Roberts describes his childhood as “sheltered.” He grew up in a household without electricity, which put him out of touch with the pop culture indulgences of the ‘80s MTV generation. Yet he had no problem falling into the rebellious, free-spirited excitement of post-punk and experimental rock at a young age. While most kids were hanging out at malls, Roberts spent his youth reading books, playing in the woods, or listening to the epic cluster of mix tapes that his older brother would make for him. “My big brother turned me on to all sorts of great stuff. When my friends were listening to U2, Ton Loc and Def Leppard, I was jamming Devo, Talking Heads, Residents and Gang of Four,” Roberts explains. “I would go to his house for the weekend, taking a box of 12 cassette tapes from Costco, and come back with all 12 filled up full. It had everything to do with how I got involved and in love with music.”

Roberts began experimenting with musical instruments in his adolescence, first with the harmonica before moving on to more sophisticated equipment like the guitar, keyboard, bass and drums. By the age of 16, Roberts was performing in his town’s unrivaled punk rock ensemble, Faucet, but decided to migrate away from Sebastopol’s rural leanings to search for a new, flourishing music epicenter. He tried New York City with limited success; the cost of living coupled with his lack of social networking in the indie rock circle there made it difficult to bank on the Big Apple as a feasible (and prosperous) pursuit. Roberts headed back to the West Coast and quickly found himself immersed in San Francisco’s eclectic music scene, but had a hard time finding a music community he fit into there. So he relocated to San Diego, where he had a lot of musician friends, in 1998. With the right combination of resources - Roberts cites “tons of talented, unique individuals and some great venues“ - San Diego proved to be the most accommodating and best fit for the hard-working artist. It’s where he teamed up with what he calls the “rad San Diego weird bands” - groups like Hot Snakes, Gogogo Airheart and The Rapture - and recorded their albums in his garage for super cheap, putting his self-taught skills to work. In fact, Roberts estimates that he recorded over 100 albums in that garage. “I even got to quit my minimum wage job at the movie theater,” he says, “cuz I was charging 15 whole dollars an hour for my rock skills.”

Now in a proper studio, it is still Roberts’ creative control over his facility that musicians seek. “When I’m an engineer/producer, I’m trying to help the artist make their particular creative dream come true, and also challenge and stretch them to make the best song or album that they can,” Roberts says, “Most of the time there’s a lot of collaboration — not just capturing the moment, but rather creating moments together.”

It was in such a moment of collaboration that Roberts stumbled upon his next calling - one that placed him in an ethical compromise of sorts, but also allowed him to funnel his artistic talents into a new, promising venture. In early 2000, Roberts was recording an album with a local experimental hip-hop group called Soul Junk. The band’s founder, Glen Galloway, had a day gig doing marketing for a company that produced music for television advertisements. Since Galloway and Roberts were working so closely together on the album, the two started writing and composing music for commercials as well. Not long after that, Galloway’s employers went out of business and the pair decided to start their own enterprise.

Like its website states, Singing Serpent goes “where other music houses fear to tread.” Employing a talented squad of young music composers and radio/TV/movie production vets, the business taps into the imaginative psyches and resources of the American indie music circuit to connect its clients with a level of inspiration and inventiveness that is much more contemporary and provocative than today’s mainstream ad market. In the past seven years, the business has worked out of two studios in San Diego (the first built through the assistance of local musicians that Roberts promised future studio time to in exchange for free manual labor), one in Santa Monica and another in New York City. It’s produced music for retailers such as Nike, McDonald’s, Citibank and General Electric - a career direction that, while not vehemently independent on the surface, has offered its own kind of artistic challenges that Roberts has been happy to face. While he states that he’s a supporter of smaller, self-sufficient establishments, he sees commercial work as a means to facilitate his solo project and support his family. “The interesting thing is that there’s definitely some art involved with commercial work, but it’s more like a craft — like you make a cabinet to keep all of your plates,” he explains. “Like ‘I need to make a heavy metal song to make it feel like this car is totally kicking butt.’ Making a record is an intuitive, personal process whereas doing songs for commercials, if you’re doing it right, you’re not doing it in a personal and intimate way. I’m not trying to necessarily challenge myself or the listener, I’m just trying to make the right thing for whatever it is.”

Yet it’s had an interesting effect on his own music. “If I listened to the stuff I did before I started doing commercials and then listened to what I’m doing now - man have I gotten weirder,” Roberts laughs. “I think a lot of it is that on any given day I don’t know if I’m going to be working on gangsta rap or orchestral music or big band jazz or bluegrass. Even though what we do calls for a certain craft, a lot of it is a learning job - learning to appreciate that music has an infinite depth, thus learning to become a way better listener and therefore a better player.”

While Roberts has successfully coordinated a middle ground between making commercials and being an artist, he’s also had to make adjustments to his personal life in order to balance family with career objectives. Thanks to rock ‘n’ roll’s “live fast, die young” attitude, there’s a prevalent notion that music careers and girlfriends don’t mix. But Roberts and his partner have devised a plan to entrust their respective skills artistically into a joint endeavor while enjoying each other’s company. “My girlfriend, Lizeth [Santos], is an awesome drummer and photographer, and we are so freaking in love!” he exclaims. “But as often will happen, we started neglecting our arts as we got closer and closer together, because it was so rad to just live together.” So according to Roberts, the couple instituted a daily task where each morning they take turns coming up with a specific word for the day. Then they go their separate ways - Roberts will retire to his studio and write and record a song, Santos will design and shoot a photo. The concept is to take that particular word and develop a mutual end product by employing each of their singular talents. At the end of the day, the two regroup and share what they have come up with. They then patch their ideas together and release the final product as an mp3 exclusive on a variety of blogs.

In the past few months, Santos and Roberts have posted these exclusives on blogs such as The Fader, Gorilla vs. Bear, Lost at Sea, You Ain’t No Picasso and Soundgirl, and have included Asthmatic Kitty in the fun as well. Although Roberts concedes that the original goal of the undertaking was to execute a blog post each day, the pair decided to do two a week instead: one as an mp3 blog exclusive and one for the Asthmatic Kitty website. In essence, Roberts is utilizing the blog posts to get his music out to new listeners and make up for not touring. “While we haven’t been one hundred percent on one-a-day, we’ve both done more new art/music in the last two months than in ages,” he reveals about the plan’s success. “It’s like art camp in a love relationship.”

And just like his girlfriend, Asthmatic Kitty is a staunch supporter of Roberts’ work. In the past year, the label has released two Rafter albums - his 10 Songs EP and Music for Total Chickens debut full length - in addition to an album from Roberts’ side project Bunky. And both camps are excited about the arrival of Sex Death Cassette. Comprised of 19 pop-soaked ditties, the album veers a bit from Chickens‘ abrasive melodies, but displays Roberts’ determination to explore new avenues and tinker with different music genres. Roberts reveals that Cassette was heavily influenced by the birth of his son, and that he sang a bulk of the vocals while holding his sleeping child in his arms. He also says that he approached the album from two opposite angles. “I was coming at it two ways: one, through a love of diverse music like Lightning Bolt, Paul Simon, Fela Kuti, Skinny Puppy and Manu Chao; two, through a desire to capture and manipulate the first impulses of pop-music making. I’d set up mics at the drums and improvise three to six songs of drums, then pick up something nearby and overdub on all of them, and repeat until my 4-track was full. Then I’d dump it into the computer, and see what was working and what wasn’t, and then edit, refine and add.”

Though both of his full lengths differ aesthetically in sound - Chickens‘ harsh overtones opposing Cassette‘s poppy sheen - Roberts acknowledges that he recorded both concurrently. He also admits that he has 24 new songs finished. “But I’m not stopping. I’m really trying to create some new jam directions for myself right now. When I’m being a musician, I turn it over completely to my intuition or subconscious to serve the ball, then that serves the ball to my rational/critical brain, which hits it back, etc. There’s a dialog between the two and there should be no rules or guidelines except that it should be awesome in some way and invoke the spirit of complete freedom,” Roberts says. “I think I’m more excited and dedicated than I ever have been about music and my relationship with it.”

www.myspace.com/rafterroberts