Artist Interview: Q&A with Colin Roy Monette
The Minnesota-based singer/songwriter/guitarist talks about the digital release of three albums and plans for a new one.
Colin Roy Monette. Photo credit unknown.
Colin Roy Monette is a guitarist, music teacher, singer-songwriter and performer on the local Twin Cities scene with some recent album releases and plans for another one in 2024. I met up with Colin to learn more about his career and catalog and what’s on the horizon for this blues/jazz/Americana artist.
Carol Roth: I know you’ve been in the Twin Cities music community for quite a while. Were you born and raised in Minnesota?
Colin Roy Monette: I was born on an Indian reservation in North Dakota, so I’m an enrolled member of Turtle Mountain Chippewa Tribe. I grew up there and then moved to a small town also in North Dakota. I came to the Twin Cities in 2001 for college and got a degree in music, and I’ve been here ever since.
CR: What’s your career been like here in the Cities?
CM: I’m part of a little Americana music scene here where I play with my band, Spaghetti Monetti, and a couple other groups and songwriters. I guess I’m somewhat of a for-hire guitarist and have been for many years. I’ve always written my own music too, but it wasn’t until the past five years that I started to identify as a songwriter. It’s almost a problem how much music I create because I can’t keep up with putting it out there. I end up kind of feeling a little behind!
CR: Speaking of, I know you recently released a couple albums. Can you talk about them?
CM: This month I’ve put out three albums: Maudlin (Slight Return), which is an updated rerelease of my 2006 debut album; my 2021 album Lucky*; and an album I released this past summer, Music Is Medicine 20/20. I printed these albums to CD when they first came out but never put them on the internet. They’re now available on Bandcamp and all major music streaming platforms.
CR: What prompted you to digitally release all three now?
CM: I don't know if it's because we’re nearing the end of the year, but I realized I needed to put all these out to kind of let people know what I’m up to. In a way they’re old news to me, but new to everybody else because they’d only existed in CD form. Now it’s all in the digital world where everybody can hear it, and hopefully they’ll dig on it and be inspired by it.
Another reason is I’ve finished another album this year that’s gonna come out in 2024. So I thought this was the time to get these out there. I feel like I had to almost go backwards to go forward.
CR: Let’s talk about the earliest album first. You say it was an update of an earlier record?
CM: That’s right. The original was my first album entitled Maudlin, which I released in 2006, an eclectic mix of my tunes recorded completely on my own. It had never been properly mixed and mastered, but recently one of the more well-known songs on the album, “Hopeless Man,” was mastered. I recorded a Native American drum group and singers and added them to the song for a music video that a former guitar student of mine made for me. It’s superbly done. After making the video I felt the need to have the entire album mastered by professional audio engineers. For the album I entitled the updated song “Hopeless Man (Slight Return),” so I decided to call the album Maudlin (Slight Return).
CR: Your next album was first released in 2021. What’s the story behind Lucky* [pronounced “Lucky Star”]?
CM: Lucky* consists of approximately 12 years of recordings that I finally decided was an album’s worth of tunes. I really like the album; there’s a cohesive thing going on throughout, but every song is different.
CR: I thought it was interesting too. There is a cohesive feel but I’m hearing a lot of different sounds, including really strong country blues, pre-war blues influences and some 60s-era folk rock style. What are some of your inspirations or musical heroes that helped create this album?
CM: One album that inspired me is Raising Sand, the Robert Plant/Allison Krauss album that T Bone Burnett produced with an A-list of studio musicians, including Marc Ribot on guitar. I also really love Bob Dylan. Our birthdays are one day apart; that means we’re both Geminis, and I think we’re afflicted with some of the same issues. I love how prolific Bob is. Also I’ve always thought if Bob Dylan can play the harmonica, anybody can. I mean that in the best way; he can inspire anybody to ramble for a while. One song on the album is inspired by his verses—they just keep going, you know what I mean? He’s not a two-verse kind of a guy. And that’s kind of what I feel like too.
Also, when I started to think I should work at developing my voice more, I thought, well, if Bob Dylan can do it, I can too. And that’s kind of where I started getting into singing more and realizing that I like my singing, where I used to be extremely critical of it and not even want to do it in front of anybody. I mean, you can hear his melodies; they’re really quite beautiful.
CR: It’s true; he’s such a good example of how you may not fit certain traditional standards as a singer, and yet he’s got something arresting that people are really drawn to, big time. And there is artistry to how he uses his voice. It’s an instrument he uses smartly.
CM: A Dylan album that really inspired me was Modern Times. It’s one of my favorites because I love the blues and it has this overarching blues feel throughout the whole thing. And there’s guitars all over the place, which I really love. That’s partly what inspired me to go into the recording studio. There’s some bluesy songs on my Lucky* album, and I really tried to sound a bit like that record. It’s about traditional, good tones, and fulfilling the song—actually finding parts that work for it as opposed to just playing riffs.
Colin Roy Monette’s Lucky* album artwork.
CR: I’m always so fascinated by the recording process because it’s capturing a moment in music’s evolution and sort of crystallizing it. There’s usually some really interesting stories that come out of the studio.
CM: Yeah, there’s nothing like going into the studio to make you realize what works and what doesn’t. I just love being in recording studios. It’s my favorite place to be really, because it’s all about the music and there's just so much to it. One thing to remember is to not beat yourself up too much about that time and place. I’ve learned that because I’m a harsh critic of myself. I mean, I didn’t release Lucky* for 10 years because I just didn’t like some of the performances and then I realized, well, that's what it was like then, so I gotta move on.
CR: That’s a good segue to move on to your third album, Music is Medicine 20/20.
CM: During 2020 when everybody was locked down, that was such a hard time for so many people, but to me it was like a major gift. I was so happy about it, because I didn’t have to look at the time and could just play my music however I wanted at the pace I wanted to. I got really into physical health and mental health, and I’ve always said music is medicine, but it truly became something that helped me in an immense way to get through what was considered to be a really hard time. That’s what this album is all about.
I was using voice memos on my phone to get things down quick, and I realized that I really enjoyed those recordings. They’re kind of vulnerable and slightly imperfect, but the sound quality was remarkable. So I started to take recording with my voice memos more seriously and try to get good sounds. I got a lot of really good takes, and I decided that’s gonna be an album. I sent them to Tony Willamette over at Minnehaha Recording Company. It’s a really great studio. and he’s a super pro.
When you record a voice memo, it’s a mono track, so he created a pseudo-stereo track and mixed them and made them sound bigger, and did a tiny bit of editing. I really loved the result, but there’s not much to them because they were recorded digitally. I wanted to see what would happen if I put all the songs through an analog tape machine. So I took that idea to Kris Johnson at Flowers Studio, who’s a fantastic recording engineer. It seemed like a crazy idea, but we ran the tracks through the two-inch tape machine, and it made them sound bigger and better.
CR: I’ve definitely heard of demos becoming the final album versions of songs, but I’m pretty sure I’ve never heard of them coming from a voice memo!
CM: It was amazing. I started using voice memos because I never really learned how to use a computer recording program, but I can play my guitar, so I decided to focus my energy on playing and writing and leave the recording stuff to the experts. I wanted to see what these guys could do and it was really impressive. I learned I can record anywhere I am, practically, and get a pretty good take. That’s what I aim for, to put on a good performance and hopefully capture it. I’d like to somehow get this over to Apple, let them know what’s possible.
CR: It does make me wonder if there are other people doing that as well.
CM: I think so. I’m sure I’m not the only one. That’s one of my favorite things about the pandemic: People started having to get real with themselves, about what matters and what’s more important. The whole concept of Music Is Medicine 20/20 is about making use of what you have instead of thinking about what you don’t have. Instead of worrying about something that’s out of your control, try to think about what you can control. When you start doing that, you realize there’s so many things you are in control of. That’s what inspired this album, doing the best you can with what you have.
That carries into the instruments, the guitars that I play. I have these really cool old Harmony guitars that you could almost consider to be junkers, but they sound so great. I have somewhat of an addiction to guitars; I’ve got quite a few. They’re not worth much, but to me they’re valuable for their songs, and they make you play them differently and approach music differently. I started creating these tunes with these cool old guitars and realizing it doesn't get any better than that.
CR: Did you use older guitars on your other albums?
CM: Lucky* features an old Gretsch guitar that’s kind of been my main guitar forever. You’re gonna hear it on just about every song. It’s got this thick sound. I like older music, so I wanna have the older sound. It made sense to get into playing vintage guitars so my music sounds more like it’s actually coming from that era. And in the studio, we’ll use traditional mics and vintage equipment.
CR: I love that, and the idea of revisiting and renewing music too. Now that everything’s finally out there on streaming, do you have any plans to celebrate these releases?
CM: There’s no official release concert. My band Spaghetti Monetti is really awesome, and that’s the main way to see me play these songs. We play at Boom Island Brewing in Minnetonka the last Saturday of every month.
It’s fun to have a recording that shows how your songs were at one point, but they inevitably evolve. I’ve got a really cool band and it’s a delight to bring my original material to them. It’s fun to see which ones stick. “Lucky*,” the 13th track on that album, has grown and developed with my band. It’s our closing song, sort of one of our anthems.
CR: What are your upcoming plans; what else are you working on?
CM: I just finished recording my new album, Simple Gifts, a few weeks ago at Flowers Studio. I’m gonna put it out pretty early 2024. The songs are jazzy, singer-songwriter, Americana anthems that I wrote, some older, some brand new. It’s more hi-fi than my others but it’s also got a vintage sound to it.
It’s not entirely a solo album, which is a departure for me. I had a couple consummate professional musicians, a bass player and a percussionist, come in and record on five of the tracks. I usually like taking time to meditate on things instead of making a quick decision, but in this case, it happened pretty quickly. I got this idea right before going into the studio the next week, so I called them up and a couple hours later, they both said yes.
The next Tuesday we hit the studio and, I mean, these guys, they got it! I got to be more of an engineer; I didn’t play, I just told them what I had in mind. Usually you’d lay down the bass and percussion first, but they played along with my tracks and really helped tie them together. So you’re gonna hear some upright bass and washboard on this album.
CR: Was the washboard player Mikkel Beckman?
CM: Yeah! I was like, if there’s anyone who can just seamlessly work themselves into somebody else’s music, it's him. It happened so smoothly, exactly how I pictured it.
CR: I’ve seen him do that with so many people. It’s crazy.
CM: I know. And it’s kind of the soundtrack of Minneapolis, that washboard sound of his.
CR: Yeah, he's one of my heroes for sure. Who plays bass on the album?
CM: His name is Bruce Morrow, but I call him Checkpoint Charlie. We’ve played together often over 15 years or so. When the idea came to me that it might be nice to hear some upright acoustic bass on some of the tracks, I knew Bruce would do a nice job, and he did.
CR: I’m excited to hear it! Anything else you want to mention?
CM: Just that I hope folks dig on my older stuff and get caught up on my most current material. I’m looking forward to sharing my new album soon!
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Carol Roth. Photo credit: Dan Lee.
Carol Roth is the primary writer, social media manager, podcast producer and event-calendar updater for Adventures in Americana. By day she’s a marketing writer/brand strategist. In addition to playing guitar and songwriting, she writes self-proclaimed “trashy” novels under the pseudonym T.A. Berkeley.
