Rocky Votolato | Makers

I once brought my girlfriend to see Rocky Votolato play a show at someone’s apartment. I kept it a surprise because I thought it was so cool that we could go see a private show from one of our favorite songwriters in some random living room.  We got to the door and a scantily clad young girl with a clipboard asked our names before letting us in. Then we sat in a room full of awkward strangers until Mr. Votolato strolled in with his acoustic after a half hour or so.  Until he arrived my girlfriend assumed I was bringing her to an underground sex party.   

Not to make this story less interesting, but unfortunately it was just a private MUSICAL performance.  But that doesn’t mean it was any less intimate.  And folks, this is how you should be describe Rocky Votolato to your friends.  Intimate.  Every song is a personal story. Every story is both a passing moment and lasting impression of real emotion.  And man, it’s depressing.  But when you’re depressed it feels good to know that there are other people who want to jump into the ocean too.  But hey, that’s too easy, and I imagine whether Pacific (he’s from Portland) or Atlantic, that shit is cold.  So instead of taking the plunge we write, be it impressive songs or mediocre blog posts.  And we drink.

Nearly every song on Makers, Votolato’s 5^th solo album, is an attempt to tackle the demons of his past, the present battle not dulled nearly enough by the bottle, and the compulsions to give up on the future.  Even on the closest thing the album has to a single (“White Daisy Passing”), he writes “Please slow it down/ there’s a secret place that I know/If I could dig a grave I’d then climb underground for good/All I want to do is turn around/I’m going down to sleep on the bottom of the ocean/because I couldn’t let go when the water hit the setting sun”.  Well, I for one am shocked this didn’t tear up the airwaves.  Write a sad song about getting dumped and people can empathize, Top 40 smash.  Write a song about ending it all and everyone turns away uncomfortably.  Tough crowd.

Surprisingly, Makers is more depressing than his previous release, and that was titled Suicide Medicine. Yeah, I know.  Votolato has talked about this time in his life; fighting depression with alcohol, acoustic guitars, and harmonica and sounds like he has some regret about creating this album at all. His reasoning seemingly that even if some of your best work can come from such a dark place, you don’t want to be reduced to a cliché of songwriter who only finds their creativity in misery.  I understand the sentiment, hell I even think Cobain was a overrated whiny brat, but it doesn’t mean those emotions don’t exist.  Although sharing them like he does on Makers is a little too, uh, what’s that word.  Oh yeah, intimate.

Among all the despair and acoustic therapy on Makers, is a happy song, full of love, a song of hope, and oddly a song inspired by M. Night Shyamalans’s awful film Signs. (The aliens are afraid of water but they came to earth… which is 70% water?  Come on!)  On “Tinfoil Hats”, Rocky V (don’t call him that) sings “Life keeps changing/you tell it stay still/but it won’t listen/I just want you near me like you are now for good.”  See, you don’t need to give up on life.  You just need someone, maybe even your family, to help keep you afloat.  And maybe a little whiskey.

The Drink: Makers (of course) and Ginger. My friends call it liquid gold. I call them drunks. But they’re not depressed so they need to be doing something right. Drink up.

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Bake

I'm nothing. Maybe less than nothing. I also write.

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