4 To Watch: A.J. Roach

Hometown: San Francisco
Fun fact: Roach’s backup career plan is to become a seal trainer.
Why he's worth watching: Since 2003, Roach has traveled over half-a-million miles and played nearly 1,000 shows in a dozen countries. That’s dedication.
For fans of: Gillian Welch, Ryan Adams, Dwight Yoakam

“When my father built our house, we had a roof-raising party,” recalls San Francisco-based folksinger A.J. Roach. “Friends and family came from all over the county, and even a few from the neighboring state came to help. We literally raised each rafter up to the top of the house and nailed it in place. And then we had a huge fish fry.”

Roach grew up in Scott County, Va.—the heart of Appalachia—once home to country-music royalty (the Carter family) and bluegrass legends (the Stanley Brothers). Given the region’s geographical isolation from the rest of the country, Appalachia has preserved much of its culture through oral tradition and mountain music. Everyday acts for common people—fishing, praying, drinking, mining coal from the earth—have become the stuff of classic songs, from which Roach takes his cues.

Thanks in large part to the Coen Brothers’ 2000 film O Brother, Where Art Thou?, traditional American music has developed a hip cachet in the new millennium—but Roach isn’t in it because it’s trendy. A bona fide highlander, he can sing about gunnysacks, Mason jars and Sears & Roebuck without coming off as disingenuous. (After all, where he comes from, they carried Mason jars around in gunnysacks. And people actually shopped at Sears.)

Roach’s songwriting perspective isn’t completely sepia-toned, though. He steeps his music in rich mountain traditions, and then weaves modern imagery and instrumentation throughout. From spry-sounding suicide ballad “Clinch River Blues” and desperate lament “Streets of Omaha” to the gospel-influenced, anti-war title track, Revelation is an endearing anthology of life stories, colored with hearty, twangy vocals, plenty of strings and that unmistakable bluegrass spontaneity. “The experience taught me that there’s no such thing as a perfect record,” Roach says, “and that pursuing perfection will, in all likelihood, cost you some level of magic that you can get from a completely raw performance.”

While others succumb to the pursuit of perfection, Roach makes music that’s hard-earned and sturdy, then lifts it to the sky like a handmade rooftop.