Mitch Rowland Wants to Go Wherever a Song Might Take Him

This past February, Mitch Rowland took home an Album of the Year Grammy for his role as a songwriter and performer on Harry Styles’ Harry’s House. Now, he’s turned his focus onto his first-ever collection of solo songs, Come June—a self-funded, mystifying record made by the wondrous six-string shredder who, every night, injects a pop of pastoral color into every song on Styles’ setlists. He’s an instrumentation guru who has just as bright of a penchant for writing pop melodies as he does for experimenting with vocal harmonies and guitar techniques. Come June may only be Rowland’s debut album, but you can trace every one of its virtuosic brushstrokes back about 20 years.

In the 2000s, Rowland grew up in Dublin, Ohio, a city-suburb of Columbus that spans three counties and is home to a field of 109 ears of corn made from concrete—a personal favorite place to take all of my out-of-town friends when they come to visit. He was a regular at the now-defunct Carabar, an Old Towne East venue on Parsons Avenue that got knocked down when the I-71 was widened nearly 10 years ago. Before he moved out to Los Angeles, he worked for local ice cream titan Jeni’s in the North Market downtown (the thought of whether or not Rowland has introduced Styles to the delights of Gooey Butter Cake is immense for me here, I can’t lie). At one point, I used to live not even a stone’s throw from Rowland’s post-college apartment on Oak Street on the city’s East Side.

If you’re at all tapped into Rowland’s role in Harry Styles’ band, you know that he positively shreds on the guitar—and Come June is, without a doubt, a guitar-focused record, albeit not quite as far into the pop range—but, when he was six years old, he started hammering away on a drum kit that belonged to his brother. The two instruments go hand-in-hand for him, if only as a means of coming from a rhythm background. “You don’t have to go with what the grey-haired person tells you what you should do, but, if they have some inkling—someone told my brother ‘You should play the trumpet,’ and I don’t know why,” Rowland explains. “But he looked at my dad and was like, ‘Fuck that, I want to play the drums.’ So he played the drums and then that’s how I got a jump on it. If it weren’t for that, who knows where things would have gone.” Rowland taught himself how to play drums and guitar by listening to records, but he had to be careful how much dedication he put into his intrigue when his sibling was around. “I would get beat up if I was caught playing drums when he was home, so I had to squeeze in my time when he wasn’t around,” he adds. “I think, if I ever had a lesson or if I was ever told the ‘right way’ to do it, that probably would have put me off—like it would a lot of people. And, maybe I would have put it down for that reason.

There’s a mythicality in rock ‘n’ roll, this idea that every great musician picks up their instrument out of thin air after feeling some sort of gravitational empowerment emanating off of it. But the truth is, most of us get stoked on music because we heard something on the radio or we found a CD with cover art we couldn’t get out of our heads. For Rowland, some of his most distinctive memories are derived from when he was younger and playing songs by the Black Crowes and Aerosmith on a jukebox in the house of a family friend. “As an adult, I wound up getting to know myself as a guitar player a lot better once I started discovering open tunings and alternate tunings,” he says. “And I have to associate that with hearing early Black Crowes singles off of that old jukebox. That’s where the seed was planted.”

Rowland didn’t grow up listening to the Black Crowes. It wasn’t until he went to ComFest—a free, perennial arts festival in Columbus’ Goodale Park—in 2008 and spun a big wheel at PromoWest’s tent and won tickets to a Black Crowes show. “Everyone’s doing their best Wheel of Fortune, ripping that thing down, and I just gave it a go and it landed on the Black Crowes. I wound up with two tickets, so I asked my dad if he wanted to go. And that started a whole thing, I just dove in,” he says. Rich Robinson was a big influence on his own guitar-playing, but Rowland’s scope of his own interest scales back even further than that—as he explains how Robinson was a disciple of Keith Richards, that the Black Crowes guitarist’s first introduction to open tuning was through the work of Nick Drake. “I was at a young enough age where my friends weren’t really listening to Nick Drake,” Rowland adds. “So that was my intro to Nick Drake and introspective music, even though it came from the kernel of rock ‘n’ roll music—which is kind of funny. I love that that happened, it’s just down to luck. And life is kind of terrifying for that reason. If it wasn’t for that, what the fuck would I be doing? Maybe something completely different.”

It took several years for Rowland to finally see just how much that chance wheel spin changed his life. Now, 15 years later, he looks back and considers it a true turning point for him, musically. He cites a time when, as he was on his way out of Ohio State, he had a guitar tuned to Open G and was learning songs off of Sticky Fingers and was just trying to figure out just where his hands were supposed to go to get such distinctive tones. His own interest in exploring those droning melodies and the chord progressions of songs like “Sway” was a breakthrough, a pivotal catalyst in him adopting a musician identity. “You pick something easy and then you slowly progress to the point where you start coming up with stuff,” Rowland says. “I wasn’t quite writing songs, but that kind of experimentation and curiosity to tune the guitar to something else was the beginning of that. I felt like I had hacked something as a guitar player. I thought, ‘Oh, this is making my ears stand up a little more.’”

Having an artist like Rowland win a Grammy Award or make a record like Come June and still speak so affectionately about Ohio is so important to me, as a lifelong resident who has watched all of the biggest bands come up all over the state and then leave once success offers them a taste of stardom. The Black Keys did it, The National did it, Twenty-One Pilots left, too. The idea, at least in rock ‘n’ roll, is that you’re never supposed to stay in the place that made you—unless you were born into coastal living. He used to worship Ohio bands, especially the ones who would do their own tours, buy their Econoline vans and go east to west and every place in-between. Rowland throws out a name like Buffalo Killers, a Cincinnati blues and psych-rock quartet who’d play Skully’s and the Rumba Cafe all the time. “Personally, I don’t know them know them, but I watched them move up and they’re now in The Black Keys, playing in [the backing band],” he says. “Some of these places I’m playing with Harry Styles, I see them go onto the same exact stages as us. And that’s really cool for me, because I wouldn’t miss a show in Ohio—wherever they were.”

Rowland felt a strong affinity for bands like the Buffalo Killers, but he’d never done his own tour—not even locally. His wife (and bandmate), percussionist Sarah Jones, has been on tour forever, but he never got introduced to any type of gigging lifestyle until he joined Styles’ band and traveled the world with each other. But being lead guitarist for the biggest pop star on the planet doesn’t make you immune to the occasional rib about your show-playing history. “We laugh at me never having toured in a van. It’s just straight to the big fat tour bus,” Rowland says. “But I’ll always remember being 20 or 21 and obsessed over these Ohio bands and being like, ‘If I could just be good enough to be them, that would be great.’ I never dreamed big beyond that, because I thought that what was in front of me was the best thing.”

10 years ago, Rowland left Ohio for Los Angeles—a migration that, despite my affection for the Buckeye State, I fully support, especially given where that move has gotten him at this point. When he made it to the West Coast, his music career stalled initially, as he was doing odd jobs around the city for three years before getting connected with Styles through his friend and housemate Ryan Nasci, who played on Harry Styles back in 2017. Despite that idle period in his life, at least musically, there were no considerations of retreating back east or going to someplace more manageable. “I wasn’t writing goals down, but I never thought of leaving,” he tells me. I was going around, figuring stuff out for three years. It felt like it was at least 10, though—if you’ve been anywhere in life that’s made you feel like time is just molasses. I was applying to jobs all around LA, and I couldn’t even get hired as a dishwasher anywhere, because I had no experience.”

When he first went west, Jeni’s contacted him and offered him a gig where he would go to every grocery store in the city—from Orange County to LA—every week and handing out samples of ice cream in the frozen aisles. Rowland did that for a good bit, until one of his friends knew the owners of TOWN Pizza in Highland Park and found an in for him. “They said, ‘Do you want a job?’ and I said, ‘No, just let me be comfortably miserable, because I don’t need to change anything. I’m used to what I’m doing.’ I think I must have slept on it for a week and I said, ‘Are they still hiring?’” While he was taking on that dishwashing job, Rowland spent a lot of time in the company of other musicians who’d been gigging around the local scene much longer than he had—but he wasn’t so caught up with jumping the line or getting his shot at something bigger right away. “I thought I was younger than most of the people and that, maybe, it just takes a long time—because I was working with a lot of people who had bands playing at cool places,” he adds. “But some of them were 10, 12 years older than me. I just thought, ‘Well, that’s the way it goes. What else am I gonna do?’ It wasn’t the worst time by any stretch, it was exciting to be somewhere that I didn’t really have a grasp on.”

The songs on Come June are balmy, finespun and beautiful, tapping into a convergence of Laurel Canyon psychedelia (“Bluebells”), the moving, atmospheric and harmonious singing spirit of Sufjan Stevens (“When It All Falls Down”) and the singer/songwriter peculiarities of a musician like Elliott Smith (“Illusionist”). It makes sense that Rowland’s trajectory would shine like this, as songs he wrote with Styles—like “From the Dining Table,” “Canyon Moon” and “Keep Driving”—all tap into a similar kind of mode and tonal color palette. Styles comes from a boy band background, but you can hear the influences of Nick Drake in his song construction, the bravado of the Rolling Stones in his affectations. The Smith connection makes sense (producer Rob Schnapf was a producer on four of Elliott’s records, including XO and Figure 8), but only in spirit—as Rowland had never listened to his work until recently, long after the framework of Come June was built. “The only thing I knew about him was his ending,” he notes. “I could never, growing up, see beyond that.” And, on top of that, he wasn’t familiar with Schnapf’s catalog, either—having only become familiar with the producer because Jones was working with him and Kurt Vile on Vile’s last album, (watch my moves).

“[Sarah] said, ‘Oh, you would really like this guy. You should make your record with him.’ I had never listened to Elliott Smith, so all that stuff really helped me be in a room with someone and not be a fan. There’s no reason for me to be a fan. I knew he’d done the last handful of Kurt albums, but I just saw him as a guy who’d done this loads and loads of times,” Rowland explains. “I just trusted who he was, and I liked him a lot. What he made was secondary to just hanging out—which was easy. But it’s really strange, I would play my first couple of demos to people and they would say, ‘Oh, it sounds like Elliott Smith.’ I didn’t know what that meant, other than ‘Well, I’ll take that as a compliment, because I think they mean it as a compliment.’ I’ve now gotten into Elliott and, wow, what an amazing songwriter. Obviously—I’m the last one to find out.” The same thing happened when Rowland first met Styles, if you can believe that he wasn’t a Directioner at any point in his lifetime. He knew the name but not the face or the music.

Come June is a pure melodic bliss made by somebody who’s been rewarded for his pop inclinations on the highest scale. One thing Rowland has pulled from his collaborators is efficiency and self-trust. “The thing I always found impressive is that they work really fast,” he says. “Even if they don’t really know what they’re doing, if we’re just chucking shit at the wall—Harry’s made records before, he’s really good at being decisive. He just has the confidence to say ‘Let’s go there’ and not be fearful of trying things and trusting the process with the people that are around him, including me. He didn’t need to make music with me. I had nothing, I didn’t even have a resume. But he trusted a feeling, which is also another thing to take note of if you’re anyone. I don’t know what it’s like to do co-writing with very many other people, especially with someone of his caliber, but he let me do a lot of driving.”

When building a bridge between his solo work and his writing with Styles, he talks about the creation of their song “Only Angel,” which Rowland wrote after listening to Vile’s Wakin on a Pretty Daze. The tempo of both was the same, and Rowland employed a lot of guitar—stacking a chorus pedal on top of a phaser on top of a reverb pedal. In his head, he was Vile in 2013. “Then, someone said, in the room with Harry, ‘Let’s make a rock song, let’s get away from the acoustic guitars and make something fun that we want to turn up.’ And I pulled this voice note, which was my fake Kurt Vile song, and we sped it up and it turned into ‘Only Angel.’ Sometimes, songs just happen in the moment and a spark happens in the room. Other times, it’s like, ‘Huh, what have I got on the workbench?’ You never know what’s going to happen. With ‘From the Dining Table,’ it was just me and Harry sat at the table. I tuned my guitar down real low, almost like a baritone. That song isn’t that far off from the songs on Come June. Maybe that’s my sweet spot.”

The sketches of Come June came together four years ago, but Rowland couldn’t flesh them out—because he was doing a big, global tour with Styles. And then, once COVID hit, he was able to be at home (splitting time between Los Angeles and the UK with Jones) and pick the work back up. They were always demos, but Rowland was treating them like they would become the first songs he would ever release on his own. “I was having a friend mix them. I was, for the most part, tracking myself but really aiming for performances that I wanted people to hear,” he says. Upon meeting Schnapf, he knew immediately that he was going to start abandoning the minimalist box that the songs had started out in. He wrote the standout track “Here Comes the Comeback” and, after sending it to Styles, the two musicians debated back and forth on which one of them should record it. “I was like, ‘This couldn’t possibly be for me, because it’s filled out and there’s a drum beat on it,’” Rowland adds. “Months go by and I think, ‘Well, before you shit on your own song, maybe there’s room to explore that side, and the record could be more about that as well.’ Getting in with Rob, I was open to anything.”

Rowland’s career path has taken a glowing turn in 2023. He won the biggest Grammy Award before even putting out a solo record, an anomaly in modern music. In turn, it wouldn’t be much of a surprise if seizing such an accomplishment added any heavier expectations for Rowland, especially when it came time to enter the space of his own music—but it was fully the opposite. “It’s not something I ever wanted to win or experience,” he admits. “This goes back to me being in the front of a bar show, watching bands [like Buffalo Killers]. It doesn’t even come into my world. It’s a funny one, because my inspiration for this record was to go the opposite direction of the world I’ve been living in—which is a lot of production. I didn’t realize, in the beginning, that I was making a record. I just wanted to make little songs. And I thought that me putting out a record, the songs are just gonna be vocal and acoustic—much like a José Gonzalez record. I love Bert Jansch and that’s something he would do, just minimal. No production. To chuck a Grammy in there is kind of funny. Music and awards, I’ll take it. I’m proud of what we did, with or without the award. There’s a lot of non-musicians in music that that thing is shinier to than, maybe, the musicians themselves.”

Working with Schnapf has opened him up to the world of collaborating more than ever. When Rowland had just moved out to Los Angeles, Nasci was going to school for audio engineering and would scribble out ideas with him and experiment with mic placements. As a result, Rowland got to find comfort in being in front of a microphone and draft the groundwork for him being able to go into a studio with a pop star and feel at home and in possession of some confidence. “Those years of practicing or recording to a click, or doubling a vocal or doubling a guitar part—I didn’t really see it as much at the time, but that was pretty important. Looking back, it made me prepared. Every time Rob and I would open up a new song, I’d say “If you hear something and you think we should add something or subtract something, I want to go there.”

Though Rowland has been the benefactor of luck and, often, being in the right place at the right time, the songs on Come June are products of a long, patient process and many intervals of writing, demoing and producing. He spends ages perfecting his songs, and the intricacies on the record are subtle yet hypnotic and beautiful—with open tuning styles and distillations of introspective, thoughtful storytelling and imagery that both chart backwards nearly 20 years, back to when he was a musical scholar discovering the hand movements of Rich Robinson and Nick Drake. When he was still living in Columbus, Mitch Rowland was just playing guitar in a room by himself, trying to unlock his songwriting. Even with a gilded phonograph or two sitting on his mantle, that’s still what he’s doing in 2023. And that’s what you can see unfold across Come June: A musician who, even as he stands at the top of the mountain, is still considering each step he took to climb all the way up there.

Matt Mitchell reports as Paste‘s music editor from their home in Columbus, Ohio.