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Meet Rebekah Rolland in Tucson

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Today we’d like to introduce you to Rebekah Rolland.

So, before we jump into specific questions about the business, why don’t you give us some details about you and your story.
Both my parents were from musical families and I grew surrounded on all sides by it. My introduction to folk and roots music came pretty early on — my grandpa was a bluegrass festival promoter and my grandparents started taking me and my sister to bluegrass festivals when I was a toddler. My mom and her sisters grew up singing gospel music together in three-part harmony and my sister and I just sort of soaked that up from the time we were little. We also grew up going to the Arizona State Fiddle Contest and that was another critical piece of my musical development. I met a lot of other young musicians there, including my husband and musical partner, Matt. Those festivals were built around a culture of jamming and song-swapping and it was incredibly inspiring and stimulating for me to be in that environment as a young musician. Matt and I were both songwriters, as well, and we reconnected in college with a really strong desire to form a band and focused on developing and arranging a collection of originals written by me, Matt, and our good friend Daniel. We later founded Run Boy Run, a collaboration with my sister and his, and that took us on the road for a few years.

My latest recording project, Seed & Silo, came out of residency with the National Parks Service and is my first solo record. I’ve been writing consistently since I was a teen and I was eager to stretch my muscles as a songwriter and solo artist. I spent two weeks at Homestead National Monument in Nebraska and researched and wrote about the history of homesteading in the U.S. In the months afterward, I poured myself into the entire writing, arrangement, production, and recording process and it was probably one of the most challenging and satisfying professional experiences I’ve had up to this point. It’s got me eager to do as much more of it as possible in the coming years.

We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc. – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
It’s been relatively smooth, all things considered, but there have been some rocky points. The issue of time and where to spend it is a continual challenge. The last few years have been a balancing act of figuring out how much time to spend touring, how much time to spend at home, how much time to spend working, and how much time to devote to artistic development, the payoffs of which don’t materialize immediately. I didn’t study music in college, nor did I intend to pursue it after graduating — I craved it, but everything I did musically at the time was for fun. I was definitely hungry to play as much as possible, though, and pursuing summer festival and weekend gigs, and had a couple of “breaks” with Run Boy Run and that led us into the industry and out on the road. I was teaching high school English at the time and left my job at the end of the school year, and just said, “Alright, I’m going to just ride the wave for a while and see where it takes me.” It was, ultimately, really great and rewarding and laid an incredible foundation for future pursuits.

But I got a bit of a late start on the whole thing, in a way. I often wonder what would’ve happened if, at 18, I’d been really deliberate about it and had said, “I’m going to study music, graduate, perform full-time, write as much as possible, tour as much as possible.” I try not to dwell too much on that, but I’ve been rolling that around a lot recently. You start to become hyper-aware of how very valuable time is and the extent to which it can be limiting, and how challenging it can be to determine where to allot your time. I’m still figuring out this puzzle as an artist and am appreciating, more than ever, how much grit and persistence and investment it takes to make a career out of it.

So let’s switch gears a bit and go into the Rebekah Rolland story. Tell us more about the business.
I self-identify as a songwriter more than anything else and I think that, between earlier musical projects and the current one, this has become an integral part of my brand as an artist. I studied English and my favorite songwriters are those with a literary bent and those that write in colorful, unconventional, and challenging styles — Sam Beam of Iron & Wine, Gillian Welch, Bob Dylan, and Aoife O’Donovan (just to name a few) fall into this category for me. Literature has a long tradition of observing, critiquing, challenging, and, of course, celebrating the milieu of a given time and place, and I think music plays a similar role. I want mine to acquaint people with very specific people and places, and I want the experience to be intimate, meaningful, and challenging. This is what my favorite writers, songwriters and otherwise, have done for me.

Has luck played a meaningful role in your life and business?
Looking back, a lot of what happened seems really lucky; but I think that there’s a positive correlation between luck and effort. Run Boy Run won the Telluride Band Competition, putting us on the national scene, and then we landed a couple of spots on A Prairie Home Companion. Both of these felt incredibly lucky and moved our careers along in really significant ways. The National Parks residency has had a similar effect in my experience as a solo artist. But I think that breaks like these often happen when you’re poised and ready for them to happen, and you’ve put yourself in an advantageous position through years of hard work.

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Image Credit:
Aubreigh Brunschwig, Amy Martell

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