:: Robby Roadsteamer - An article ::

Robby Roadsteamer working on cure for death By Brett McCabe

After being dropped from Mass Appeal, a subsidiary of Universal Records, almost as quickly as he was picked up, North Shore comedian and musician Robby Roadsteamer wouldn’t let that stop him. He continued on right back where he started, but this time with an entirely new outlook on life, music and society. With a new album due in December, Robby’s prepared to take on New England from a whole new angle. Influenced by Bill Hicks, Denis Leary, Andrew Dice Clay and George Carlin at a young age, Robby Roadsteamer was on the road to make people laugh before he even knew it. His website features a regularly updated "sh*tcom" and he is a part time DJ on 104.1 WBCN. With his backing band, he is best known for the single "I Put a Baby in You," which got airplay on over 200 radio stations in the U.S. and the video was featured on VH1.

After deciding to drop his character act, which was his version of Andy Kaufman’s Tony Clifton, Roadsteamer is ready to reveal to the world the real person under the wig and sunglasses. Just releasing the album "I'll Be at Your Funeral" (described as a concept album about dinosaurs, Nintendo and the North Shore) this past summer, Roadsteamer has already finished recording his latest album, this time without the help of his band. The new album, “L.R.P” is Robby Roadsteamer unplugged and will be released in every Newbury Comics branch on Tuesday, December 4. I met up with the Masshole at a bar in his current residence of Allston Rock City to talk to him about the new album and see what his favorite 80’s action movie was. Brandishing his Boston accent, he describes what it’s like to put a mask on every day for work, what society really thinks of artists and music today. “Hi, I’m Robby Roadsteamer. This song’s about video games.”

The last time Roadsteamer performed with an acoustic guitar in a public setting was at the Comedy Connection in 2000 and it was a disaster. Comedian Steve Sweeny went on stage first and killed. During Roadsteamer’s turn on stage, he had to close his eyes just to finish off the set. His fragility is what led to developing his stage persona. “Personally, I did it because I was scared. Those sunglasses were the best because my eyes, you can tell when I’m nervous, angry, sad, everything.” “Sup? Yeah, we write songs about cocaine and dicks.” Earlier in his career, Robby wrote songs to make people laugh. To name a few, many with his former band the Sweatpant Boners, there are, “I Put a Baby In You,” “Fire!,” “Save Your Virginity,” “Shower Games.”

But with support from his friend Reverend Glasseye (who beat him in the 2005 WBCN Rock’n’roll Rumble), Roadsteamer finally completed his goal of recording an acoustic album, which wasn’t based on just making people laugh. However, instead of going James Taylor on his fans, the new album features more cynical, thought-provoking lyrics. After doing his first solo acoustic gig in years, Roadsteamer grabbed the sound engineer from the club to drag to New Line Studios in Cambridge. “Dude, you wanna record an album with me? ASAP? Life’s too short?” Next to his Yankee vanilla cupcake candle, Roadsteamer sat down in the studio, refusing to wear headphones, and played the way he does when he is in his own bedroom for eight hours straight.

The new album boasts song titles such as “New Hampshire: Live Free or Sigh” and “The Marijuana Train.” Roadsteamer sung some of the lyrics to the latter for me: “Well I wake up in the morning and I put my mask on/And fake it for the norm/All day long/I talk to customers, my life is f*ckin’ dirt/My life is f*ckin’ dirt/Sell another shirt…/I’m leavin’ tonight…(laughs)” Roadsteamer went on to explain more about artist development: “It’s still in a comedic sense, but the fact of it is, being an artist, what are you supposed to do? You’re supposed to reflect what you see, what you feel, what you perceive. I think a lot of that is lost on the musician today. Music today is what would sound good in the back of a party, what looks great on TV. And that’s what is perpetuated as success because nobody wants anybody to say what they say anymore. Because who knows.

Maybe people could start coming out like ‘WOW, maybe nine to five, dying at eighty with a 401k isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Maybe I was capable of doing more.’ “I look at it like we’re all wearing a mask. We wake up in the morning, we go to work. We put on our work mask. We’re not really ourselves, ya know. You work at your job… We don’t wanna be constantly fighting with other people. “People only mind a bad day at work, for example. There’s stuff that triggers it. There’s stuff in your own head. There’s stuff to make you perceive you are having a bad day at work. It’s also mindfulness. It’s like saying we work retail and I come up to you and I’m like ‘Sir, this coffee is a piece of sh*t. It tastes like crap.’ Now there’s two ways you can look at that person: ‘I don’t care, it’s a f*cking coffee. Shove it up your f*ckin’ a**.’ Or you can be like: Oh man, this person’s really attached to coffee. Wow. All right, well this is my job. I’m being paid to do this. I mean, I’m going to be doing this no matter what for nine hours anyway, I might as well…It’s all how you look at everything.”

Robby Roadsteamer is not a fan of sitcoms or typical Hollywood movies. Praising Arrested Development for being so different, that’s exactly the reason why it didn’t last more than three seasons. “People don’t want that. People want [expletive] a situational comedy where it’s not even situational because, I’ll tell you right now, I don’t know a situation that exists like those [expletive] shows.”

Predictability isn’t only common on television but in film as well. “Why don’t they make a Spider-man movie where Spider-man dies at the beginning of the movie and the rest of the movie is funeral arrangements or a wake. Ya know, it’d be totally [expletive] up! They wouldn’t show a trailer for it, you’d have no idea, you just go to the Spider-man movie and in the beginning five minutes Toby McGuire dies. It’s like, what the [expletive]! And then you think it’s some weird thing, like in the middle of the movie they get a serum. No- There’s a wake, then they bury him. And then Kirsten Dunst’s characters cries for the rest of the movie. And at the end of the movie Kirsten Dunst realizes: ‘Maybe the hero was always inside is me. Maybe I should move to the Himalayas and be a guru or a yogi.’ “Just something totally outside of the box. You’d watch the movie and be like ‘Holy [expletive]! Everything’s capable in life!’ Instead of the old ‘You’re a bad guy. You’re a good guy. Web, web, web, web. I win!’ I mean, it’s just so funny, man. I don’t think we’re even allowed to do outside the box ideas like that anymore.

“I’d love to have situational comedies where the family’s in the house and in the first two minutes a guy comes in with a machine gun, kills everybody, and the rest of the situational comedy is how he lives in the house and tries to pretend he’s the family and then sets up some sort of drug ring. Stating reality television to be lacking in the “reality” category, Rob explains how things worked on his appearance on NESN’s dating show “Sox Appeal.” “I had to go up with three girls and have a date. Well, I would have never dated these girls in real life. And they kept feeding me questions to say and they kept telling me what they wanted me to do. If that’s just a little taste of small town reality TV, imagine what they do on Survivor, imagine what they do on American Idol. I mean, it’s just scary. But, what are you gonna do? I write songs.”

When asked about what music he’s currently listening to Robby replied: “Favorite right now hands down without a doubt: Elliot smith. The [expletive] he wrote it was like feeling like I was in a cell at some prison and someone wrote his name, like ‘been there, done that.’ And then, actually this past summer, I had his last album that they released after he died, “From a Basement on the Hill.” Just jaw dropping. Like, just the [expletive] he was saying you could tell he wasn’t in a good space. It’s really sad but at the same time amicable that a lot of the best art that you’ll ever see or hear… I wouldn’t even say miserable, when they’re not afraid to hold back anymore. When that line is no longer there. I listen to it… and there’s no happy ending. He’s not somewhere out in LA writing another album. It’s like, whoa. That still hits me like a fast ball.”

In the movie “Fight Club” there’s a scene where the two main characters walk into a convenience store and hold a gun to the cashier’s head and say: “If you could do one last thing what would you do?” “I always wanted to be a veterinarian!” That’s similar to what Robby experienced while tripping on mushrooms. “When I was on ‘shrooms one time I always thought I was gonna die. I always thought ‘If I’m gonna die what would I wanna do?’ I think my joy came on once I realized ‘I wanna be a singer. I wanna write something. I wanna write something really great.’ Then I realized I wasn’t gonna die and there’s that ecstasy level ‘I could actually write this out. I’m gonna do this! This is great! I love life! Lookit the TREES!!’”

Two years ago Robby stopped looking at sales on iTunes and started looking at the people around him. “I LOVE Massachusetts. Bill Hicks actually has a funny thing about this ‘I notice people when they get a vacation from work, always go on a plane trip somewhere. Why don’t you take a vacation in the life you chose? Why are you paying a lot of money for a travel agent to travel far away from the life that YOU chose for yourself?’ And it’s true, man. There’s something to be said to actually wake up in the morning and being like ‘Wow. You know what, man? I’m really psyched at the decisions I’ve made, I’m really happy with the people around me I love and I’m really happy with the life I chose.’”

It’s safe to say that Robby Roadsteamer is finally comfortable in his own skin. Putting his legs up and leaning back in the booth at the bar, Robby describes not regretting abandoning the character he used to play on stage. Calling it his version of Andy Kaufman, he pissed off a lot of people, but it never reached outside of Boston. So who cares? Having a bunch of different phases no one ever knows about won’t matter after he dies since people will just muddle with his Wikipedia.

Using the bad days to drive creativity, Robby will write a song, write a blog, or make a video. After it goes up on YouTube, the regular fans give it the usual 200 hits. “I have to wave my dinky around and sing some 311 song to get more.” But it’s not about that. It’s about someone later coming up to Robby and asking him: “Dude, were you trying to say this with it?” To which Robby will agree, happily. “When you get used to your body and your spirit, you’ll find there’s gonna be a lot of people out there that wanna hear what you have to say.”