Name: Rockie Lynne
Occupation: Pianist, composer, improviser
Nationality: Swiss
Current release: Rockie Lynne 's new full-length album Love is out via Carolina Blue Sky Music. Watch the documentary Rockie Lynne: Where I Belong on Amazon.
Recommendations:
1.) Gary Moore: The Official Biography by Harry Shapiro. Although Harry never met Gary in person, he researched and obsessed over his life to create a beautiful, poignant and brutally honest at times picture of one of the greatest guitar players.
2.) Bruce Robison's Wrapped album.

If you enjoyed this Rockie Lynne interview and would like to keep up to date with his work and music, visit his official homepage. He is also on Instagram, and Facebook.



When I listen to music, I see shapes, objects and colors. What happens in your body when you're listening? Do you listen with your eyes open or closed?

The first time I ever heard someone play guitar, I was 4-years-old. This gentleman came to play for us kids at the orphanage. He sang "I'm going to Alabama with a banjo on my knee" and I was hypnotized, hooked and completely enthralled. I couldn't control my body as I moved to that sound coming from the old wooden box that he was strumming.

I knew from that day forward I was going to try to learn how to play the guitar. I dedicated my life and everything in it to the journey. That was a lifetime ago and still feel the same way today. From the moment I wake till I fall asleep at night, I am singing, humming, listening, learning or creating music.

Whether my eyes are open or closed I am engaged fully and completely to my mission, to follow the muse that grabbed me at four years old and has yet to release me.

Entering new worlds and escapism through music have always exerted a very strong pull on me. What do you think you are drawn to most when it comes to listening to and creating music?

In the early days of operating my studio and recording demos of my music, there was no money. Out of necessity, budget and the unquenchable desire to share my art, I taught myself to play all of the instruments I would need for my recordings as well as engineering, editing and mixing duties.

As a result, many things are inspiring to me. It can be a cool bass line that pops into my head, a rocking drum groove, a single note, a chord progression, or more often than not, a lyric. A line from a conversation overheard, a paragraph from a novel, graffiti on a bathroom wall or the sound of a bluejay announcing a new day is dawning in the charming little southern town I call home.  

What were your very first steps in music like and how would you rate the gains made through experience?

Although I had fallen in love with the guitar at four years old, I didn't get one till the summer break between my 6th and 7th grade school year. My adoptive parents were smart, hardworking, and honest folks. Being children during the great depression, compounded with difficult life circumstances, my dad had a 6th-grade education and my mom only finished the 3rd grade, both having to work to help provide for their siblings. Anything we got, we had to work for.

I took a job mowing yards that summer and earned enough cash to purchase an electric guitar from JC Penny's mail-order catalog. Having wanted a guitar for so long, dreaming of it day and night, it was quite literally a dream come true. By the middle of the 7th grade, I was playing in a band with grown men in honkytonks and bars, further watering the seeds of my flowering desire to make this passion my life.

As a result of working so hard just to get into the game, I never expected anything to come easy. That experience still is one of the greatest lessons I have learned. That this quest is going to be hard. No one is going to help you and any gains you make will be from your sweat and blood, and in retrospect, it should be hard. If it were easy, everybody would do it.


According to scientific studies, we make our deepest and most incisive musical experiences between the ages of 13-16. What did music mean to you at that age and what’s changed since then?

I respectfully submit to you that whoever made those assumptions has never stood beside a Goldstar mother at Arlington National Cemetery as her son is brought to his final resting place in a flag draped casket while the mournful refrain of "Amazing Grace" from a lone bagpiper is wafting through the tombstones bringing home the stark reality of their unchangeable circumstance.

That being said, every teacher comment on my 7th grade report card is "All Rockie ever does is draw pictures of the band Kiss."


How would you describe your own relationship with your instrument, tools or equipment?

I am a student of music. I never want to think "I've got this" or feel like I don't have a lifetime of learning to go. I feel as if every day I have to practice, put the time in, and be respectful of the ones who came before me and paved the way for a poor kid from an Orphanage in NC to do, for a living, what I would have gladly done for free.

I want my instrument to be an extension of myself. With no discernible place where my physical body ends and my guitar begins. I want to put in the work so that, even on a bad night, my fans won't notice that I might not be firing on all cylinders.

A guitar master once said in a Guitar World interview "I want to have rehearsed so much that even on a bad night, I'm pretty good." I never leave the stage thinking that. After every show, I immediately begin the self-deprecating process of rethinking every note I just played. The tone, the choice of notes, and the relationship of the notes played to the underlying chord structure and accompanying rhythms.

All matter to me more than my next breath.


Where does the impulse to create something come from for you? What role do often-quoted sources of inspiration like dreams, other forms of art, personal relationships, politics, etc play?

Inspiration can come from anywhere if I can be open enough to accept it. My songs, lyrically, are story songs, hence the subject matter of some of my previous albums. Songs for Soldiers, Rolling Thunder and Faith are all collections of songs about what their cover titles imply. Songs about service, motorcycles and spirituality.



The new album Love is just that. It becomes a quest when faced with the challenge of writing 12 songs about a given subject but not making them cliche, repetitive or similar. For example, The song "Heavy Load" is about forgiveness.



I wrote it after a young man walked into a church in South Carolina, where he was accepted by the parishioners' and asked to join them in their worship. He shot them.

How do you find love and forgiveness from such an seemingly unforgivable act but somehow, the relatives of the deceased have. A song about "Love" from a different perspective. Inspiration from a decided uninspiring event.



Are you acting out parts of your personality in your music that you couldn't or wouldn't in your daily life? If so, which are these? What, would you say, are the key ideas behind your approach to music?

No, I am not acting out parts of my personality that I wouldn't in my daily life. I write about what I think I know, what I have lived, witnessed or experienced.

It's the same with our recordings and live performances. No tapes, no tracks, no click, no autotune, and no trickery. It is what it is.

I approach music the same way I try to do everything, with honesty, transparency, and absolutely, positively no drama. 


If music is a language, what can we communicate with it? How do you deal with misunderstandings?

I think in some ways music is more impactful than language. You don't have to know the words to a song to feel the emotion or the groove. Athletes play their favorite songs to prepare for the game. Tank crews in Iraq played heavy metal music to prepare for battle. Lovers dim the lights and play love songs whether they understand the lyrics or not.

Music moves us to our core. It shapes who we are, how we feel, and react, and what we believe. I try to open myself up to allowing music to move through me and try not to get in its way.


Making music, in the beginning, is often playful and about discovery. How do you retain a sense of playfulness and how do you still draw surprises from tools, approaches and musical forms you may be very familiar with?

In our live performances there are segments of our show that are unplanned. Jam sections where the recorded arrangements are set to the side for a period of experimentation, improvisation and ad-lib.

Any of the musicians in the band can greatly affect how these sections go by altering what they normally play. In a heavy groove song, the drums might drop out or go to a completely different dynamic level or time signature thus making everyone rethink what they play. It keeps the music fresh, not just for the band, but for the audience as well.

Inevitably, when you allow yourself to be uninhibited or restrained by conventional thought or processes, creativity flourishes. 


Sound, song, and rhythm are all around us, from animal noises to the waves of the ocean. What, if any, are some of the most moving experiences you've had with these non-human-made sounds? In how far would you describe them as “musical”?

Jackson Browne's album Running on Empty was recorded live while the band was on tour. At times you can hear the moan of the diesel engine as they recorded while the bus rambled down the highway.



The sound of the motor and transmission are decidedly non-musical noises but are embedded into our subconscious as integral parts of that collection. The rhythm of a horse galloping, the sound of a lonesome freight train or  a single raindrop on a window pane are examples of nature bringing time, groove, and melody to our world.

If only we can be still and listen for it.



There seems to be an increasing trend to capture music in algorithms, and data. But already at the time of Plato, arithmetic, geometry, and music were considered closely connected. How do you see that connection yourself? What aspects of music do you feel can be captured through numbers, and which can not?

I believe all of the advances in recording, sampling, and creating music are extremely positive. Anything that makes the creative process more accessible to everyone is a step in the right direction.

Even on some of the most artificial recordings I have heard, the artist finds a way to put their own personality on it. The human element, while imperfect, adds the perfect compliment to electronically generated sources.

Music will forever be made from different perspectives and technical proficiencies but I believe there will always be a place for the guitar player and a song.



How does the way you make music reflect the way you live your life? Can we learn lessons about life by understanding music on a deeper level?

Most people have a life with many different factions. Work, play, hobbies, love, chores etc ... My life is the opposite. My work is making music. My hobby is making music. I love making music. It is all I want to do.

I don't carve out time to create or schedule a time to practice. I schedule life around music, at whatever level I can do it. Not for money, prestige, notoriety or a higher place on the ladder in the hierarchy of what we think of as the human equation but simply for the love and respect of the muse.



We can surround us with sound every second of the day. The great pianist Glenn Gould even considered this the ultimate delight. How do you see that yourself and what importance does silence hold?

The sound of civilization flowing has become deafening to the point we are inundated with volume 24 hours a day. So much so that when the world finally slows and the TV / radio / podcasts / car horns / construction and bustle of the undertow cease, often we are taken aback by the sheer beauty of the quiet.

Silence allows us to think, ponder, and reflect from a more introspective space. I look forward every day to the end of the day. I turn my phone off and put it away, wind down listening to a vinyl record played from the power of a tube amplifier, and then ... nothing. Silence. All quiet on the western front.



Do you feel as though writing or performing a piece of music is inherently different from something like making a great cup of coffee? What do you express through music that you couldn't or wouldn't in more 'mundane' tasks?

I actually think the two are similar. learning to write music is no different than building a birdhouse or making a great cup of joe.

The first birdhouse you build probably won't be very sturdy just as the first song you write probably isn't great. If you love something and are willing to put the time, effort, research, practice and failure into becoming the best you can be at something, one day you might build a pretty nice birdhouse.


If you could make a wish for the future – what are developments in music you would like to see and hear?

I would love for original music to be widely available and easy for everyone to access and enjoy. In my perfect world, artists would be applauded for creating, rewarded for their efforts, and respected for the art they create. It wouldn't take money, connections or a rich daddy to get heard.

Young women wouldn't have to decide between the proverbial  "casting couch" or the highway. The guy that owns the PA wouldn't be the fucking singer and the greatest drummer nobody has ever heard would not be delivering door dash and living in his parent's basement. Fentanyl wouldn't be slipped into young bar musicians and their dreams, as well as their lives wouldn't get squashed out before they even had a chance.

The world would be a stage with an empty stool and everyone who sits on the stool to share their gift gets treated the same way. With respect and honor
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