Part 1

Name: Anton Roolaart
Nationality: Dutch-American
Occupation: Singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist
Current release: Anton Roolaart's new album The Ballad of General Jupiter is out January 23rd via MoonJune.
Recommendations for Amsterdam, the Netherlands: Amsterdam is a charming, open-minded, international big “town” with a deep history, and I love its history. It's 750 years old this year, and it is small as it doesn’t feel like a metropolis. My recommendation is simple: walk, wander through neighbourhoods at dusk and notice the open windows, people sitting in their living rooms with no need to close the curtains. That everyday openness is part of the city’s soul. But be aware that the Dutch people are very direct and practical, and come across cold sometimes. And also Amsterdam is not the Netherlands. If you really want to know the Netherlands you have to go to other towns.
And do this: grab fresh herring at a market (there are many), and finish by doing what Amsterdam does best: sit in a café for longer than you planned. The cafés are not just for coffee, they’re social architecture. You don’t “visit” a café here, you inhabit it.  
Topic I am passionate about but rarely get to talk about: Not sure about this question but I'll say this. The older I get the more and more I feel that the destiny for humanity revolves around the creativity that we are capable of, learning to live in harmony, and while the tech companies are trying to take over and control our lives, I think we need to really keep this human touch with our community and not just scroll away on our couches. Maybe people are already talking about this, and I do think that's the case, but I wanted to mention it.  

If you enjoyed this Anton Roolaart interview and would like to stay up to date with his music and upcoming live dates, visit his official homepage. He is also on Instagram, Facebook, bandcamp, and Soundcloud. 



Do you think that some of your earliest musical experiences planted a seed for your interest in writing lyrics or poetry? How and when did you start writing?

Ok, let’s start with my father, who was an artist.

He had a study where he spent a lot of time listening to music and painting. I still remember the huge homemade corner speaker cabinets he had built in Holland long ago, with beautiful wood inlay, each about 175 cm high. It was obvious sound quality mattered to him.

His world was strictly classical and opera, and I can still picture him painting, smoking a pipe, completely absorbed. Sometimes there was even a tear in his eye. That kind of emotional permission plants something in you.

My older brother was also a full time artist, more modern style than my father. He studied many styles, including Maxfield Parrish, Roger Dean, and others. And my mother let him paint full album covers across each wall of his bedroom: Santana's Abraxas, ELP’s Tarkus, Uriah Heep’s Demons and Wizards, and Jethro Tull’s Aqualung.



After he moved out, I got that room and it became my world for several years! Only later did I realize those walls basically foretold my future.

I started putting together guitar chords and snippets as a teenager, probably around 10th grade. But before that, I took classical guitar lessons at 12 or 13, and soon explored playing tunes from Cat Stevens, Neil Young, Beatles, Dylan, and more. I didn’t really write my own song until I was 18, a piece called “Shipwreck,” inspired by Swiss Family Robinson.

Since the 80s I’ve kept notebooks of lyrics, poems, fragments. I’m very visual, so I often see a scene first and then build the song around it. And once I get into the studio, the song evolves in delightful ways.

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

I really like the way you phrased that, because it describes me perfectly. In the context of escapism, at least the way I'm interpreting that term, I will tell you that often I wander through town observing people with a headset on listening to music that fits my mood, and I enter my own secret world. I really love that!

I don’t write songs just to “say something.” I Instinctively write to open a door. I want to hand the listener a story and offer places you can visit, however dreamy they may be. I’m drawn to that moment where reality is still in the frame, but it starts slipping into something more symbolic.

I think visually, in scenes. Sometimes it’s two people talking and everything is ordinary, but the emotional undercurrent is huge. Sometimes it’s a more abstract or fairytale version of something real, where you can still feel the truth even if the details are “fiction.”

The title track “The Plight of Lady Oona” is a good example of that approach.



“On to the Afterglow” is another: it starts in a living room with cats, and suddenly there’s a minstrel riding a leopard across the floor. That’s dream logic, but the feeling is real.



I also love poetry and have been revisiting it lately: Edgar Allen Poe, Kahil Gibran, Rumi, Charles Baudelaire. Those writers remind me that suggestion is often stronger than explanation.

I like surrealism and abstraction, but I’m always trying to land on human emotion and human interaction. I guess my writing lives at that crossroads.

What were some of the artists and albums which inspired you early on purely on the strength of their lyrics? What moves you in the lyrics of other artists?

Purely on lyrics, hmm … it’s hard for me, because the music keeps trying to jump in and claim the spotlight.

But if I focus on lyrics alone, early standouts were: Abbey Road (Beatles), Tea for the Tillerman (Cat Stevens), Ziggy Stardust (Bowie), and Dark Side of the Moon (Pink Floyd). Those records taught me that lyrics can be world-building, not just storytelling. They can be cinematic, philosophical, intimate, and still singable.

What moves me is when lyrics are honest without being literal. I like images that don’t over-explain themselves, lines that feel like they came from a real inner place. I’m drawn to writers who can be simple and devastating, or strange and precise, and somehow it still feels human.

Bowie did that brilliantly. Floyd did it in a different way. Cat Stevens had this direct emotional clarity that still hits.



And I have to mention how I learned music socially. As a teenager, friends introduced the more naive (concerning interesting rock music at the time) me to Yes, Genesis, King Crimson, and more. We’d sit around with a new album, listen closely, talk about it, then pick up guitars and jam.

Those sessions weren’t only about music, they were about learning how to listen, and learning that an album could be an entire world.

Have there been song lyrics which actually made you change (aspects of) your life? If so, what do you think, leant them that power?

Kinda hard to pinpoint a specific case. Certain writers made me feel it was okay to be complex, to be sensitive, to be contradictory, and still make something beautiful out of it.

Lyrics taught me that you can tell the truth sideways. You don’t have to write a manifesto. You can write a scene, an image, a character, and the listener finds themselves inside it.

I also think great lyrics give people language for feelings they didn’t know how to name. That’s power. It makes you less alone. It helps you be more honest with yourself.

It is sometimes said that “music begins where words end.” What do you make of that?

I relate to that saying, with a small adjustment: sometimes music begins where explanations end.

Words can point you toward meaning, but music can carry meaning without naming it. A singer can add emotion to a line in a way that changes everything. A phrase, delivered with the right breath and tone, can make you cry even if the words on paper look simple.

And then there’s what music does beyond words: harmony, tension and release, rhythm, space, volume, timbre. You can feel something before you understand it. Sometimes you never “understand” it in a logical way, but you still know it’s true.

I also would like to say that I think the visuals matter. Artwork can complement lyrics the way a film realizes a script. It gives context and direction, it helps connect the dots. But at the same time, I love the opposite experience too: close your eyes, listen, and let your own imagination build the world. Enter a new experience tuned to your inner self.

That’s the balance I aim for: enough intention to guide you, enough space for you to live inside it.

I have always considered many forms of music to be a form of poetry as well. Where do you personally see similarities? What can music express which may be out of reach for poetry?

I agree with that. For me, the similarity starts with suggestion.

Good lyrics, like good poems, don’t explain everything, they suggest the right images and let your mind complete the picture. Rhythm matters too, and repetition can work like an incantation. A line that comes back again and again isn’t just a hook, it’s a spell you’re casting on the listener.

You can hear that in my songs like “Gravity,” with the repeated “Gravity denies me,” or “The Revealing Light,” with “Come fly with me,” where the meaning deepens because it returns.



What music can do that poetry often can’t is physical. Harmony, melody, timbre, and volume can carry emotion without naming it. A single chord change can create a feeling that would take paragraphs to describe. Music also has time built into it: tension and release, breath and pace, the way a phrase lands on a note or hangs in the air.

That’s why I love writing what I call dream realism, because the sound can build the place and the lyric can furnish it. Sometimes the music tells the truth before the words even arrive. And of course, instrumentals prove the point: no words, but you still travel.

The relationship between words and music has always intrigued me. How do you see it? In how far can music take you to places with your writing you would possibly not have visited without it?

I think about film scores a lot. You can have a great script, but the score can pull you into an emotional world the words alone can’t reach. I see songs the same way. Lyrics can frame the scene, but the music tells you how to feel the air in that scene.

In my process, music often opens doors that my writing wouldn’t open by itself. A chord progression can suggest a landscape. A rhythm can suggest a character. A vocal melody can change the meaning of a line. Sometimes the lyric is the furniture, but the music is the architecture. That’s why I like “places you can visit” as a description. The music is literally the transport.

Take “On to the Afterglow”: the lyric has domestic details, but the music gives it that drifting, searching quality. Or “Gravity”: the chorus is almost brutally simple, but the music makes it feel like longing, weight, resistance, and wonder all at once. Words and music aren’t competing, they’re collaborating to create a third language.