The Minnesota-based singer/songwriter/guitarist talks about the digital release of three albums and plans for a new one.
The Minnesota-based singer/songwriter/guitarist talks about the digital release of three albums and plans for a new one.
Colin Roy Monette. Photo credit unknown.
Colin Roy Monette is a guitarist, music teacher, singer-songwriter and performer on the local Twin Cities scene with some recent album releases and plans for another one in 2024. I met up with Colin to learn more about his career and catalog and what�s on the horizon for this blues/jazz/Americana artist.
Carol Roth: I know you�ve been in the Twin Cities music community for quite a while. Were you born and raised in Minnesota?
Colin Roy Monette: I was born on an Indian reservation in North Dakota, so I�m an enrolled member of Turtle Mountain Chippewa Tribe. I grew up there and then moved to a small town also in North Dakota. I came to the Twin Cities in 2001 for college and got a degree in music, and I�ve been here ever since.
CR: What�s your career been like here in the Cities?
CM: I�m part of a little Americana music scene here where I play with my band, Spaghetti Monetti, and a couple other groups and songwriters. I guess I�m somewhat of a for-hire guitarist and have been for many years. I�ve always written my own music too, but it wasn�t until the past five years that I started to identify as a songwriter. It�s almost a problem how much music I create because I can�t keep up with putting it out there. I end up kind of feeling a little behind!
CR: Speaking of, I know you recently released a couple albums. Can you talk about them?
CM: This month I�ve put out three albums: Maudlin (Slight Return), which is an updated rerelease of my 2006 debut album; my 2021 album Lucky*; and an album I released this past summer, Music Is Medicine 20/20. I printed these albums to CD when they first came out but never put them on the internet. They�re now available on Bandcamp and all major music streaming platforms.
CR: What prompted you to digitally release all three now?
CM: I don't know if it's because we�re nearing the end of the year, but I realized I needed to put all these out to kind of let people know what I�m up to. In a way they�re old news to me, but new to everybody else because they�d only existed in CD form. Now it�s all in the digital world where everybody can hear it, and hopefully they�ll dig on it and be inspired by it.
Another reason is I�ve finished another album this year that�s gonna come out in 2024. So I thought this was the time to get these out there. I feel like I had to almost go backwards to go forward.
CR: Let�s talk about the earliest album first. You say it was an update of an earlier record?
CM: That�s right. The original was my first album entitled Maudlin, which I released in 2006, an eclectic mix of my tunes recorded completely on my own. It had never been properly mixed and mastered, but recently one of the more well-known songs on the album, �Hopeless Man,� was mastered. I recorded a Native American drum group and singers and added them to the song for a music video that a former guitar student of mine made for me. It�s superbly done. After making the video I felt the need to have the entire album mastered by professional audio engineers. For the album I entitled the updated song �Hopeless Man (Slight Return),� so I decided to call the album Maudlin (Slight Return).
CR: Your next album was first released in 2021. What�s the story behind Lucky* [pronounced �Lucky Star�]?
CM: Lucky* consists of approximately 12 years of recordings that I finally decided was an album�s worth of tunes. I really like the album; there�s a cohesive thing going on throughout, but every song is different.
CR: I thought it was interesting too. There is a cohesive feel but I�m hearing a lot of different sounds, including really strong country blues, pre-war blues influences and some 60s-era folk rock style. What are some of your inspirations or musical heroes that helped create this album?
CM: One album that inspired me is Raising Sand, the Robert Plant/Allison Krauss album that T Bone Burnett produced with an A-list of studio musicians, including Marc Ribot on guitar. I also really love Bob Dylan. Our birthdays are one day apart; that means we�re both Geminis, and I think we�re afflicted with some of the same issues. I love how prolific Bob is. Also I�ve always thought if Bob Dylan can play the harmonica, anybody can. I mean that in the best way; he can inspire anybody to ramble for a while. One song on the album is inspired by his verses�they just keep going, you know what I mean? He�s not a two-verse kind of a guy. And that�s kind of what I feel like too.
Also, when I started to think I should work at developing my voice more, I thought, well, if Bob Dylan can do it, I can too. And that�s kind of where I started getting into singing more and realizing that I like my singing, where I used to be extremely critical of it and not even want to do it in front of anybody. I mean, you can hear his melodies; they�re really quite beautiful.
CR: It�s true; he�s such a good example of how you may not fit certain traditional standards as a singer, and yet he�s got something arresting that people are really drawn to, big time. And there is artistry to how he uses his voice. It�s an instrument he uses smartly.
CM: A Dylan album that really inspired me was Modern Times. It�s one of my favorites because I love the blues and it has this overarching blues feel throughout the whole thing. And there�s guitars all over the place, which I really love. That�s partly what inspired me to go into the recording studio. There�s some bluesy songs on my Lucky* album, and I really tried to sound a bit like that record. It�s about traditional, good tones, and fulfilling the song�actually finding parts that work for it as opposed to just playing riffs.
Colin Roy Monette�s Lucky* album artwork.
CR: I�m always so fascinated by the recording process because it�s capturing a moment in music�s evolution and sort of crystallizing it. There�s usually some really interesting stories that come out of the studio.
CM: Yeah, there�s nothing like going into the studio to make you realize what works and what doesn�t. I just love being in recording studios. It�s my favorite place to be really, because it�s all about the music and there's just so much to it. One thing to remember is to not beat yourself up too much about that time and place. I�ve learned that because I�m a harsh critic of myself. I mean, I didn�t release Lucky* for 10 years because I just didn�t like some of the performances and then I realized, well, that's what it was like then, so I gotta move on.
CR: That�s a good segue to move on to your third album, Music is Medicine 20/20.
CM: During 2020 when everybody was locked down, that was such a hard time for so many people, but to me it was like a major gift. I was so happy about it, because I didn�t have to look at the time and could just play my music however I wanted at the pace I wanted to. I got really into physical health and mental health, and I�ve always said music is medicine, but it truly became something that helped me in an immense way to get through what was considered to be a really hard time. That�s what this album is all about.
I was using voice memos on my phone to get things down quick, and I realized that I really enjoyed those recordings. They�re kind of vulnerable and slightly imperfect, but the sound quality was remarkable. So I started to take recording with my voice memos more seriously and try to get good sounds. I got a lot of really good takes, and I decided that�s gonna be an album. I sent them to Tony Willamette over at Minnehaha Recording Company. It�s a really great studio. and he�s a super pro.
When you record a voice memo, it�s a mono track, so he created a pseudo-stereo track and mixed them and made them sound bigger, and did a tiny bit of editing. I really loved the result, but there�s not much to them because they were recorded digitally. I wanted to see what would happen if I put all the songs through an analog tape machine. So I took that idea to Kris Johnson at Flowers Studio, who�s a fantastic recording engineer. It seemed like a crazy idea, but we ran the tracks through the two-inch tape machine, and it made them sound bigger and better.
CR: I�ve definitely heard of demos becoming the final album versions of songs, but I�m pretty sure I�ve never heard of them coming from a voice memo!
CM: It was amazing. I started using voice memos because I never really learned how to use a computer recording program, but I can play my guitar, so I decided to focus my energy on playing and writing and leave the recording stuff to the experts. I wanted to see what these guys could do and it was really impressive. I learned I can record anywhere I am, practically, and get a pretty good take. That�s what I aim for, to put on a good performance and hopefully capture it. I�d like to somehow get this over to Apple, let them know what�s possible.
CR: It does make me wonder if there are other people doing that as well.
CM: I think so. I�m sure I�m not the only one. That�s one of my favorite things about the pandemic: People started having to get real with themselves, about what matters and what�s more important. The whole concept of Music Is Medicine 20/20 is about making use of what you have instead of thinking about what you don�t have. Instead of worrying about something that�s out of your control, try to think about what you can control. When you start doing that, you realize there�s so many things you are in control of. That�s what inspired this album, doing the best you can with what you have.
That carries into the instruments, the guitars that I play. I have these really cool old Harmony guitars that you could almost consider to be junkers, but they sound so great. I have somewhat of an addiction to guitars; I�ve got quite a few. They�re not worth much, but to me they�re valuable for their songs, and they make you play them differently and approach music differently. I started creating these tunes with these cool old guitars and realizing it doesn't get any better than that.
CR: Did you use older guitars on your other albums?
CM: Lucky* features an old Gretsch guitar that�s kind of been my main guitar forever. You�re gonna hear it on just about every song. It�s got this thick sound. I like older music, so I wanna have the older sound. It made sense to get into playing vintage guitars so my music sounds more like it�s actually coming from that era. And in the studio, we�ll use traditional mics and vintage equipment.
CR: I love that, and the idea of revisiting and renewing music too. Now that everything�s finally out there on streaming, do you have any plans to celebrate these releases?
CM: There�s no official release concert. My band Spaghetti Monetti is really awesome, and that�s the main way to see me play these songs. We play at Boom Island Brewing in Minnetonka the last Saturday of every month.
It�s fun to have a recording that shows how your songs were at one point, but they inevitably evolve. I�ve got a really cool band and it�s a delight to bring my original material to them. It�s fun to see which ones stick. �Lucky*,� the 13th track on that album, has grown and developed with my band. It�s our closing song, sort of one of our anthems.
CR: What are your upcoming plans; what else are you working on?
CM: I just finished recording my new album, Simple Gifts, a few weeks ago at Flowers Studio. I�m gonna put it out pretty early 2024. The songs are jazzy, singer-songwriter, Americana anthems that I wrote, some older, some brand new. It�s more hi-fi than my others but it�s also got a vintage sound to it.
It�s not entirely a solo album, which is a departure for me. I had a couple consummate professional musicians, a bass player and a percussionist, come in and record on five of the tracks. I usually like taking time to meditate on things instead of making a quick decision, but in this case, it happened pretty quickly. I got this idea right before going into the studio the next week, so I called them up and a couple hours later, they both said yes.
The next Tuesday we hit the studio and, I mean, these guys, they got it! I got to be more of an engineer; I didn�t play, I just told them what I had in mind. Usually you�d lay down the bass and percussion first, but they played along with my tracks and really helped tie them together. So you�re gonna hear some upright bass and washboard on this album.
CR: Was the washboard player Mikkel Beckman?
CM: Yeah! I was like, if there�s anyone who can just seamlessly work themselves into somebody else�s music, it's him. It happened so smoothly, exactly how I pictured it.
CR: I�ve seen him do that with so many people. It�s crazy.
CM: I know. And it�s kind of the soundtrack of Minneapolis, that washboard sound of his.
CR: Yeah, he's one of my heroes for sure. Who plays bass on the album?
CM: His name is Bruce Morrow, but I call him Checkpoint Charlie. We�ve played together often over 15 years or so. When the idea came to me that it might be nice to hear some upright acoustic bass on some of the tracks, I knew Bruce would do a nice job, and he did.
CR: I�m excited to hear it! Anything else you want to mention?
CM: Just that I hope folks dig on my older stuff and get caught up on my most current material. I�m looking forward to sharing my new album soon!
Lucky* by Colin Roy Monette Artist�s WebsiteABOUT THE AUTHOR
Carol Roth. Photo credit: Dan Lee.
Carol Roth is the primary writer, social media manager, podcast producer and event-calendar updater for Adventures in Americana. By day she�s a marketing writer/brand strategist. In addition to playing guitar and songwriting, she writes self-proclaimed �trashy� novels under the pseudonym T.A. Berkeley.
