BGS 5+5: Clint Roberts

Artist: Clint Roberts
Hometown: Brevard, North Carolina
Latest album: ROSE SONGS (February 26, 2021)

Which elements of nature do you spend the most time with and how do those impact your work?

I always have been, and probably will always be, a mountain boy. I’ve lived in Western North Carolina for 90% of my life, all of that time between Brevard, Asheville, and Boone. Mountains are deeply inspiring and meditative for me, perfect for stewing lyrical ideas or song narratives in my mind. I trail run a fair amount, and that’s always a good time for me to listen to my demos and do lyrical gymnastics with them, or simply listen to other people’s music and try to get lost in it. I’ll never know to what extent my environment informs my process, but I imagine these mountains give me a lot.

What was the first moment that you knew you wanted to be a musician?

Prior to finding songwriting in early high school, I wasn’t sure what I really wanted to do with my life. I felt like a fish being asked to climb a tree in the areas of school sports, Boy Scouts, and the various other middle school activities that kids are often herded into. The moment I learned four chords on a ukulele in 9th grade, I started writing songs. And soon after I would decide that performing my songs is what I wanted to do with my life. The process was and still is addicting, and at the time it was one of the first times I can remember hearing validation from other people that I was good at something. So between my own love for it and hearing friends and even strangers tell me that I had a shot, I decided to go that route.

What’s the toughest time you ever had writing a song?

There’s a song on my upcoming record (ROSE SONGS) that took roughly five years to finish. That’s not to say that I spent each day of that time slaving away at it, but rather, that I didn’t know what I wanted to do with it until that much time had passed. The first verse and chorus were written in a day, the rest of the song was finished about five years later. It was a song that always hung out in my demos, always reminding me that one day it had to be finished. I’m really glad I did, because it’s one of the songs and recordings on the album that I’m most proud of.

What other art forms — literature, film, dance, painting, etc — inform your music?

Film informs my process a lot. I’ve occasionally written songs from the perspective of different characters in movies that I like. The aesthetic or setting of a given film can very potently reside in my mind, often subconsciously informing my creativity. I particularly like epics that have a lot of different fantastical settings, like The Dark Crystal and The NeverEnding Story. When curating the songs for a record, I try to keep my song choices diverse like the settings of such movies, so that no one given song feels quite like the other.

What’s your favorite memory from being on stage?

This isn’t quite a stage memory but it’s a backstage memory. I’m friends with members of Steep Canyon Rangers, a band that many of your readers are probably aware of. They perform with Steve Martin frequently. My college band had given the guys several copies of our first EP, and it’s now my understanding that they had given Steve one of the copies (maybe they just played it in front of him, I’m not sure). Some months later, our band would be on a festival bill with Steve and the Rangers, and Steve was waiting to shake my hand off stage when we were done performing. “Sounds just like the record,” he said. That was a very confusing and exciting moment for a 19-year-old songwriter.

Photo credit: Daniel Barlow