Sarah Jarosz

Brother Roy is New York City’s rock and roll missionary. It’s impossible not to immediately like the guy when you walk into the bar. He looks like that guest who no one invited and was the last one to leave the party. But there’s something timeless about his gruff croon accompanied by an unrelenting pulse on an old battered piano. You can’t help but listen.

He lists Harry Nilsson, the Beatles, The Band, Bob Dylan, Neil Young as some of his biggest influences. These are high standards to live up to, and many have tried and failed. But with a refreshing honesty, dedication, and healthy dose of self-deprecating humor, Brother Roy has managed to find a voice for himself in a genre so beloved that it might as well be a religion.

Born the son of a pie maker and a school teacher in Scranton, Pennsylvania, Roy had one of those classic, all-American childhoods: he played baseball after school, soaked up his dad’s obsession with 60’s rock and roll, and eventually dropped out of the local college to join his brother’s band. Around that time he took a job with the Scranton Parking Authority—immortalized in his song, “Crazy Bill”—where he would sit for hours each day in the booth in the garage playing guitar, taking tickets, and dreaming of the big-time.

One day the Mayor of Scranton reprimanded him personally, “you can’t be playing guitar on the taxpayers dollars!” So Roy picked up the mandolin. Eventually, enough was enough, Roy recalls. “I decided, I’m going to go to New York and play the shit out of music.” That’s exactly what he did. After getting a gig playing rhythm with the gypsy jazz guitarist Stephane Wrembel, Roy moved into a tiny bedroom in Brooklyn, just big enough for a keyboard, a pedal steel, a busted lamp and his guitar.

Over the course of the next few years, Roy toured internationally. He learned the ropes from his guitar hero Jim Campilongo (now a frequent collaborator), in addition to being a bandleader from Wrembel. Eventually he quit the band and moved into a musical apartment in Bed Stuy. His new roommates invited him on a “spiritual exploration trip” to an ashram India. Along with about ten other musicians, Roy studied classical Indian music and practiced intensely for two weeks.

While Roy didn’t achieve enlightenment, he did realize that he needed to make a rock and roll album. Over the course of two intense months, after returning from Brooklyn, he wrote twenty songs, lost twenty pounds, and emerged from his trance with a full-length album. Roy will be the first to tell you his strength and confidence as a leader comes from his community.

He has gathered around him a team of top-call, young musicians that show up devotedly to his gigs night after night. In “Last Man Standing,” Roy has tapped into the energy of this group, and with almost no budget or high-powered support achieved what used to be available only to major labels with armies of musicians, engineers, and producers.

Call it unshakeable belief, lovesick obsession, or just plain survival, Roy has written a collection of defiantly good-timin’ songs. With an unbeatable rhythm section, lush strings, in-your-face horns, and soaring organ solo. “Last Man Standing” has that special vitality that only comes from a cult of talented friends packing into a stinky basement studio and playing rock and roll till the sun comes up. So whether your heart’s broken, your job sucks, or you’re just waking up from the hangover of 1969, do yourself a favor and follow Brother Roys’s advice. “Come on by the House” and stay for a while.