URL: www.rwroldan.com
It’s a sunny day, and we’re hanging out in the magnificently endless plains of the American Midwest. There’s a steady strike of acoustic chords that charismatically sways back and forth like a breeze passing through the branches of an old, tall tree. Along a stretch of highway there’s a little dive bar, a roadhouse where everyone comes to drown their sorrows and forget about whatever is troubling their minds. There’s nothing particularly special about this bar, but there’s something about it that makes it different from the other little dives on this stretch of open road. This is where a lot of dreams have come to die in this dried up corner of America. As callously forgotten as this place has become, it’s a place of great importance and should be treated with the same respect as any other graveyard. We find a girl living out back behind the bar, her hopes as dead as the dirt.
I-TUNES: https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/falling-star-single/1385222598?app=music&ign-mpt=uo%3D4
Sleeping in a broken down car, she tells us of how she lost her song, her sound, and the length of the road ahead of her was just too long and far to travel down any further. Gone too long to turn back, and too young to have even left home in the first place, this is what it’s all come down to. At 17, she seemed to have everything in the world going for her. The open road wasn’t as scary back then. Guided by the night stars, she chased after the very brightest ones, led by the sound of that acoustic guitar that greeted us when R.W. Roldan’s new single, “Falling Star” began to play just a couple of minutes ago. It’s easy to forget that we’re not sitting on the hood of that car next to R.W. and the fallen piece of cosmos that this girl is. We can feel the yearning in her heart, the bittersweet acceptance of her circumstances and the truth that this is the reality for most of the asteroids that we see blazing through pop culture every year.
SOUNDCLOUD: https://soundcloud.com/ray-william-roldan/falling-star-1/s-Xm6nV
This was my first time listening to a track by the singer and songwriter best known as Ray William Roldan, and I have to say I really loved his vivid and descriptive songwriting style. Whatever this single is lacking in elaborateness it makes up for in the strength of its prose and quality of its instrumentation. From what I understand, Roldan’s new album Can You Feel This is due out later in 2018 and should make for a more sprawling, full-screen experience for listeners to get into as opposed to this short single, but either way I think this song is a fine teaser for what we can expect to come. If you’re a fan of classic country ala Merle Haggard or even more rock-oriented Heartland music like Tom Petty or John Mellencamp, R.W. Roldan is an artist that I think you would probably enjoy. While “Falling Star” isn’t quite the watershed country music has been waiting for, it’s certainly one of the most sincere songs it’s produced in a long time.
Photo Credit: Myke Wilken
YOU TUBE: https://youtu.be/hUUj8HxHT5E
Jamie Morse