Roisin Mckeown is telling a story with Spell

Kisi: I just watched the Loisaida music video, and I'm so emotional right now, I was definitely gonna cry, but we have to do this interview so I'll cry later. The mixing is amazing. I love the way it sounds. I’m really over the overproduction thing in new music that's coming out. This sounds so tender and raw and easy to listen to. It's like a nice, hearty meal. 

Roisin: Especially with that song, I wanted it to be simple. Me and Carter both were like, I think it's good. 

Kisi: You guys didn’t over produce it into hell. Thank you. I wanted to start by talking about existing in a community of musicians and artists. I loved the choreography in the music video, and I’m reminded of a different music video that you were shooting in Dublin for Silver Tears. There are a lot of musicians out there that don't actually exist within a creative community and do have to go out of their way to be in community with other artists. Not only is your mom a musician, but a lot of your close friends are, your bandmates are your friends, and your friends are your bandmates. You're going to other people's music releases and shows, and you’re in this artist scene in New York. Do you think that affects your process? 

Roisin: Yeah, the “Loisaida” video is directed by my friend Saint Eriks-Bermejo. He does a lot of work in film. We actually went to high school together when I came back to New York from Dublin and went to high school here, he was there, and we were in the same music and arts internship at our school. Years went by, we didn't see each other because everyone kind of lost touch after COVID. Then I bumped into him like three times in the neighborhood in the same month. 

He was throwing this event at KGB, and asked me to sing at it. As I was thinking about the music video for this song, I knew I wanted someone to dance in it, and I wanted it to be in the neighborhood. He also grew up here, so it just kind of seemed natural. Marley, who dances in the video, I randomly met at a Halloween show that I played on the roof in Bushwick. She said, “If you ever want a dancer for a video or anything, let me know”. A year later, I was like, gosh, who would I ask? Then I thought of her, that's how that came together. 

I've realized, I really love making friends that way, making friends through collaboration. It feels like a specific bond of friendship, or a foundation for a friendship. 

I can't say a date, but the Silver Tears video will be out hopefully in the next few weeks. And that's directed by Jasmin Grace, who's a brilliant director in Dublin. I met her once at some random event in Dublin two years ago, and then I was thinking of someone in Dublin who could direct a video. I reached out to her, and that's how that happened. It's all a very serendipitous sort of thing. When you first said artists in community, I thought of Torture Tuesdays. It’s a big thing that's taken up a big part of my life this year and I’m really grateful for. Joey, who's my good friend and manager, introduced me to Torture in January, just because she had double booked herself for a coffee meeting and invited us to the same Cafe, and then we kind of realized within 15-20 minutes that we had a lot of connections through our mothers being in the 90s Irish New York music scene. She was like, Oh, I'm going to be doing a residency every Tuesday for the next month at Baker Falls and I'm gonna have different people opening every week. She did it for a month, and then it's still going now. I think it's 43 weeks today. Crazy. So fun, really, really special. I can't credit her enough for all of the passion she kind of puts into that every week. To answer your questions, there's something really special about being friends with other songwriters, to me in particular, and musicians, but especially songwriters, because there's a certain storytelling that obviously comes with that, and then there's a certain humor behind it where, only my friends that are songwriters will understand certain things. I don't know how to explain it.

Kisi: Like minded people and great minds think alike, yeah?

Roisin: I also grew up with a song writer as a mother, so I guess that really encapsulates it. Even when I was going through my first heartbreak at like, 17-18, she was like, well, you got some good songs out of it. You know what I mean? Very much how I was raised. 

Kisi: That’s not the way a lot of people are allowed to approach this craft. Your family history, obviously, and then also growing up in New York. I feel like it's important to note that you are really entrenched in the New York local music scene, and not in a small way. You’re kind of right there in the mix and in Dublin too, in a lot of ways. I think even songwriters and musicians that have a good following, an audience following, that's not the same as being connected to the other artists in your scene. I feel like you kind of have that advantage over other much larger artists that maybe almost feel alienated within their genre or within their flavor of career. 

Roisin: I grew up watching my mom perform and going on tour with her and stuff, and that probably all sounds very glamorous or something which, it was pretty cool. Don't get me wrong, especially now being able to reflect. But now I have so much gratitude for having those experiences and getting to travel at such a young age. I got to see my mom perform. The storytelling was always at the center of her performances. I would hear her tell the same story to explain a song every single night, in Germany and then in France, and for a six year old I was like, Jesus, here we go again. But, it came to the point where I memorized these stories and especially for a song called River, which ended up becoming our song that I would sing on stage with her. That song she wrote about an old Irish myth about a warrior. It's a long story, but I would hear her tell this story on stage every night, and that definitely led to this importance of storytelling. It directly influenced who I am, my relationship to the music industry being in the time that we're in, and the age that I am, and Tiktok being a thing, and all this sort of stuff. The way I view music, and view songs especially, is like a language. A lot of people have said it, but it's such a viscerally important thing of storytelling, whether it’s kids making up songs while they're playing on the playground, or people singing while they work, or people disguising hidden messages in a song so that people won't know what they're singing about. I love songwriting as a craft, and that's where it comes from. 

Kisi: This is a nice way for us to hone in on the new EP that's out. I've always noticed that a lot of your songwriting is very narrative. I think that's something that a lot of modern music is kind of missing out on. We got really addicted to emotional and abstract lyrics that rhyme and maybe make melodic sense, but not real sense. There is actually a lot of music, if you do really listen to it, that has a really distinct narrative going on, but a lot of people aren't really invested in it for that reason. Do you know what I mean? 

People are kind of craving a story to make sense of what has gone on in the last five or six years since COVID hit. People have had kids, people have gotten married, people have died. A lot of stuff has happened, but it's also been in the midst of this crazy political and cultural turmoil, but your life still goes on. Mundane things are still happening and, important, personal things are still happening in the midst of this. 

A way for us all to feel connected at a time like this is to really tell our own stories. Maybe it even says something about how people are sort of starting to reject or question the larger narrative they're telling us. So, the anecdote to that is telling more stories to each other. Because you can't really trust the main narrative anymore. 

So many of the songs on this EP are emblematic of what New York is now. There’s definitely a crowd out there that says to keep politics out of music. Some of these songs could be seen as a cultural commentary, but they're also just songs, you know what? It’s the story that matters to you, whether it's cultural or political context or not. 

In your own words, what stories are you telling with this project? 

Roisin: Well, you said that perfectly. You almost took the words out of my mouth because I had done some journaling before this about how to verbally put into words what Spell is about and I wrote the last few lines like, this is an amalgamation of this time in my life as a young woman and as a young artist. 

The title track Spell, that song puts it all together. A lot of songwriters have had this happen where something just pours out of you, and sometimes it's kind of a prophecy, and sometimes months or years later you'll be like, Whoa. Maybe it’s God or higher power, but something just comes through you and those are usually the best songs. 

It's very rare that I force myself to write a song. I’m not gonna sit down with my guitar and force it. It's just not really how it works for me. I'm always coming up with melodies and then sometimes I'll come out with a full song in 10 minutes, like phew! I needed to get that off my chest.

But the song Spell, I didn't know what it was about when I wrote it, which was about two years ago. Now when I sing it on stage, I think about female singers and songwriters. It’s about women throughout history who were not valued for their words, but just a pretty voice. But singer-songwriters are so much more than that, it’s this combination of being able to write your own words and also sing them that is so unique and special. Some of my favorite artists, Billie Holiday, Nina Simone, Sinead O'Connor, women who were singing a lot of protest songs and really wanted to, and weren't always allowed to, and people wanted them to sing love songs or like songs about heartbreak, something more ‘appropriate’. There’s been a historical abuse of power that exists in musical spaces or otherwise, where peoples voices and words have not been heard. 

There's another layer to it; I think that being a songwriter is kind of like being a witch, because if manifest words are manifestations, then I see songs as spells. When you sing a song, you cast a spell. I also really love a good one word title for a project. Also, Scorpio season. 

Kisi: Should we dive into the track list really quick and just go in order? 

Roisin: “Poor Heart of Mine” is the opening track, and it’s a self-reflection, a stream of consciousness. I envy rappers, because there are things you can say in rap that just don’t sound good sung. Nas has that lyric about walking down the street, spitting phlegm on the concrete…which would never sound good in a singing voice, but it’s so real. I have so much respect for rappers and singers who freestyle. Honestly, a lot of my songs come from that same place, just a stream of consciousness. “Poor Heart of Mine” is one of those songs. It has all these lyrics that touch on different things that have happened in my life, and then I tie them together. The title sounds a bit woe-is-me, but there’s a hopeful streak to it.

Kisi: Musically, the song is hopeful. It reminded me of that trope in Spanish-language music where the song is upbeat and happy but the lyrics are devastating.

Roisin: Aren’t those some of the best songs in so many cultures?

Kisi: Those are the best songs!

Roisin: I’m very influenced by jazz and Irish folk trad. Both have upbeat tones with a singer who’s basically saying, “Someone just left me and my heart’s on the floor.” I love a song like that, something that’ll make people dance or get stuck in their heads, and then they go, “Oh, those are deep lyrics.” You have to keep people on their toes.

There are two lyrics that really stand out to me. The one I’m most proud of is:

“You know what they whisper, you know what they preach about, how the body keeps the score? Well, my body’s been bruised by all of Ireland’s wounds and some of Manhattan’s before.”

I can’t help but smile when I sing it, especially if my mom is in the audience, because it’s so real. The New York + Dublin mix is such a huge part of my identity, and it’s also this territorial thing. Like siblings: you can be mean to your sibling, but if someone else is, you’re like, “Hey, you can’t say that, that’s my brother.” Places are the same way. New Yorkers can shit on New York, but if someone moves here and tries to do it, it’s like, “Leave!” I think everyone feels that way about where they’re from. You’ve faced the trials of that place, you’ve earned the right to love it.

Kisi: That’s kind of a good transition into “Bushwick Fool”. It has a cheeky energy, still connected to that protective, territorial lyric you love in “Poor Heart of Mine”, but in a different tone. “Loisaida” feels tender to me, but “Bushwick Fool” has that tongue-in-cheek thing.

It’s cheekier, but it’s addressing that same overarching energy of being a native in the city and watching it change every five to ten years. Even though I lived there for five years, built community, saw a ton of change… it’s still not the same as what a native New Yorker has lived.

Roisin: Say that again! You built a lot of community.

Kisi: Sure, yeah. But still, I can’t speak about New York the way a native can. And then there’s this whole other layer where people who don’t know the city at all speak with authority.

Roisin: That point you made is a good one, because it connects to narrative songwriting. “Bushwick Fool” is totally tongue-in-cheek. It literally came from a freestyle. Some people were over, Carter, who plays drums and produced the whole EP with me, was playing my guitar. It was around Halloween last year. My friend had a bad night in Bushwick and came back to Manhattan to my place. A few of us were there, Carter was playing something jazzy, and I just hit record on Voice Memos in case something good happened.

And the whole song came out at once. I was trying to cheer her up, make her laugh. We’re both Scorpios, which we joke about but also don’t joke about, and it was Scorpio season. So I went into that “Don’t you know it’s Scorpio season?” energy, hyping her up.

There is depth to it, though. There are a lot of “Bushwick fools” out and about on nights out. And it feels very specific to right now, being young in New York.

“Bushwick Fool” and “Loisaida “ are like sibling songs to me. They’re commentary on present-day New York from my perspective. Both neighborhoods are rapidly gentrifying. For decades they’ve been home to artists, immigrants, working-class people and now those same people can’t afford to live there. Bushwick is a place people party in, the same way people treat the East Village or the Lower East Side. But these aren’t stage sets…people live there, raise families there.

I think about that when I’m in Bushwick. It’s close to where I’m from, but it’s not my home. And I’m really proud of the line:

“This East River water is barely dirtier than your mind — I’m going home. Get the fuck out of here, back to the Lower East Side.”

It paints a picture of the city through the lens of singing about some drunk fool, and we’ve all known plenty of them. But the East River line cracks me up because it came from a freestyle, and it also taps into that classic New York joke about how dirty the East River is. Same with the Liffey in Dublin, which is always the running joke.

My mom found this old newspaper clipping from the 50s about an Irish guy who tried to take his life by jumping into the East River. He immediately swam back out. Journalists asked why, and he said, “I was trying to take my own life. I have nothing left to live for. But I’ll be damned if I die in such dirty, blasted water.” That has always stuck with me.

And to your credit, you inspired me to release “Bushwick Fool” and “Loisaida” as the first two singles. Now I see them as sister songs. “Bushwick Fool” is summer-turning-to-autumn, Scorpio-season, upbeat anthem. “Loisaida” is the gentrification ballad. On the EP, it’s like: “Poor Heart of Mine'“, “Bushwick Fool” — things are fun and upbeat — and then “Loisaida” arrives and says, “Okay, now we’re getting serious.”

Kisi: America is the land of immigrants, and New York is supposed to be the most potent example of that.

Roisin: Yeah. There have always been people moving to New York, and that’s not the problem. The problem is the certain types of people who are moving here now who have a complete disregard for the place they are moving to and the people who have been here before them. 

I say in the song, I have that line about 

“Nowadays I get tired of explaining my story. Yes, I was born here, but it wasn’t all the glory that you may think, let alone for the people before me.”

Because I’m very interested in the times we are living in. Every day when I’m walking down the street, more and more I want to learn the history of the playgrounds I grew up in, the people I grew up around, the names. What is St Marks? Why is it called that? Or the Lower East Side or Alphabet City or the East Village versus the Lower East Side and Houston. What’s that about? I learned about the real estate stuff that comes from and the class disparities and all the rest. It’s fascinating. It explains so much when you start to look into it. 

And some of the people I meet nowadays who are moving here have no interest in learning anything about that. It baffles me, because I’m such a lover of history and sociology and music and stories throughout time. So I don’t understand why, if you are moving to a place with such rich culture and background, you would not want to learn about that and be part of that community. Some people have such an apathy and disregard and treat New York and the Lower East Side and Bushwick as their playground, their personal playground. And it is exhausting to walk around in.

Kisi: I want to write this essay about meta commentary and about how Facebook rebranded as Meta. I want to tie that in somehow and say everything is meta now. Everything. Not only literally, because Meta is everywhere and Instagram and WhatsApp and sunglasses now, so you never know when or how you are being recorded. We are living in that dystopian reality. But also a lot of people move to the city and get so involved with meta commentary on the city that they build an entire existence out of commentary. You can live here and never actually touch the ground. It’s easy to live suspended above the physical reality and conditions of living in the city.

And maybe because the city feels cutthroat to people who move here from car dominated areas, there is this hyper individualism that gets encouraged. When I first moved there I kept thinking about locals, people who had lived this lifestyle forever, and I was like whoa. I’m struggling to battle the elements right now. I can’t imagine this being normal or imagine being homeless during this or being more vulnerable during this. That’s where my brain went. I wasn’t thinking about making a TikTok complaining about the weather. So I think it is a predisposition that social media encourages in young people, this habit of maintaining meta commentary about something without ever actually puncturing the pig. Like dude. 

Roisin: This ties in as well to what I was thinking about before the interview. I was literally thinking about dystopian novels. There’s also an element where a lot of these people have the same uniform they walk around in, like khaki shorts and white shirts, and they drink the same drinks and work the same jobs and are from the same small towns and they do not get the vibes here. They are trying to make New York wherever they came from.

The song “Loisaida” opens with the line “Nowadays I have to check if I’m at the right apartment since they painted my door black and my walls gray in the building I grew up in in the Lower East Side” My whole life the walls were mustard yellow and the doors were brown. Sometime last year the management painted the walls gray and the doors black.

Kisi: I remember hearing about this as it was happening.

Roisin: It looks awful. I remember me and my mom talking about it…that man does not have to see this every day. The management does not live here. And it might sound simple but for a week or two after it happened, I would come home and be like whoa. Every day. There were at least one or two times where I genuinely paused and thought, am I on the right floor. Because all the visual indicators I had my whole life were gone. 

People had stickers on their doors. Vote for Obama 2008. There was an apartment with a sticker that said Live reptiles and written in Sharpie it said in case of fire save Wally. And that was always there growing up. One day I asked my mom who Wally was. She said that was a guy from years ago who had a duck named Wally and he wrote that on his door. 

Kisi: Those are what we need back in New York.

Roisin: Exactly. That’s my duck. That’s Wally. And painting the doors black erased all of that memory within the walls of the building. It was a visceral thing for me. Even now, I’ll see neighbors who have known me since I was born and we joke like we should all come out at nine in the morning someday and paint everything orange or something. Because it felt like such a clear representation of what they are trying to do to this city. 

It reminded me of the dystopian novels I read from ages eleven to fifteen. The Giver is the main one that comes to mind. The idea of a world where there is no poverty or violence or war but also no love and no music.

Kisi: No dancing.

Roisin: Everyone is the same. Everyone operates the same way.

Kisi: Your destiny is chosen. LikeThe Giver where an external entity chooses your spouse, chooses when you have children…

Roisin: Exactly. And to me that is a world with gray walls and black doors. A world I do not want to live in. Because I grew up in a tenement building, I always think there was probably a Polish family of five living in my apartment a hundred years ago and they probably saw the same colored walls. And now it is all gone. 

It inspired a song because I’m a sentimental lyricist and the world is changing rapidly around you and you feel out of control because you are out of control. “Loisaida” is an ode to everyone who has ever called this place home, especially all the artists and immigrants who came here for a better life, decided to build families here and raise New Yorkers and give back to the city and community.

“Silver Tears” I wrote two years ago, and it is almost a joke between me and the band now that it is the generational trauma song. It is written from the perspective of my granddad. I wrote it after a long chat with my mom about family lore and trauma and stuff that has gone down. Everyone is going to mess up their kids in one way or another. The goal is to do better than what your parents could do for you. The hope is that everyone is trying their best with love and learning to see your family as people. Everyone has a different age where they start seeing their parents as people and not just parents. The same is true for grandparents and aunts and uncles.

You start to humanize your older relatives. They were your age once. They were living in a different time and battling different odds. You try to have empathy for them. My granddad was a man who did the best he could. No one can say he did not.

My favorite lyric is probably the breakdown

“Generation upon generation passing the bottle around year after year. It grows more and more quiet. You cannot even hear the sound. And then I say want to bury my face in the dirt. Want to bury my heart in the earth. But I cannot for I know what it is worth”

And I wanted to convey a sense of desperation because that is what the song comes down to. There is a desperation to being a parent or grandparent. You want to do the best for the next generation you can. It is also about toxic masculinity within families and Irish history and that way of just getting on with things.

Kisi: Yeah. I love what you said about everyone doing the best they can with love.

And something about family legacy. A lot of people now are not concerned with legacy. Fewer people are having kids. There are so many reasons for that, I do not want to get into them. But whether as a coping mechanism because people cannot have as many kids or as an excuse, people invest more in their relevance during their lifetime than in their legacy. Something like an EP or art lets you demand a level of perfection you cannot demand from a human being.

You can view art as work. You can view raising a child as work. But there is a difference. There is a surrender you have to have in parenting. It is like death. There is something desperate about it. You do not want to surrender the project of carrying on your family name. As a kid you feel that resistance too, that gap between who you are and who your parents want you to be. Or who your kids want you to be.

I saw this quote that said my favorite voice is a voice that cracks because it cannot sing the note it wants to. My favorite art is art that reaches past its capacity. And that is like legacy too. You cannot control how your kids will be. You can only do the best you can with love. It matters. Maybe you were not perfect, but you did the best you could with love. That means something.

More music should be made with that in mind. I love this song. It is so hard to pick a favorite on the EP but this is one of my favorites that you sing live. I love “Silver Tears”. 

Roisin: It's another one that's upbeat and gets people dancing, but then there’s pretty introspective lyrics and story behind it. And “don't let those silver tears fall” is something that my mom told me my granddad would say to her when she was crying. So I just thought that was like a nice kind of thing to put in there, and then it kind of became the song. Leaving a legacy also ties into the rest of the EP, because I guess I already talked about the female singer-songwriters that I'm inspired by and stuff, but I would be remiss to not mention my own mom and also my grandmother, who I never got to meet, but she was an organist and composer and choir arranger or choir leader in a church in Dublin, which is in the Silver Tears video whenever it comes out.

The very last song on the EP is a recording of my grandmother singing Ave Maria in her church. And my mom has a few recordings of her singing and playing organ that she only showed me in, like, 2020, but Ave Maria was the first one that I heard, and it just made me start sobbing instantly because I'd never heard my grandmother's voice before, but I grew up hearing all about her, and her and my mom were very close and stuff. I knew that I wanted something on the EP that was related to my family, whether it was like a voice memo or like an old recording or something. And then that kind of just felt like the right way to end it.

There's also an interlude kind of thing between, an acapella song that I wrote a month or two ago in the process of recording the EP, and that's before Ave Maria, just because I love a little acapella thing in there. And I do, like, a bunch of vocal stacks on it and some harmonies, and, yeah, the acapella one is very kind of witchy and ethereal, I suppose, but it's just kind of singing about a song being a spell in a way. And there's a lyric about “raise your voice, take up the room,” like just encapsulating everything that the EP is about. I wanted it to be very much leading into the EP and then leading out. Like, I just—it always rubs me the wrong way when there's an EP or an album, like a long project that has a really harsh ending or something. I'm just like, damn. Like, give it some afterthought or aftercare or something. 

Kisi: Listening to the EP, it feels wooden. Does that make any sense? It feels echoey, like an old theater or heavy velvet curtains. It’s like the smell of an old book and a fresh drink. It’s one for fall and winter. I think it's coming out at the right time. It's relevant, but it's not being overly referential, because your life is the source material. It's not this concept. It's your life.

Roisin: The cover is shot by Riley Natalova at Baker Falls, which was very intentional, because as I said earlier, Torture Tuesdays have been a big thing. I've spent my time there this year, and that's always been at Baker Falls. I've played there quite a lot for Rambler shows and various other shows this year. I had the idea of me being on a stage in the cover photo, surrounded by some items—my guitar, a rose, a microphone, and some things with me on stage—to kind of capture that image of a witch and a jazz singer. My Irish–New York… you know, it's me, but a certain side of me that fits the music of the project.

Kisi: There's a mystery to it. A lot of witches are connected to the mystery. Institutional religion, and especially westernized Christianity, overlooks the mystery of faith. Maybe some aspects of Catholicism are still very esoteric, very about the mystery, not meant to be fully understood. You're supposed to be this tiny little thing brushing up against eternity. Your life and this music feels like it's about discovery. It's about existing in that curiosity instead of needing all these hard answers. What I like about your lyrics and about the project is that it's observational first before it's judgmental. I've been really on this recently, that sometimes your observation says a lot more about you than your opinion on your observation. I'm really a lot more interested in people's observations than I've been in their opinions recently. That's why the narrative storytelling hits. It's just you observing. You're not inserting a heavy opinion. You're not putting crazy judgments on what's happening. You're just sharing your observation of your life, your world, the last couple of years. It's so much more insightful and beautiful.

Roisin: Thanks. Kisi, that’s such high praise. That's a great way to end it, though.