Artist Spotlight - Poi Rogers

Poi Rogers’ Twilight Blues jabs (“Don’t Steal My Covers”) and jukes (the title track) with effortless elegance. We recently caught up with the band’s duo Gerard Egan and Carolyn Sills about their Western swing-meets-Hawaiian steel collection.

“The Poi Rogers duo came together during the pandemic,” Egan says. “Carolyn and I had been playing together in a five-piece band for about twelve years, but then I got really into Hawaiian steel guitar when the lockdown happened.”

Alt-Country Specialty Chart: Describe how Twilight Blues happened from there.

Gerard Egan: I had this 1954 Fender triple neck guitar for a few years, but I never really got anywhere on its learning curve. Then I found myself stuck at home in 2020 and thought, Now’s my chance. I spent a good six hours in front of that thing every day that first year and got really into playing these old Hawaiian tunes from the Twenties and Thirties. Also, Carolyn had been playing mostly electric bass until that point, but she got really into upright bass.

Poi Rogers happened because we needed to find a way to put our influences together into a duo combining older Hawaiian steel music with the Cowboy swing music we like. Carolyn thought of the name Poi Rogers to get that music across to our audience. We ended up playing up three hundred shows over the next couple years and just put this album Twilight Blues out a few weeks ago.

People either shut down or really got inspired during the pandemic.

Carolyn Sills: Yeah, we definitely were the latter. We felt let down with three tours cancelled for our five-piece band and not being able to travel and play live. We wanted to embrace the opportunity of staying home even though nobody knew how long it would last. We didn’t learn new languages or how to cook anything, but we spent our time playing steel and bass and writing songs instead. I don’t know that Poi Rogers would have happened if not for that time. We’re definitely grateful. Being told we could only practice and write was heaven for us.

Do people understand the band name?

Carolyn Sills: Most people get it, but sometimes we do show up at a gig and people ask, “Which one of you is Poi and which is Rogers?” Not everyone in their twenties knows who Roy Rogers is. We want to introduce those people to some of these older sounds. We’re playing mainly original music, but it’s inspired by older Western swing music like Sons of the Pioneers and the old Hawaiian steel guitar songs. It’s nice to introduce people to some older genres they might not know.

Explain where you found the title track ‘Twilight Blues.’

Gerard Egan: ‘Twilight Blues’ is an instrumental song that was recorded by this guy Dick McIntire and His Harmony Hawaiians in the late Thirties. Dick McIntire is criminally underrepresented in today’s music listening world. His music has never been reissued on vinyl or CD and you literally have to track down his old 78s, although there are guys who will digitize stuff and send it around if you get into the steel guitar world. That’s how I came across him.

Twilight Blues is a pretty tight record at only 22 minutes and 8 tracks.

Gerard Egan: Yeah, that was the theme. These are short, snappy songs with short solos, but we have one longer tune called “Tuesday in Las Cruces” that clocked in at a little over four minutes.

Carolyn Sills: That’s like our Marty Robbins-inspired song, so it had to be more than four minutes.

Gerard Egan: Twilight Blues fits eight songs on a ten-inch vinyl, which we’re big fans of. We have a small but pretty fun collection of ten-inch jazz and Western swing records from the fifties. Twilight Blues is adorable in that way. We’re just a two-piece band with a 10-inch vinyl. The theme is to pair everything down into the bare minimum. When you go onstage as a two-piece with just an upright bass and acoustic steel guitar it’s a lot of sonic ground to cover. We’re trying to make as big a noise as possible while trimming all the fat.

Explain why what you call ‘vintage music’ is so popular right now. 

Gerard Egan: Great question. We’ve always been attracted to vintage music. Old blues music was my first roots music in high school. Now, we’re trying to peel back the layers of rockabilly and those guys were into Western swing. For us it was always following the trail – the breadcrumbs, so to speak – in terms of who the guys who are playing roots music nowadays are listening to. There’s a level of authenticity that’s getting harder and harder to find in that music.

These are real musicians who can really, really play. There’s so much music today where you can click a button and hear an AI song. It’s encouraging me that even though it s harder to make money playing music it’s forcing musicians to really be musician and forcing us to become more like minstrels. You get out there and play music for people who want to hear the genuine article.

Carolyn Sills: The vinyl (resurgence) has so much to do with that. It’s so easy now to put on music that you can loop forever, but you have to be present with vinyl. You put the record on and make choices. That’s a part of the scene now in wanting the real human experience of listening to music versus everything being curated for you.

Also, sequencing records is a lost art.

Gerard Egan: Yeah, going back to making mix tapes, having that perfect order is a big deal. You want to present your music in the right way because you’re tethered to the turntable with vinyl and have to get up every twenty minutes to flip it over. People really sit there and appreciate the song order. Listening to vinyl is not haphazard.

Carolyn Sills: It’s also why we’re fans of community radio and radio programmers. We love visiting radio stations as a touring band and seeing their playlists and talking with people who are taking the time to present the listener with songs and song orders that make sense and are introducing new music based on songs they like. It’s another lost art that’s super important in getting new music out there.

Why is radio still important to your average listener? 

Carolyn Sills: That goes back to what you were asking about the older, vintage stuff, which is part and parcel to real people programming real radio for real listeners. If people aren’t going out to see live music and listening to local radio to discover what’s new then that stuff will go the way of the dodo. We’re all in this together and supporting local radio today is more important than ever.

– Brian T. Atkinson