Whitney Rose teams up with Radiohead producer for something 'a little more rock 'n' roll'

Releasing a record during a pandemic is a very quiet thing.

"It's stupid," Whitney Rose says jokingly, over the phone from her Austin home. She laughs quickly, explaining that the decision to go ahead with the April 24 release date of We Still go to Rodeos, Rose's fourth full-length album, was all hers.

"I'm in a bit of a privileged position because this is the first time that I'm ever releasing an album on my own label," she says. "And so the decision was entirely up to me. And I decided to go ahead with it because well, number one: I don't know how long this is going to go on. And so I don't want to postpone a record for a year until I can be in our live music space and actually promote it … and people, now more than ever, need music."

For someone who has built a career on touring and local gigs when she's home, self-isolation is a big change. ("I haven't seen anyone other than my next-door neighbour since March 15," she says.) 

Rose grew up in Charlottetown with her mother and grandparents, later moving to Nova Scotia for a brief stint and then to Toronto for formative years as a regular performer at the Cameron House, whose label released her first two full-lengths, Whitney Rose (2012) and Heartbreaker of the Year (2015). 

Rose's time performing at Cameron House introduced her to country/roots mainstays the Mavericks, which forged a close friendship and musician partnership with the band's lead singer, Raul Malo, who produced Heartbreaker of the Year and Rose's followup and breakout album, Rule 62, on Six Shooter Records. 

But before she would release Rule 62, Rose headed to Austin in 2015 for a two-month residency at the Continental Club, where she still plays weekly when she's not touring — and with that move, she found home.

"I think it was two weeks after I moved here, I said to my manager, 'I'm not leaving. I'm staying here,' and you know, I had spent time in Nashville and I had never had that feeling."

While Austin and Charlottetown may seem worlds apart, Rose insists that's not the whole truth.

"I think that one of the biggest reasons why I ended up staying in Austin is because I've toured around North America pretty extensively at this point and there's something about [Austin].… I know that it's a biggish city or whatever, but it has a lot of small-town qualities that very much remind me of home."

After five years in her adopted hometown, Rose decided to change things up with her fourth release, We Still go to Rodeos — sound-wise, producer-wise and label-wise. 

"So many of the tunes that I had written were a little more rock 'n' roll than anything that I've done before — and maybe it's anti-rock 'n' roll to say, 'Oh I've written these rock 'n' roll songs," she adds, laughing. At the same time that she had these louder songs swirling around, Paul Kolderie — who's produced for Radiohead ("Creep," specifically), Pixies and Juliana Hatfield — contacted Rose and asked if she wanted to meet up for some potential work. 

A February lunch in upstate New York turned into a full album recording by summer 2019, and the result is We Still go to Rodeos, an album filled with love, heartbreak and agency that nods to Rose's formative music of Kitty Wells, Tammy Wynette, Dolly Parton and Hank Williams, while also comfortably expanding to barnburners like "I'd Rather be Alone" — the pluck of a banjo and the twang in Rose's voice keeping the country thread alive.

I like to think of myself as a therapist who doesn't have the education or the regular pay cheque."​​​​​​- Whitney Rose

What hasn't changed with Rose's expanding musical genres — countrypolitan, Americana, country-rock — is the songwriting at the heart of her work. 

"My favourite thing is to essentially tell stories, some of which are my own, but also some of which are from very good friends of mine, some who have confided in me. And I am taken by their stories and so I want to tell their stories as well and essentially, through my music, help people to navigate their emotions.... I like to think of myself as a therapist who doesn't have the education or the regular pay cheque."

A friend's relationship slowly coming to an end sparked the line "I'd rather be alone than lonely" from the song "I'd Rather be Alone" — "I was trying to be a good friend and so I talked to her for a little while longer, but really I just wanted to get off the phone because that line clicked immediately in my head," said Rose — while attending a game with her boyfriend led her to the kicker: "I gave you too much of me to be here in your cheap seats."

Rose also knows how to take a tried-and-true country form and flip it on its head, as she did with "Believe me, Angela," a song about cheating that has nothing to do with the man who's hopping between relationships.

"I had this idea of this cheating song that I wanted to write and it started out, you know, angry, and it was taking forever and I just wasn't into it," says Rose. "I didn't feel the anger. And then it kind of clicked in my head like, what if you and her are the team?… And then as soon as I had this idea, for me to write the song based on unity between the two women, I wrote it, and it was written in less than an hour."

All the songwriting credits belong to Rose, and with this fourth release she wanted a higher level of ownership over the whole project, releasing it on her own label, MCG Recordings.

"I was in a position where I could essentially fund my own record," says Rose. "I wanted to learn a little more about the other side of putting out an album because in the past, I wrote the songs, recorded them, and then everything else was completely in other people's hands. And so I felt there was a lot to learn. And I wanted to see what it felt like to have 100 per cent of my credits, my writing."

That decision also meant that she was holding the reins when live music came to a halt in March, and that whether to stay the course and release her album or postpone it was in her hands.

"I decided to just put it out because, you know, I'm basically going to let it marinate on people's turntables or whatever until I am able to do the live performances to support it," says Rose. "It's a humble offering, but it's something I can offer."