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Watching Caroline Rose interact with a full room of Radio Milwaukee members at this Studio Milwaukee Session, the word “genuine” kept springing to mind.
On stage during the performance, she was up front about still being half-asleep after the previous night’s gig. After the broadcast, she stayed on the mic to ask the crowd what they were up to the rest of the day (most popular response: work). And as those same fans worked their way to the front of the merch line to snag an autograph, Rose took the time to chat them up about anything and everything.
You get the sense it’s not because she does what she wants to do, but rather it’s what she needs to do.
That jives with a music career that’s seen Rose take more control over an environment increasingly stacked against artists. Rather than just shouting into the void (or “old man yelling at cloud,” as she put it during the mid-set interview), she takes tangible steps to actually do something about it, including a tour of all pop-up shows that stopped at Shank Hall the night before the session.
“Musicians get together, we complain about it all the time, and usually that's where it ends,” she told us. “But I started my own record label, and it has sort of been this incubator for ideas my manager and I come up with. And this … started as an idea, and we're kind of testing out seeing if we can run fully independent shows — running our own ticketing [at] fully independent clubs.”
The test yielded some positive results, with Rose and her crew adding a second performance Tuesday at Chicago’s Schubas Tavern after the early show sold out. And if our session was her version of tired, the folks just to our south are in for two memorable performances.
Not only was the band’s energy great on the three songs you’ll hear in the broadcast version, but their versatility was on full display as well. They kicked off with the airy synth-pop of “More of the Same” from breakout album Loner, segued to the angular sound of brand-new track “RIDE(!!!) and finished with the frenetic rockabilly of “Yip Yip Yow.”
It was a sampler platter of what Rose brings to the indie-rock table and left us looking forward to what she wants — or needs — to do next.
Studio MKE: Caroline Rose set list
- “More of the Same”
- “RIDE(!!!)
- “Yip Yip Yow”
- “Calm” (post-broadcast performance)
