In September, Amarillo native Travis Roberts was, somewhat unusually these days, close to home.
“I was playing in Lubbock at Slade Coulter’s Big Damn Family Jam. It was a ton of fun, but the coolest part about it was that my dad got to come to the show,” Roberts recalls. “My dad had never seen me play live since I was in high school playing open mics. He flew in from Idaho to see this show.”
Later, father and son were relaxing at a Lubbock hotel.
“He was just like, ‘Man, I really think that the fact that you’re able to look back at your life with a new set of glasses is what makes you a good writer,’” Roberts says. “You know, I really take that to heart.”
That new set of glasses is working out. Roberts is exploding on the national scene, with features and reviews in Rolling Stone, American Songwriter, Americana Highways and others accompanying his debut album, Rebel Rose, which dropped in August.
(This interview has been edited and condensed.)
Chip Chandler: So the last time I saw you, you were playing a free gig at WT for some students. Now, you’re being featured on Sirius XM, playing major music festivals and were signed to a pretty big label. So catch us up!
Travis Roberts: It’s kind of been crazy. It all kind of happened this last year. We had finished Rebel Rose in, gosh, I’d say 2023, so we sat on that thing for a while, and so we were playing gigs just based off of, you know, a couple singles that we had put out four years ago. Now that the record’s out, it feels like everything’s kind of ripped into high gear. We signed a deal with New West, and those guys have been fantastic for us. We picked up a great booking agent at Atomic Music Group who’s been helping us get on gigs and do real stuff, you know?
It’s been kind of crazy to see how much just a little bit of legwork on a bunch of ends just kind of pays off. I still have a day job. I still work for Tarpley [Music] in Amarillo, but one of the coolest things about it is like some days I’m at Tarpley and I’m just restringing violins or making sure trumpets are clean and ready to go. And then some days it’s like, hey, here’s an article in Rolling Stone about your record.
CC: You had some pretty tough times getting to this point, right? Tell me a little about it, but more importantly, what kind of perspective does that give you on your career now?
TR: It took me a long time to get really, really honest with myself. The fact that I was sick, the fact that I was dealing with alcoholism and drug addiction and realizing that nobody does drugs like a gentleman and nobody can drink the way I did like a gentleman, you know? Being an actual contributing member of society pushed me to being a musician because it was pretty much the only thing that I could do. You know, I’m not good at a lot of stuff, but I can write a song and I can put on a pretty good rock ’n’ roll show. Nowadays, I’m just making sure that whatever I’m doing, I’m doing it with honesty and integrity and making sure that it’s something that would make my dad proud if he was to see my name on it.
CC: Knowing the highs and lows—and the lows, maybe especially—of where you’ve been, does that give you more clarity on being in Rolling Stone and all these other things?
TR: Man, as much as that stuff is really, really cool, none of it really matters that much. The real clarity is being able to see things from a perspective that isn’t just what’s right in front of me or what just happened to me. I’m looking at this trying to build a 10- to 25- to 50-year career. So I’m just happy that I get to feed my family doing this, and that I get to be in an elite class of Panhandle artists who have been doing this for longer than I’ve been alive, making some of the best music, the best country music, the best rock ’n’ roll music in the country. I’ll look up to guys like J.D. Souther and Terry Allen, who did this for a really, really long time and found a way to do it for a really, really long time and keep themselves successful.
CC: What are you excited for folks to hear on Rebel Rose?
TR: A lot of people really love the rock ’n’ roll edge of it. A lot of people really love the songwriting side of it, where they’re able to just dig into the words underneath, which is always my goal. And a lot of people love how not cohesive it is. It comes from kind of a hodgepodge of playing clubs like Leftwoods before it closed and playing Golden Light, playing Hoots, playing Smokey Joe’s.
CC: Tell me why you’re looking forward to coming back to play at the Golden Light in November.
TR: Man, it’s good to be home. I mean I’ve been everywhere, going to New York City and to Tennessee and getting ready to launch a real tour next year and getting ready to cut another record. I really owe a ton to Angela (Corpening, Golden Light owner) and Wade (Tosh, music booker) because there was a time, especially when I first got sober, that I didn’t know what to do to make money, because the world was shut down. It was the middle of 2020. Wade would book me to open for practically anybody. There’s just so much of me cutting my teeth day in and day out on Sixth Street that really made me the artist that I am today.
Travis Roberts will perform Nov. 7 at Golden Light Cantina, 2908 SW Sixth Ave.
