You don’t have to know any Roxy Roca songs to enjoy a night of the band’s music. With its self-described “dynamite Texas soul” musical style, the seven-piece band from Austin, Tex. offers a sound familiar and fresh at the same time.
On Friday, June 12, Roxy Roca returns to Birmingham for a 10 p.m. performance at Innisfree Irish Pub. Recently, we caught up with lead vocalist Taye Cannon by phone as the band was en route to Lafayette, La.
Weld: Taye, thanks for your time today. Your band makes its home in Austin, Texas — one of the country’s “it” cities.
Taye Cannon: It’s a great place and there’s a lot of music every night, so you can take your pick. There’s a lot going on there and there are creative people everywhere. You go down to the local coffee shop and you might run into Gary Clark, Jr. or Ray Wylie Hubbard. I was getting tacos one day and Steve Earle and Lyle Lovett were sitting on the sidewalk having tacos and coffee.
[Renowned festival] South by Southwest is a monster, and I don’t necessarily mean that in a negative way. It just literally takes over the whole downtown and it’s a frenzy. It’s the place to be right now and we’ve been able to play a lot in our hometown.
Weld: You have personal roots in Alabama, correct?
TC: I was born in Alabama. I was born in the Gadsden/Attalla area and that’s what I consider home because my family is from that area. I moved around the South as a kid and I lived in Tuscaloosa for seven years when I was in my twenties. I moved to Texas from there. We have a song called “Cornbread” — it was one of the first songs we wrote. The band was just kind of jamming and I started talking about my grandmother’s cornbread in Attalla and it turned into a song [laughs].
Weld: Tell me about your latest album, Ain’t Nothin’ Fancy.
TC: We recorded that record in December 2012 and we hadn’t put it out. Stag Records decided they wanted to put it out. Some of those songs had been around for a while and hopefully we’ll have a new record out next year. We’re looking at our near future and we’re spending so much time on the road. If we’re going to be writing new songs, we’re going to have to do it on the road.
Weld: You guys are billed as a soul band but there are several elements that can be heard in your music. How does your sound take shape?
TC: That’s a good question. We’ve started to call it “dynamite Texas soul.” What that says to us is that our inspiration is definitely soul music, like the Muscle Shoals stuff from the ‘60s, but we do have some rock influences and some of the horn players have some jazz influences. We get together and there’s a collaboration going on and we do it with some Texas flavor.
Roxy Roca will perform at Innisfree Irish Pub on Friday, June 12. The show begins at 10 p.m. For more information, visit innisfreeirishpubs.com.