No looking back.
After a globe-trotting career and a professional reset, musician Tim Roose has found clarity by returning to his roots, literally.
The artist, who describes playing guitar as a “compulsion rather than a choice,” has closed a pivotal chapter by finally releasing ‘Rollin’ Stone,’ a collaborative EP with his father, Roosta.
The project, a decade in the making, fuses blues, rock, and folk, detailing his father’s long-haul trucking experiences and their shared philosophy of moving forward.
For Tim, this record represents a hard-won trust in his own instincts, a lesson learned after a bad deal forced him to start over.
Recorded partly at the legendary, now-closed Satellite Recording Studio, the EP is a testament to legacy, resilience, and the simple power of “just playing the damn guitar.”
Happy: What’d you get up to today?
Tim Roose: I recently moved into a new apartment, so a lot of moving things around in here to see what feels right creatively. I spent way too long hanging and re-hanging a huge canvas painting of Slash on various walls throughout the place.
Happy: Tell us a little about where you’re from, and what you love about it!
Roose: I’m from a small town south of Perth called Armadale. It gets a bad rap for its high crime rate and whatnot, but I appreciate the place a lot more now that I’m older and long gone.
I see what navigating the streets did for me and my brother, as it did come with a lot of confrontation that I think both of us didn’t know everyone else wasn’t going through.
As I age and meet people from various parts of the city and share my experiences, I see that they have made me who I am.
I remember being embarrassed to say I was from there when I turned 18 and would venture out to clubs in the city; now I’d say my favourite thing about the place is its chaos.
Happy: You’ve described playing music as a “compulsion rather than a choice.” What does that feeling of being compelled to create actually feel like for you?
Roose: Honestly, it’s a battle at times. I turned to spirituality some years ago now to help me cope with the fact that this may just be my soul’s purpose in this lifetime.
I get a lot of relief from thinking that way. I know it’s cliché, but I genuinely feel like I sold my soul to rock’n’roll. I “must” play. I had an epiphany recently that music was the reason I’m often able to walk into a room and make people smile.
Though I battle with the urge not to let it consume me, it simultaneously, and maybe paradoxically, makes me who I am.
Happy: After touring the world and signing the “wrong deal,” what was the most important lesson you learned when you had to start over at 30?
Roose: Trusting myself. I think everybody can relate to retrospectively looking back and knowing this or that person was bad to have around.
Since starting over, I’ve just trusted myself. Even when things didn’t seem like they were going that great, I felt I made the right decision when a decision had to be made, and things always worked out.
And I mean always. I still feel like that same person who’s nice and inviting to everyone, but I certainly say no to some great opportunities if they don’t feel right.
Happy: You mention returning to your roots and “just playing the damn guitar.” How did stripping things back in that way change your approach to music?
Roose: I was overcomplicating everything. I like that I experimented, but I probably should have kept it more to myself. I’m a guitar player.
I smiled as I wrote that, actually. I can’t really tell you the specifics and complexities of how I know, but in this lifetime, I am supposed to play that damn guitar.
Once I realised this, I knew that finding my sound was going to be more about simplifying everything. The answers were always right in front of me. Find a band full of like-minded individuals, and just play.
Happy: The title “Rollin’ Stone” represents where you both are in your lives. What does that phrase mean to you personally right now?
Roose: Since starting over, my life has been a continuous moving on from everything and everyone.
The title is so fitting to where Dad was at when he wrote these tracks, and me when I finally sat down to produce and record my solos for them. I just keep letting go and moving on. This is the most explorative time of my life to date.
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Happy: Can you tell us about the story behind the song “Bitumen To Gravel”?
Roose: It’s really Dads story to tell. In a nutshell, he spent many decades driving road trains across the country when we were young.
He saw and met many people, and had many memorable experiences. I believe he drove an infamous truck that is now in a museum somewhere, and he still speaks often to guys he met while on the road. Dad would often work very long days and nights.
I can remember when I was in primary school, he would come home late, turn the hallway light on, open my bedroom door, and come sit on my bed and wake me up to ask how my day at school was.
Happy: Having moved on from the desire to “make it,” what does success look like for you now?
Roose: Success is trust to me. I often find myself stepping back after big decisions and seeing that there is a greater force at play.
It’s sometimes as if my life were a video game. I only have the gut feeling to make decisions, and following that is my life’s adventure.
The feeling to make this crazy decision on what is simply a hunch, then have a series of completely unpredictable things unfold.
That is the most fun I’ve ever had in my life. Probably worth mentioning, it is also the most unclear.
Happy: With this chapter closed as a “Rollin’ Stone,” what is the next creative move you feel compelled to make?
Roose: The timing of this question! I was just an hour ago thinking about the fact that I had set myself the goal of my debut EP and this record with Dad this year, and it is about to be ticked off tomorrow.
It was an emotional wave for me. I had initially planned to record my next album in the coming months, then take off to Indonesia somewhere to surf, dive, play some shows, and produce the record.
But I feel like now I should go away first. Here it is in real time, that feeling thing I’ve been writing about. I, Tim (the ego), want to record the album, then go.
Something much wiser and more powerful than me is saying just go, and let the changed me figure it out when I get home.
I should mention, too, that I spun an atlas, and it landed quite clearly on South America. That could mean something.
Happy: Lastly, what makes you happy? :-)
Roose: Love. I thought a lot about love in the last year. I came to realise that when I love somebody, or something, it’s not “my” love.
It’s that I choose to access love for those people, and those things. Love just ‘is’ it’s never actually created or given.
It’s accessed. And so I’ve actively put more time and energy into loving more often. I don’t always have the pleasure of enjoying everything unfolding in life, but I can access love whenever I want.
It’s always been there, just waiting. I loved a woman today, actually, who was very rude to me while I was purchasing something. I could feel her block toward my presence, and so I just accessed love.
Which meant I understood as a feeling, not a thought, that a lifetime of experiences that I’ll never know anything about, led up to this very moment where just my presence is bothering her.
So I loved, left, and nothing about the experience changed my internal state.
