The New Roses hail from the Rheingua region of Germany and have spent the last six years or so honing their craft sharing stages with everyone from Accept to Molly Hatchet. Thanks to a well-placed track (without a trace) on the US hit show, Sons of Anarchy, the band have increasingly gained international attention and, thanks to an impressive third album (2017’s one more for the road), the band are showing no signs of slowing down. With a UK tour scheduled for November / December, we took the opportunity to have a chat with Timmy Rough, the band’s charismatic singer, about the band’s history and growth. 

You guys formed in abut 2007 and then spent some time basically building your name and getting out as a support act, with quite a lot of well-known artists, is that right?

Um, you know, 2007. That’s when I met the drummer… back in 2005 or 6 and then we started playing the bars in our area and we played the songs of The Rolling Stones, Skynyrd, AC/DC, the Beatles, Elvis, metallica and all these things and then we made a good living from that. But, as you can imagine, at a certain point you realise that it’s not for you. You want to tell your own story with your own words and your own songs, so we decided to make the cut, start over with original tunes and that was 2012 – that was when we started the New Roses. We got two more guys and we started doing our original stuff, so the new roses were formed in 2012 but the whole history of the band began in 2006 / 7.

Your influences were very diverse, it seems, which flows nicely into your original music. When you started to put the band together, was there a core sound that you wanted to aim for, or do you just go with what feels right in a given song?

You know, until today I have a big problem because I like so many styles of music and I can really picture myself playing this music, so every time I write a song, I’m not sure what I’m going to write. Sometimes I have a very soul attitude, or country attitude or southern attitude. Sometimes, it’s metal… I’m not a super-metal guy, but I like the lower, lighter metal stuff like Metallica or Iron maiden – stuff like that. But, I never know what I’m going to write and it’s not easy for the guys because I’ll send them a song and there’ll be like “what the fuck is this, man? It’s not even close to rock ‘n’ roll!” It’ll be some funky, country, hip-hop kind of thing. I like Kid Rock, I like Run DMC and I like, I don’t know, Missy Elliot… but I like Pantera and Slayer and the Rolling Stones and Howling Wolf and all these things, so we try to keep as tight as possible, but still The New Roses have a pretty, pretty wide range of rock ‘n’ roll.

I think it’s really cool that you approach it that way and also that you’ve found a group of individuals who are willing to go on that journey with you because it can be hard to find people willing to go along with that diversity, but when you have it, it makes it all so much more interesting.

Yeah, especially when you start a band these days, when nobody… when there’s no support form the music industry, you know. The problem that we face at the moment is that you don’t get any support form the record companies or anything, or to be correct, you don’t get as much support as you used to get. So, back in the day, in the 90s or something, you got maybe 200,000 / 500,000 dollars or Euros in advance to make a record; one single record, you know. These days you get 10,000 Euros and you have to pay the record form that, so there’s no way you can live on that. So, you need a band, a group of people that is willing to sacrifice all their time and all their power for no money at first! There’s no benefit – just the applause of the crowd and the fact that you can travel… but there is no financial benefit at first. So, to have a band stay together, that’s the biggest challenge these days in the rock ‘n’ roll business. Just to stay together.

You’re right, it’s incredibly difficult and you have to raise the money to make the record and you have to get people who can take time off work, get into the studio and go on tour – it’s really challenging.

Exactly. And on the other hand as well, it’s such a diverse mix of rock ‘n’ roll, because when you play 120 shows every year you learn to appreciate that you’re not having to play the same groove every night. So, I think it’s cool because I can sing a big range and then the guitarist, Norman, he can do certain different things and it’s a challenge in many ways and that keeps it exciting.

Quite aside from keeping it exciting for you, which is of course important, but it also allows you to move between different audiences because you’ve played with a really great mix of people from Joe Bonamassa to Black Country Communion – that’s a very diverse audience that you can tap into.

That’s exactly correct. At first, you know, it was kind of… how to say, intimidating when you get on a straight-up death metal festival! We have… the metal scene in Germany is very big, so there’s a very big market, but we never saw ourselves doing this. Then, they started booking us and you go out and you think “are we doing the right thing or are we going to embarrass ourselves?” But, in some way, the metal crowd seemed to really like. Of course, we’re kind of exotic and they liked it! We never try to be something that we’re not. We’re a rock ‘n’ roll band and we bring a little more roll to this rock event and we hope people like it and it goes down well. It’s a lot of fun to be on so many different festivals with so many different audiences – it gives you the opportunity to lay a lot of shows. We’ve played so many different shows this year and next year and last year – it’s crazy because we can travel anywhere!

Certainly for metal audiences and I think for rock in general, it’s not so much what you play in terms of “ah, it’s rock ‘n’ roll, we’re not going to listen” so much as the passion with which you play and when you see a band giving everything to be on that stage, I think it translates very well to the audience…

Yeah, we’re not the most technical band in the world, of course, like Mr Big or, I don’t know, Dream Theater, or these super-well-trained guys. We just always wanted to be in a band… I always wanted to be in a band, or even just hang with a band. I didn’t imagine myself being in a band, I thought I’d turn out a roadie or something, you know. So, to be in a band and travel, it means so much to us that, of course, we try to ‘win’ every night… to win the audience and the passion and the night. So, this is our main goal. Of course we give it all we can – it’s a passion, yeah! As soon as you hear that bass drum or you feel the guitar in your bones… you can’t hold me back, at least!

It’s such a great way to be, when you still get that adrenalin kick… that’s really important and you can’t fake it and if you see someone on stage who feels that way, it hits the audience hard…

Exactly man, it’s like I said, we started as a cover band in small bars and stuff and now, for example, we played Sweden Rock, Hellfest, in France, and all these big events in Germany; all those stages in Germany where we used to go as fans, seeing bands on those stages. So, for me, it’s a really, really deep and intense feeling, because what I experience now gives a big push that you don’t get anywhere else, you know.

You fight for rock ‘n’ roll, you fight for yourself, you fight for your time mates and you fight for the audience who are looking at you with big, expecting eyes! They travelled for hours, for example, and waited two hours in a line. They spent their hard-earned money on your tickets and then you go out on that stage and you see those eyes and you just want to make everybody happy and make yourself happy and this is a very strong thing. It’s very powerful and that’s what I really like the most about it.

So, I’d like to ask you a bit about one more for the road – tell me a bit about the recording process because it sounds very tight, but it has that raw, rock ’n’ roll energy – so how did you record that?

So, we recorded the record at the same studio where we recorded the first two records as well. Which was in our home town area, which is very important for us. We didn’t go the usual way and rent a bigger studio in Berlin, kind of thing. We’re kind of a home-brewed band, you know, so we decided to keep everything local so we went to a studio in our area, which is more like a garage with a computer and a drum room. We like it there and we recorded the first two records there, we produced it all ourselves and recorded ourselves, so we decided to keep it that way. So we went back to that same studio and I wrote the record in between shows. Every time we were home, I sat down and tried to work on the songs that I’d come up with, always on tour. On tour, I’d have the idea, maybe write little stretches and then, at home, I turn them into songs and show them to the band and then we work on that, decide which songs to pick and after that, we go to the studio and record and this we do very quickly. We recorded one more for the road in two weeks, and then we mixed it in another two weeks, so the whole record was done in a month. This is how we work. We don’t produce it big time, with a lot of overdubs and stuff. We try to paint the picture that we’re going to show live. It’s mainly two guitars, two vocals and bass and drums. That’s why we’re pretty quick in the studio.

In terms of the lyrics, I’m always interested in bands working with English as a second language because I think that writing lyrics is always a difficult – to say what you want to say in a concise, song format – is it a challenge for you to develop the lyrics?

It’s funny, but I think no. Because, when I was a kid, I used to listen to the record collection of my father. There was only Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Bill Hailey, stuff like that. I used to listen to all of that, and I never actually listened to German music. There was, I think, one German song-writer that I admired and that was it. All the rock ‘n’ roll bands and all the great 70s bands that I listened to sang in English – when I first sat down, I immediately switched to English, and thought in English. A few months ago, for the first time, I tried to write a German song; not for The New Roses, but for myself and it really felt weird. All my life, I just thought in rock ‘n’ roll… I saw it in English. It has a certain groove – the language flows and it has a certain groove, a certain flow that, for me, is very important for the groove of rock ‘n’ roll music, that’s why I felt natural writing English lyrics.

That makes perfect sense and when you hear something in that way, it becomes ingrained. It’s always interesting how people approach lyrics because rock ‘n’ roll lyrics can come from a very personal place…

Yeah, I try different things on each record and when you listen to all our records, I try different perspectives and different ways of writing lyrics. There’s autobiographical stuff, there’s story-telling, I also tried some political stuff… but, only just one or two songs. I try to write a ballad every once in a while and, for me, I would say that lyric-wise I come from country music as a big influence. I always admired it as an influence rather than rock ‘n’ roll writers like Motley Crue or Guns ‘n’ roses. There are certain rhymes you can work around because they’re maybe too obvious. For me, it’s very important.

It’s interesting to try and do things from different perspectives and you said you tried to include some political ideas and your own take on ballads – but I think it’s very difficult to take political ideas and reduce them to the medium of the song and still keep the idea and relevance…

Oh man! The story of my life! The problem is… I think, sooner or later I’ll write a book, a novel or something because, for me, when I pick up a topic, for example like ‘without a trace’ or ‘the storm’ or ‘dead man’s wars’ – these songs, I could have written maybe twenty-five verses, you know! I have so many ideas for certain topics, so it’s really tough for me to always scratch 90% of my ideas and just keep three minutes of them. And then in a three minute and thirty second chorus, there are three choruses, which means three times the same set of words, so you only have very little time to cut to the chase and make your point and to really turn it into magic like Bruce Springsteen does some time, or Bob Dylan Townes Van zant or Steve Earl or anybody like that. To have three minutes, minus three choruses, and still turn it into magic is a very, very big challenge.  

You’ve got a huge amount of touring coming up, including a number of UK shows – what have you got planned for the tour?

Well, as you say, we play very, very many shows this year and I don’t even know where we’re going to be! I only know that we’re going to be back in the UK and right now we’re in the middle of the festival season and everything is going really well and we’ve always dreamed of playing those festivals that we’ve played this year and it’s great! We’ve been to the UK several times, but never as a headlining band, so we’re very, very happy to come this time for this late Fall (or early winter) to do some headline shows in the UK because we’ll have the time to really connect to the audience. No rush, no nothing. You can just go out and do your thing and play some encores if the audience likes and stuff like that. It’s always been really important to us and I think we reveal, or unleash, the most power when we have a little more time. So, yeah, that’s what we’re looking for to give the UK audience a chance to take this ride with us and to give them a 100 minute / 120 minute rock ‘n’ roll party!

One thing that stuck out from the touring that you did was that you did a couple of shows for the troops in Afghanistan, that’s remarkable – how did that come about?

We always wanted to do that in a way, because a lot of my friends are in the military. One or two of my very, very close friends are working for the US military. So, I always knew about the fact that they work really hard and, especially, the German military is not getting the appreciation (at least this is my opinion) that they should get. So, we always wanted to do that and the best way we can do that is music. So, we volunteered for this thing and we told the German military: “if you ever want a rock ‘n’ roll band to give all the troops that are stationed there a good time, we’re ready!”

Then, it took a while, then one day the phone rang and there was this commander, I don’t know what his rank was, and he said if we wanted to go, we could. So, yeah, they sent a big military truck to our rehearsal room, they loaded all our shit in and flew it over and four weeks later we followed and flew into Afghanistan. It was a weird feeling because I’ve never felt myself to be in danger, so this was really the first time. There was this little troop that were supposed to protect us, with machine guns and helmets and bullet proof vests and stuff, so it was weird because it’s just a regular airport, but there were all these people with machine guns and what have you. So, we stepped on the bus from the airport to the camp and they said we had to let the curtains close because… well, you know and I thought like… I remember thinking “please, let it be for protection from the sun – not making a good target!” So, it was really weird for us because I had never felt that threat. It’s a very big experience, it’s like you add a new feeling to your life, to your range of feelings. Of course, as a lucky person, I only know the opposite feeling – total protection and security. We feel totally secure, so to see the other side of that feeling, the other end of the line, was exciting and, of course, a little bit frightening. Even more, you start to appreciate what they do over there, because they’re always at risk and something bad could really happen at any time. So, we went over there and we played a show and they loved it so much that we spontaneously played a second show, two days after, on the back of a military truck. It was crazy! We just through our shit on the back of the truck, plugged it in and started playing and we talked to many of the soldiers from many different countries. Not only Germany, but even soldiers from Afghanistan who were training there and stuff like that. America, Croatia and I don’t know, all these nations that are working perfectly together and that was really cool to see. I think we really made something important there. You feel that people really appreciated our appreciation and it was totally worth it, I would totally do it again and it was one of the biggest experiences of my musical life. It was definitely something that I would have never experienced without being in a rock ‘n’ roll band, so it’s a very cool thing that I’ll never forget.

That’s such a cool story and it sounds like an amazing experience for a band to have. I’m really conscious that I’ve taken up a lot of your time, so is there any final words you’d like to add?

I’m really always saying this but without you, there wouldn’t be an us! So, there’s no taking my time. It’s our time for rock ‘n’ roll to keep it alive!

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2018 UK TOUR
WITH SPECIAL GUESTS DEPARTED*

*EXCEPT CARLISLE, NEWCASTLE & SOUTHAMPTON
BOOK TICKETS VIA WWW.THENEWROSES.COM/TOUR