Interview: Rosali
Rosali Middleman moved from Philadelphia to the remote outskirts of Durham in the fall of 2021. The singer, songwriter, and guitarist who records and performs as Rosali was drawn to both the solitude of rural living — which reconnected her to the bucolic elements of her Michigan upbringing — and the Triangle’s close-knit music scene.
The balance of isolation and community created fertile ground for Middleman’s songwriting, which had stalled amidst the anxious uncertainty of the COVID-19 pandemic. Time in nature provided a welcomed reset from the sensory overwhelm of a dozen years in a dense, bustling city. Long walks with her beloved Siberian Husky mix, Foxy, who inspired the chorus of one of 2024’s best songs, “Rewind,” grounded her in new internal rhythms and unlocked fresh creative pathways. She felt simultaneously settled and re-enlightened.
“Being away from the city has me in a different kind of headspace,” Middleman says. “The woods are so different. It’s quiet and peaceful, and you can hear more of your own thoughts. Different stories start to emerge.”
Many of those narratives made their way onto the fourth Rosali album, Bite Down, which was released last March. The LP’s title is a self-directed call-to-action for Middleman to sink her teeth into the complexities of life by actively embracing both the good and bad. Its 10 songs find her going inward to examine feelings and past experiences with a mature, healthily detached perspective afforded by growth and self-awareness. She calls it her most joyful and freeing record yet.
“There's a lot of healing on Bite Down,” Middleman says. “It definitely feels like a corner was turned for me.”
When it came time to hit the studio, she again recruited David Nance and The Mowed Sound, the Omaha-based band with which she recorded and toured 2021’s No Medium, to flesh out her brooding and buoyant compositions. The group’s playing adds agita and a raucous intimacy, enveloping Middleman’s assured vocal delivery — which lands somewhere between Aimee Mann and Chrissie Hynde — in a vortex of sound.
“The calm of Rosali’s voice, the straight talk of her inner search vs. the wildness of the band, the sonic storm she rides in on. That’s their sound,” opines Dan Bejar of Destroyer in the Bite Down press kit. “They play free and wild and relentlessly melodious. They rip and create space and fill it up with what seems like reckless abandon, but listen carefully or listen for a while and you’ll find them paying real close attention to each other and exactly what the song demands.”
Standouts like “Hills on Fire” and “On Tonight” were written during a chapter of profound personal upheaval. In addition to saying goodbye to Philly — where she cut her teeth on the experimental noise rock scene and, ultimately, shaped the sound of her solo work — she’d quit drinking and signed with Durham-based Merge Records. With a clearer plate and mind, Middleman manifested a more fluid, sonic-driven approach to making music, inviting in melodies during hikes and through the rediscovered ritual of meditative guitar-playing versus deliberately carving out time to put pen to paper.
“That’s now how I start trying to write songs — to get out of my own way and let things come through,” adds Middleman, who in 2023 released an improvisational guitar album under her Edsel Axle moniker.
Ahead of a rare solo performance at AyurPrana Listening Room on Friday, Jan. 24 — which doubles as a benefit show for Lamplight AVL’s efforts to support local artists impacted by Tropical Storm Helene — Middleman spoke with Asheville Stages about the evolution of both projects, her creative priorities for 2025, and connecting with a new generation of female fans.
Jay Moye: You’re coming here with Hiss Golden Messenger as part of a short run of shows revisiting Bad Debt, the first album M.C. Taylor released under the Hiss moniker back in 2010. How’d you originally get to know Taylor — who also lives in the Durham area — and get on board for this January tour?
Rosali Middleman: At the end of 2021, he asked me to come out on a Hiss tour for a couple weeks after my third record, No Medium, came out. I’ve known his bass player, Alex Bingham, for a while, because his wife is a good friend. At that point, I hadn’t moved down here. I did a tour with them as a duo with my friend from Philadelphia, Emily Robb, and we had a wonderful time. They were a great group of people to hang out and play shows with. Now that I live down here, and we’re both on Merge, we’ve kept in touch.
He reached out to do this special little regional tour, and I think it's a good pairing. Both of us are winding down from touring a bunch last year behind new records. I’m really looking forward to these mellower solo shows. And to be in Asheville and help do some more fundraising.
JM: You were on the lineup for Burial [Beer Co.]’s Burnpile festival here, just after the storm, with H.C. McEntire.
RM: We were planning to do a mashup of both of our songs with her band, who are amazing. And her songs are incredible. We were really practicing when the hurricane hit and were, of course, bummed when it was canceled. I was looking forward to seeing John Moreland and Woods. Hopefully it comes back and they ask us to be a part of it.
JM: You toured most of last year with your band in support of Bite Down. Are you approaching this run of solo shows as a palate cleanser, to reset and maybe try out new songs?
RM: I'm still working on some new songs and am not quite ready to bring them out yet. I've only done one solo show with the new [Bite Down] songs, and it feels completely different. It reconnects me to the origins of the songs, and I can play around more with the lyricism and delivery. And I think it maybe gets more to the song’s emotional core, the intensity on that end, and less of our big sound, which is of course also really fun. After playing them with the band, I feel more ready to do them solo than the other way around. And the context of the venue in Asheville is the perfect environment.
JM: You were on the road for much of last year, playing a mix of headlining shows, festivals, and opening slots. How did it feel to bring Bite Down from the studio to the stage?
RM: Traveling and creating music together with my band, who are like my brothers, is so much fun. It feels like we generate a lot of love and share that love with the audience. That exchange was really palpable to us; it felt like we were doing something good for people.
JM: Did the songs evolve on the road?
RM: We always have a looseness and an open-ended approach. We’re good listeners who play with dynamics and communicate well. We’ve developed our stage telepathy. Songs like “Hills on Fire,” for example, Jim [Schroeder] — who’s my guitarist and collaborator — evolved how he’d play the solos in between the verses with each show. Sometimes they'd be more minimal and sometimes more wild.
We played some songs more tough than they are on the record. We finished those songs while we were recording, so when we first started playing them live, we had to ask ourselves, “Is this how it goes?” Then after playing them a bunch on the road, we were like, “OK, we're gonna play this faster and harder.”
Like “Hopeless,” which we play a lot louder than it is on the record. And “Bite Down” was really fun to figure out how to do live. That one is really keys-heavy, and we're touring as just a four piece, so we played around with how to create that space-y, late-night feel. Part of it’s wanting to have fun each night, because when you're playing hundreds of shows, you don't want the songs to feel stale. Allowing room for them to be the living things they are keeps it exciting for everybody.
JM: Do you write with your band in mind, or do things start with you and build from there in the studio?
RM: They're always on my mind. I definitely was thinking of them when I wrote some of Bite Down. But generally, I try not to write with any preconceived ideas of instrumentation, because I want us to be open to what comes through when we’re together.
JM: Which isn’t very often. They live in Omaha, and you’re here in North Carolina. Does the long-distance dynamic create “healthy space” that benefits the music?
RM: There are definitely pros and cons. Yes, there's healthy space, but it makes practicing or doing one-off shows or developing things together a little more challenging — and expensive. We make it work because everybody's dedicated. When we made No Medium together, we thought it would be a fun, one-off project. After touring that record a bunch, we felt like we could go so much deeper. Now we really feel like we're a band.
JM: You also record solo, avant-garde guitar instrumentals as Edsel Axle. How does that music come to life?
RM: It’s all improvisational. I started playing guitar like that as a regular practice in 2020, during the first months of lockdown. I’d just finished No Medium and had to press pause because none of us knew what was going on. And I didn't have words yet or know what I was going to say, so I just started playing guitar every day without any preconceived direction. Just letting things flow felt like all I could really do. It was super therapeutic for me, and it's definitely grown in quality and energy.
I've only played one Edsel Axle show live, at Hopscotch [Music Festival 2024] in Raleigh. For forever I’d felt super self-conscious about trying to get into the headspace to play in front of people and let myself be free. But I’ve really wanted to do it more, so when Hopscotch asked if I would play, I nervously said “yes.” And it actually went well. I’m playing Big Ears [in Knoxville, Tenn.]this year and doing a few shows around that, including one in Asheville [on Thursday, March 27, again at AyurPrana Listening Room].
JM: How would you describe the experience of playing an Edsel Axle gig compared to a Rosali show?
RM: I’m much more nervous. It has to be for an audience that wants to be intentionally listening to this kind of music, because sometimes it's not melodic. It can be noisy. I try to get into a state where I'm riding the wave and in flow. And the audience has to be willing to be along for that ride.
But it's also not unrelated in that it’s still emotional. I'm not technically trained. I'm a self-taught player. I’ve been playing guitar for a long time — since I was 13 — and have always been an intuitive, emotional player, regardless of the end product. With the Rosali project, my voice and singing take over more. That's where my brain activates. Whereas with Edsel Axle, I free-flow through the guitar playing.
JM: Is there a connection between the two? Do you start out creating something on guitar that ultimately becomes a Rosali song, or are they two different animals?
RM: It's a combination. If I'm just playing without any expectation, they can bleed into each other. If I land on something with good changes or a nice tone that feels like it could become an actual song-song, I’ll make a note. Because oftentimes when I’m playing, I have no idea what just happened if I don't record it and make some kind of memo.
JM: Well, cheers to you for getting outside your comfort zone and doing something without a net. It sounds terrifying, but also really fun.
RM: Yeah! I consciously tell myself that it’s exciting. And that people are there for that. I'm okay with crashing and burning at this stage in my life.
JM: What does winter do for you, creatively? Do you intentionally slow down, hibernate, and go inward to bring forth new ideas in the spring?
RM: I'm feeling kind of activated right now. In December and over the holidays, I definitely felt the slowdown, but there's new energy now. And having a Husky, I'm not indoors as much as I used to be. I tend to write a lot in my head while I'm walking, so I'm feeling that kind of energy again, being out for multiple long walks a day in the cold and trying to appreciate that aspect of winter.
Over the last month, I’ve been resting, which my brain and body have needed. And also bracing for who knows what 2025 will be, on a collective level. But I’m still making plans around art and music and playing. We hope to make another Rosali record this year, so I’m focused on finishing new songs. And we’ll play some shows, including dates that haven't been announced yet.
JM: How has living in North Carolina — or, maybe even more specifically, the Triangle area — seeped into your creative consciousness and songwriting?
RM: It’s funny, a lot of people have said [Bite Down] has a twang to it, or it's country. I think it’s my least country record. But maybe there's a subconscious thing, being in the South.
JM: Speaking of Southern artists, you did a run supporting Iron & Wine. How do you approach opening sets like that for a band with a pretty devoted following who may not be familiar with your music?
RM: They're a huge band, which I kind of knew, but after actually seeing the production I was like, “Oh wow, this is big!” Playing those rooms was really awesome. We’d just come off our rollicking headlining tour where we're playing, like, 200-cap rooms where people were there to see us. So we had to figure out how to find the right mix for an audience of people dressed up and out on a date.
We’d go in and do our rock set in these opulent theaters. Everyone was so kind to us, and people responded well, but it's just a totally different thing. Their stage set-up is very intricate, with projections. It's such a different energy when you enter into these bigger production environments. Because we’re scrappy. [laughs]
A lot of the shows were all-ages. I’m always at the merch table selling my stuff, and kids would come up to me wanting to talk. Teenage girls bought my merch, which felt really important and cool to connect to a younger generation. That part was really special.
JM: Bite Down was among many great records released by women artists in 2024. How does it feel to be a part of what seems like a powerful wave of female songwriters and female-fronted bands?
RM: It’s definitely true. For the first leg of shows we did on Bite Down, we supported Mary Timony, who’s a hero of mine. Her record came out in January of last year, so that was incredible to witness right off the bat. But across all genres, it was definitely women-led and community-based. It’s just a fact that a lot of incredible, talented women are making music right now. Women have a lot to say. Men do, too. But last year, especially, a lot of women put out incredible records. And it’s an honor to be among them.
IF YOU GO
Who: Hiss Golden Messenger (solo) with Rosali (solo)
When: Friday, Jan. 24, 8 p.m.
Where: AyurPrana Listening Room, 312 Haywood Rd., ayurpranalisteningroom.com
Tickets: Sold out
(Photo from Rosali’s April 2024 show at Eulogy by Alex Cox)
