Hey Rosetta!: Rock, Not Fiddles, From The Rock

Being from St. John's, Nfld. comes with certain musical expectations for Hey Rosetta! But their sweeping and melodic form of lyric-driven alternative rock is about as far removed from the stereotypical fiddling expected of them.

"There are definitely some presumptions," frontman Tim Baker says of being an east coast band. "Last time we were out, a guy at one of our shows was saying to me, 'I'm really excited, you know, to hear Celtic rock.' I was like, 'Whoa, buddy. Sorry to disappoint, but you're not going to hear any Celtic rock tonight!'"

The band grew out of a battered old briefcase full of songs that Baker had amassed during time spent living as a student in Montreal that he brought along on a road trip to California and back. Baker originally performed them solo, but quickly realized something was missing.

"I had all these songs and I actually started looking for people. I really wanted to make sort of an acoustic thing, almost a folky acoustic sound with cello and acoustic guitar and piano," Baker says of the band's beginnings. "Then Josh [Ward] came in and started laying down big old bass lines and we started doing some distortion. It evolved into something a little more rocky than I was originally gearing to, but I think that was a natural thing, something I wanted to have whether I knew it or not."

This Listen Up article is from the November 2007 issue of Chart Magazine. You can purchase the issue in the Chart Shop.