Keep It Fly in the Negative Zone, the debut album from West of Rome, a band comprised of four veteran San Antonio musicians, feels like fine wine demanding to be decanted and served for a celebratory toast.
The release is an amalgamation of guitar-driven pop songs steeped in a garage rock ethos. For music fans who pine for alternative rock blended with introspective lyricism and memorable hooks, the release is likely to feel both new and instantly recognizable.
The band’s album release performance will take place Saturday, Feb. 1 at The Lonesome Rose with the New Attractions and the Please Help opening.
Part of that timelessness probably comes courtesy of the band’s lineup of local musical stalwarts. Vocalist Kevin Higginbotham, guitarist Charlie Roadman, bassist Blake Smithson and drummer Jamie Roadman are lifelong performers with deep roots in the San Antonio music scene, both as individuals and in tandem with one another.
Prior to West of Rome, Smithson was a member of Hondo Radar, The Paisley and Coyote Dreams. Guitarist Charlie Roadman started his musical journey with S.T.E.V.E (Satan’s Teeth Eat Virtually Everything) before launching his solo effort Torrejon, while brother Jamie Roadman, the original drummer for art-rock collective Buttercup, served as the man behind the kit for The Mechanical Walking Robot Boy and Los Mescaleros. The Roadman brothers and Higginbotham also played together in multiple projects including Evergreen, F for Fake and Athens v. Sparta.
The origin story for West of Rome, named for the 1991 Vic Chesnutt album, extends all the way back to 1991. At the time, Smithson, then a member of Coyote Dreams, met the Roadman brothers and Higginbotham, who were playing Evergreen. The two bands embarked the following year on a memorable — and at one point bloodcurdling — tour.
“It was a harrowing few minutes: Mike Ryan from Coyote Dreams had a VW bus all painted hippie-style,” Jamie Roadman said. “It was wintertime, and we went over a bridge that was frozen. I was driving behind, and I saw the VW bus go on its side. There were a few minutes of sheer terror, and then Mike Ryan popped out the top and said, ‘We’re fine.’”
“We all bonded very heavily over the course of that tour, and then we’ve all played together ever since,” Smithson added.
In the years that followed, an oft-thrown together combination of musicians called The Unables played regularly. The revolving lineup featured members of both Coyote Dreams and Evergreen, and its pool of talent evolved over the years to include members of The Intentions, Light Baby Strange and The Infidels.
From the ashes of The Unables, the members of West of Rome kept in touch, now combining for a new creative endeavor three decades down the line.
The four friends said their bond is strengthened by their music. Each member plays multiple instruments, and their extensive gigging experiences have strengthened their collaboration.
“We’re all at this point pretty easy going,” Jamie Roadman said. “We’ve had a lot of experience in bands, and sort of know when to insert our opinions — and not. Most of these songs were written by Kevin, with input by everybody.”
While Higginbotham brought in fleshed-out song ideas, the final product is the result of each member’s experience, Smithson explained.
“We would get in the room and sort of hammer them out,” he said of the creative process. “Charlie has very definite music ideas, which is great. He’s real focused. He’ll hear something in his head and really be able to chase that down.”
Charlie Roadman’s guitar journey started in his early teens while a member of a military family that moved frequently. He could always find his footing in a new town through music. An early fan of heavy metal, the elder Roadman abandoned the genre once exposed to the alternative sounds of the ’90s.
When it came to recording with West of Rome, Charlie Roadman said he spent more time focused on tweaking his contributions.
“I don’t know that I heard the parts instantly,” he said. “I wanted to avoid cliché guitar riffs while working toward a positive outcome.”
Adding the mixing and mastering process, all four members of West of Rome have recording experience and have produced multiple projects.
“We were getting together just for the fun. There wasn’t a grand goal at the very beginning,” Jamie Roadman said. “It was easy to book a block at a studio and go in and work on some ideas we’d been playing with.”
Higginbotham described the nine songs that make up Keep It Fly in the Negative Zone as a “love letter to misspent youth and a survival guide for difficult times.”
The difficult times in question are the COVID-19 pandemic, which hit not long after the members of West of Rome began assembling the project. At its core, the album reminds the listener through example of how to stay true to what makes one happy.
“It combines our love of vintage gear with modern abandon,” Higginbotham added. “Our analog obsessions were recorded live for transmission into a digital world.”
$8, 9 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 1, The Lonesome Rose, 2114 N. St. Mary’s St, thelonesomerose.com.
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This article appears in Jan 22 – Feb 4, 2025.