Live from the Boom Room is a live music video series featuring live performances recorded in the Blip Blap Video HQ bunker in St. Louis, Mo. Learn more about Blip Blap Video at blipblapvideo.com, or follow them on Instagram and YouTube.
This week’s episode features Spectator performing “Save Me.”
About this week’s artist:
Spectator is Megan Rooney and Jeffrey Albert. They met in Saint Louis in 2006, spending evenings together playing around with ideas they’d each been cultivating for years. As a sound began to emerge, they headed to Centro Cellar Studio in Columbia, MO, without a clear objective. Over too many weekends to count, songs and relationships began to grow into what became Spectator and their first EP In the Brick, released in 2012. They followed with The Last Exchange in 2015, also recorded at Centro Cellar. Their most recent record is Charlie, Baby, recorded at Native Sound Recording in Saint Louis with collaborators both old and new. Their next project is underway and expected in 2024.
What brought you to this point in your life as a working St. Louis artist?
We’ve been putting out albums since our first EP In the Brick in 2012, and playing shows since a year or two before that. We’ve been around a long time, but we tend to fly under the radar. In the early days we played lots of shows all the time, but it’s less these days and more focused around album releases or just fun things that come up. We’re working on a new project right now with the aim of releasing some things in the spring and summer, so hopefully some cool opportunities to perform come out of that.
What inspires your music? What does this song in particular mean to you?
For us each song is inspired differently. Sometimes it’s a thought we want to capture. Sometimes it’s a melody first and the words just find their way into it. Sometimes it’s a song that lives with us for years before coming together, like this one, which is called “Save Me.” One big theme in this track is loss. This performance happened just a few days after Meg lost her dad, and it was cathartic to sing about it and then just drown it out with noise at the end.
Who in St. Louis are you inspired by right now?
We’re always inspired by everyone putting in all the work. We love seeing bands still out there that we were out there playing with more than 10 years ago, and there are so many newer bands and artists that we haven’t even had a chance to check out yet. The scene here is always alive, always changing, and it’s inspiring to be a part of that. To see some of the success formerly-local artists are having outside our city—like Tonina and LePonds—has been great. Watching Joanna Serenko and Neil Salsich on their wild rides was a blast. We’re emerging from having two really little kids and are learning more about the scene through the Boom Room series too.
What bands are you performing with lately?
Our most recent show was at Platypus with our dear friend Wil Reeves of Penny Marvel. We recorded our first two projects at his studio Centro Cellar in Columbia. He was in town to support another old friend of ours and his project, Soft Crisis.
Where do you hope to be in 5 years?
We’ve always had a pretty slow process from album to album, but the pandemic and two little ones at home has extended even further that normally long process. So as our kids continue to grow, we hope to have more and more time to focus on completing all these half-finished ideas we’ve accumulated over the past couple years.
Links:
Website | Previous Blip Blap Video collaborations: “Waves” (2019)| “Muddy Water” (2016) | “We’ve Been Through This Before” (2013)
This season of Live from the Boom Room has been partially funded by a generous grant from the Regional Arts Commission. Help keep Live from the Boom Room an absolutely free service for musical artists by supporting the project with your donation here: https://paypal.me/blipblap
