To the naked eye, rock music and showtunes don’t share many parallels. The former is a genre created by reckless young people with a lust for life, while the latter is mostly consumed by refined adults craving high culture. But if you take a look past the surface level, the two styles—and lifestyles—have a lot more in common than you’d think.
Just ask Rocket Paloma frontwoman Joey Kerner. From drama geek to rock ’n’ roll star, Kerner has long had a knack for taking center stage. Her interest in performing music began while she was studying theater at Cardinal Stritch University, where she was enrolled in a music composition class. It wasn’t until moving abroad that she purchased her own guitar and became a self-described “songwriting machine.”
“[Writing music] is where my curiosity has brought me,” Kerner says. “It has been a really fulfilling way to express myself and collaborate with others. I get to be myself; I don’t have to be other people.”
Upon returning to Milwaukee, Kerner dipped her toes into the local music scene for the first time. Kerner says the Milwaukee music community was heavily focused on folk and bluegrass when she first began performing solo shows around the Riverwest neighborhood. She was inevitably inspired to expand her solo endeavor into a full-fledged rock outfit. After meeting her bandmates through friends, she says everything began falling into place. The four-piece band released their first EP together in March 2017.
Rocket Paloma’s sound is often described as progressive and folky, the latter Kerner attributes to her early days as a solo performer. Even though the prog-folk genre is most often associated with 1970s groups like Strawbs and Jethro Tull, Kerner cites more contemporary acts like Arcade Fire among the group’s most prominent influences. Their unique progressive-folk sound is a “happy accident,” according to bassist Jon Blohm.
|
|
“A lot of our stuff early on had this kind of folk base to it,” says drummer Bob Schaab. “As we started writing and collaborating more together, we started writing things with more progressive elements like longer songs and odd time signatures. It all just kind of blended together.”
After a few EPs and singles, the band released their debut-full length Mother Mountain on Sept. 21. The album clocks in around an hour, featuring energetic, funky tunes like “Ghosted” and epic, theatrical ballads like the 10-minute title track. Schaab stresses the importance of listening to the album from beginning to end. “We’re very, very big on the album as the thing, not just focused on singles,” he says. “We think the whole body of work should flow into each other.”
Kerner agrees. “I think it really takes you on an adventure, kind of like a guided tour,” she says. “It’s a history of how we came to be; there’s so many cool twists and turns to us as a band and how we do stuff, and how we’ve developed over time. When you’re really listening to it, you go someplace instead of skipping around.”
A transition from theater to prog-rock may sound odd, but given the dramatic elements of each genre, perhaps it comes as a likely career move for Kerner. She’s able to belt Freddie Mercury-style falsettos with ease, and it’s not hard to imagine Kerner belting out Broadway standards like “Memory” and “Don’t Rain on My Parade.” Between Kerner’s one-of-a-kind voice and the dual-guitar stylings of Kerner and lead guitarist Jack Beyler, Rocket Paloma has a sound unlike any Milwaukee band. Even though their music may not be licensed by Stephen Sondheim any time soon, the band will certainly continue to receive a standing ovation in Milwaukee.
Rocket Paloma’s music is streaming at rocketpaloma.bandcamp.com.
