This interview was originally broadcast over the KALX airwaves on June 11, 2025.
Frontal Lobe: [00:00:00] Well, Lindsay, thank you so much for joining us here at K-A-L-X Berkeley. We’re so happy to have you.
Salami Rose Joe Louis: Thanks for having me.
Frontal Lobe: And so, who is your alter ego? Salami Rose Joe Louis.
Salami Rose Joe Louis: And that’s a tough question. I, uh, never know who I am. [Laughter]. The only constant in my life is that I feel like I’m always changing a lot, rapidly. [Laughter].
Frontal Lobe: Relatable. So you just put out an album in April, Lorings. You’re touring it now. You’re gonna be here in the Bay Area this coming Friday at SF Jazz, since I think you used to live in the Bay and participate in this wonderful cohort of fellow creative people in Oakland called Smart Bomb, um, I’d love to hear about how that contributed to your musical process and…
Salami Rose Joe Louis: Some of the musicians that I met in the Bay Area really changed my life. There’s such a spirit [00:01:00] of experimentation and so many artists put me onto so many listening experiences, and I am so grateful to the musicians I met and they’re open minds. I think there’s like an emphasis in the Bay on experimenting. That was just so cool to be around and I felt like I could be myself, feel supported and doing my thing in a way that felt very new, ’cause I had, before that I had been in Southern California and I hadn’t quite found that scene of acceptance and letting me be weird. And so it was really cool to, to meet all those artists. Also, so many incredible visual artists as well that I met up in the Bay that inspired me so much. I feel like I’m such a visual person, but I am not able to make the visual arts, but that definitely inspires the music.
Frontal Lobe: I love that there’s always this conversation between the visual arts and then sound.
Salami Rose Joe Louis: [00:02:00] Yeah!
Frontal Lobe: It’s very simpatico. So I wanna dive in a little bit to the album. I’d love to hear kind of the arc of how you approached making Lorings. Are you a lyrics first person? Are you noodling or are you like collaborating ’cause you got some folks coming on the album with you. What’s the germination process?
Salami Rose Joe Louis: In general, I feel like I tend to be a music first person and lyrics are harder for me. And I think that’s why in the past I’ve always done like conceptual projects where it’s all this one story and universe so I can be a little more intentional with the lyrics. And this, Lorings felt like cringingly honest, like a lot of the songs were just as if they’re coming out of my embarrassing diary.
I was hoping to do something like that. At the time in my life, there was kind of like this overarching theme of people in the music industry kind of telling me what to do. And so I just wanted to just completely be [00:03:00] myself and just like do exactly what I wanted to do in that moment. [Laughter]. So it kind of just felt like unbearably honest, lyrical take. Almost funny too. It’s just over the top in its honesty.
Frontal Lobe: Yeah. On that note, um, you’re famously in love with the Roland MV-8800.
Salami Rose Joe Louis: [Laughter].
Frontal Lobe: And so I wanted to ask you what it’s like to have a long-term relationship with a workstation? [Laughter].
Salami Rose Joe Louis: Wow, that’s such a cool question. Thanks for asking. [Laughter]. Honestly, I feel a little bit like a freak with how much I love this machine. But, what’s cool is I, I feel like no matter how much I work with it, there’s always something new to learn and always a new way to approach things. For example, I’m getting this solo set together and I just discovered the beauty of attaching two different MIDI sources. So like I can control the MIDI In and the MIDI Out at the same time.
It’s just a whole new chapter of the [00:04:00] MV I haven’t explored yet. So I feel like there’s always something new, but what’s nice too is like it’s really become such a big part of this sound universe. It’s fun to just know an instrument so well, so I can, uh, express what I wanna express a little quicker.
Frontal Lobe: I mean, I feel like you’re describing like having a third limb or like a second brain.
Salami Rose Joe Louis: It’s really special and I don’t know if I would be making music if it wasn’t for that being the process ’cause I think that it has such a unique sound, which I think has been really fun for me to get to have that whole sonic universe. When I have made stuff on like computers, I get really overwhelmed by the vast possibilities ’cause computers are like, there’s so many plugins, there’s so many sounds. You can just do so much. And I think having something that’s a little bit more contained is better for my brain. That is, having options is a little [00:05:00] tricky, so it’s, I feel like I can focus better on the MV.
Frontal Lobe: Yeah, the endless choice is paralyzing though having like a boundaried container is liberating, which sounds weird maybe, but, or counterintuitive. Back to the album and collaboration. So you have a couple folks on there, Flanafi, Omari Jazz, Luke Titus. You said you start from music, lyrics come a little later. When do other people come in?
Salami Rose Joe Louis: It’s a little bit all over the place. I feel like with having Luke, I had asked him to play drums on a different song. This is a bad habit of mine, but anytime I get some kind of like drums, it’s, I just like had fun, just kind of chopping it up. So then I had made that track Dribs and drags, and I was like, “Ooh, what if I flew in the drums that he sent from that other thing over here?” So I tried it over Dribs and drags and I actually like chopped up those drums and used it on like four other songs that I had made, but they’re unreleased. But I was like, I have to just pick [00:06:00] one song to have the drums on. I can’t just have the same drums on like four songs.
[Plays music].
And with Fill the void I had had this like demo going of that song and I sent it to Omari Jazz and he did his magic, like I love his soundscape stuff. So he made that like really cool intro and then Pool to cry with Flanafi. We made that, that was actually just one live improvised take. Like we made the song on the spot.
Actually, the keys and the vocals were going into the same channel, so there’s no way to edit it. So that was just like a live [00:07:00] take. But I think it’s like a, I really like kind of the feeling and emotion expressed in that moment. So I feel like I love collaborating with Flanafi, where I feel like we have a cool mind meld going on right now.
[Plays music].
Frontal Lobe: You were kind of joking earlier that this album Lorings feels like an embarrassingly honest diary and I was actually gonna ask you if you’re someone who journals. You can really feel the [00:08:00] emotion. The first track Inside kind of captured my attention. I’m like, okay, we’ve got feelings, we’ve got process.
Salami Rose Joe Louis: [Laughter]. I wish I journaled more. I would say I’m a kind of almost musical journal. If I’m not on tour, I try to at least record one song a day. It sort of keeps a log of how I’m feeling and especially like if I’m really upset about something, making music is my main form of therapy. So as a result, kind of logs the, the emotional rollercoaster of life.
Frontal Lobe: Going from the personal to the societal. Some of your previous albums, you didn’t really shy away from exploring or like processing heavy themes. Zdenka 2080 and Akousmatikous, they touch on propaganda, environmental issues. What’s your current existential chewing gum?
Salami Rose Joe Louis: [Laughter].
Frontal Lobe: You know, we’re living in some unprecedented times, so…
Salami Rose Joe Louis: One thing I’ve really been thinking about a lot is how do we authentically [00:09:00] create music in the context of an industry that wants to commodify and put their capitalism on everything?
And it’s, I sort of came to this conclusion, I don’t know if I can be an authentic musician and make a living as a musician. I think I have to find a day job because I don’t know how to make a living if I’m going to stick to my morality. There’s probably a way I just haven’t figured it out. So I’ve just been thinking about how important music is. It has this magical ability, I think, to bring people together. I know that sounds cliché, but I really firmly believe that it’s like magic when people feel connected to one another, especially in the context of like the governments and the powers right now are really trying to keep people opposed and separate from each other and isolated and you [00:10:00] know, they’re encouraging people to be bigots and have really violent thoughts toward each other. So I think it’s just like especially important for music and live music to exist at the same time, like I think the industry has been pushing musicians in a more and more like packaged and sterile direction, so I think it’s just like extra important for musicians to push back against that and do their thing and try to experiment and not be put in boxes.
Frontal Lobe: Absolutely. You painted a very clear picture there, and it’s upsetting to hear that you need to figure out a way to support yourself so that you can keep making what you’re making without compromising your values. In various ways, like yeah, I’ve heard that thought process from other musicians. And you know, we have this new mayor in San Francisco who’s like, yeah, we’re gonna like bring the arts back to, to SF and we’re [00:11:00] gonna have all these like festivals. And my thought is like, okay, that’s great, but how about you just like give artists like free housing and a stipend as like you would support creativity so much more just by providing like meeting basic needs. Festivals are great and cool, but also artists are really good at making their own spaces and putting on shows that is not necessarily where the help needs to be right now.
Salami Rose Joe Louis: I also really love as an audience member, I love the smaller shows and it’s funny because I think as a touring artist, unfortunately the only way to like properly, you know, cover your expenses and, and pay your band what you would like to pay them is to play like these really big rooms and these really big shows and it’s all about, you know, just like these huge audiences. But as an audience member, like I don’t like going to big shows. I would so much rather just see like a house show or like a [00:12:00] small environment. It would just be so cool if there’s a way where that could be, uh, sustainable for artists. Where they could just do these sort of like intentional and small little shows. I think they’re so inspiring and community building and stuff.
Frontal Lobe: You know, unless you’re someone like Beyonce that has the resources to make an entire stadium feel really fun and intimate.
Salami Rose Joe Louis: Yeah, totally.
Frontal Lobe: Most people do not. It can feel stretched thin sometimes in a bigger venue. To that end, I’m really excited to see the SF Jazz Show. Have you performed there before? I forget.
Salami Rose Joe Louis: A couple years back. Yeah. That was really fun. I think I did in the Joe Henderson Lab. I’m really excited to, to be back and we have a fun set planned.
Frontal Lobe: Awesome. And you said we, so you’ll have people with you. Can you let our listeners know who else will join you on stage on Friday?
Salami Rose Joe Louis: For that one I’m playing with Flanafi, who’s gonna play like a mixture of guitar and bass and Luke Titus who’s gonna play drums. We’ve been touring a [00:13:00] bunch together and it’s been really fun and we all did this show in New York with the incredible legendary Ambrose Akinmusire. It was such an incredibly inspiring experience, and he just had so much patience and he was such an incredible listener. I just learned so much about taking time and just letting things breathe and being really attentive to what everyone else was doing. And it was just so cool. [Laughter]. We were all so inspired by that show with him and we’ve since then been trying to like improvise a lot more in our shows and, um, take our time in different musical moments.
Frontal Lobe: Sounds like you wanna bring that energy that gave you so much inspiration to, to the stage.
Salami Rose Joe Louis: Yeah.
Frontal Lobe: Which is exciting for us. Well, thank you so much.
Salami Rose Joe Louis: Oh, thanks. Thanks for having me.
