On a Tuesday morning in early May, while taking a break from mowing the lawn of his home just outside Nashville, Roe almost sounds puzzled retracing his steps: touring and recording with Johnny Cash and Charlie Louvin, backing up Dwight Yoakam and Loretta Lynn, working as the in-house bassist for Dan Auerbach’s Easy Eye Sound and as a coveted hired-gun session musician and mainstay in the Nashville gig circuit. “A jack-of-all-trades and an expert at none,” he quips.
That aside, Roe’s self-taught and intuitive upbringing on bass have made him a stylistic chameleon, with perhaps a deeper connection to the rhythms and feel of each genre he plays. His playing evidences a seamless quilting-together of his teachers—’50s, ’60s, and ’70s radio-pop sweetness, the swagger of his mother’s country records, the calm confidence of West Coast Americana, the flair and bravado of funk and disco. His bass parts are classic and unimpeachable, witness marks of a player who learned, with his body and spirit alongside his brain, how to play the bass in a way that people will want to hear.
Dave Roe lays down a track at his Nashville Home Studio, which he named Seven Deadly Sins.
Photo courtesy of Dave Roe
Roe’s path from cover-band grinder in island tourist bars to one of the country’s most sought-after bass players might not make technical sense on paper. Thousands of others have started out the same way and never advanced beyond their hometowns. It doesn’t fit into the tidy algorithmic churn of modern life. But music isn’t about algorithms and optimization—not all of it, not yet. It’s still about feel and soul and heart, and a bit of luck.
Roe’s father was a military man, whose service eventually took him and his family to the middle of the Pacific Ocean. He was stationed in a small town called EwaBeach about 40 miles outside of Honolulu on Hawaii’s third-largest island, Oahu. This is where Roe grew up. He was a drummer before he ever picked up a bass, but in high school, without any local bass players, Roe’s friends elected him to take up the instrument. His first bass wasn’t a bass at all: It was a 6-string Silvertone electric guitar, which Roe restrung with bass strings. “That didn’t last very long,” he says.
Roe didn’t have the money to buy a proper bass, so in 1969, his high-school sweetheart’s father went with him to a music store in Honolulu and signed for a Fender Jazz Bass and an old Guild amp for Roe. “That’s when I got my first really good gear,” he remembers.
Getting a real bass was one thing. Learning to play it was another. And Roe did it all himself—he’s still never taken a single formal lesson. “I sat down with records and taught myself,” he says. “I was a big Top 40 enthusiast. I loved anything that was on the radio.” That included the usual suspects: Jimi Hendrix, the Beatles, Cream, the Rolling Stones. “That’s really where I cut my teeth,” Roe continues, “just playing the blues and hippie rock and stuff like that.” Roe’s first band, a power trio playing covers by Chuck Berry and other early rock ’n’ roll pioneers, worked its way up to opening for Grand Funk Railroad in Honolulu.
Roe rips it up with guitarist Chris Casello at Robert’s Western World on Nashville’s Broadway entertainment strip.
Photo by Elise Casello
Roe moved east off Oahu to Maui in 1971 and joined a country outfit at a critical moment. Due to its relative proximity, the West Coast scene had an outsized impact on the island’s cultural imports, and once the hippie-country and Laurel Canyon folk waves swept over California in the late ’60s and early ’70s, it didn’t take long for it to reach Roe’s radio. His mother was a country fan and imparted some early affection for the genre, and, later, Roe would catch Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young and the Burrito Brothers when they toured Hawaii.
Roe didn’t sit still for long. After the country stint, he moved back to downtown Honolulu and played in a rhythm and blues band. In the mid ’70s, he went through a “real heavy” disco and funk phase, and dabbled in prog rock and jazz, too. “I was a working Top 40 musician,” says Roe. “When you work in a tourist town, you have to learn how to play a bunch of different stuff.” His learning technique was the same as ever: “I just would listen and play and try to pick up stuff and copy people. That’s all I did.”
But by the final years of that decade, the magic feeling was getting harder to find. There weren’t enough opportunities to create and live on playing original music, and after a decade of playing covers for tourists, it was time for something new. He settled on Nashville. “I just put my socks in a bag and took off,” says Roe.
Luckily, Roe had an insider in Music City. His cousin, a comedian and professional entertainer, lived in Nashville and let Roe crash with him when he arrived. More than that, he set Roe up with his first gig. His cousin knew folks at the Grand Ole Opry, and took Roe along to a show one evening. Roe was introduced to country artist Charlie Louvin that night, and as fate would have it, Louvin was looking for a bassist. Roe expected to be asked to audition, but Louvin simply told him when the bus was leaving for the tour. “That was a really good gig at the time, a highly respected gig,” says Roe. “That was really beneficial to me.”
Dave Roe's Gear
Roe gets ready for a take, with one of his Fender electrics along for the session.
Photo courtesy of Dave Roe
Basses
- 1964 Fender Jazz Bass
- Alien Audio 5-string bass
- Lemur Music Jupiter upright bass (in studio)
- Blast Cult upright bass (live)
Amps
- Ampeg B4 Head and 410 Cabinet
Strings
- Dunlop .045–.105 flatwound strings for electric
- Pirastro Evah’s for upright
It can be hard to tell sometimes when a moment is the beginning of something, or if it started even before. Both things can be true, but playing with Louvin certainly seems like a critical moment in Roe’s career. After playing with Louvin for three months, Roe was recommended to Jerry Reed, who hired him for his live band. He says gigging with Reed and his band took things to another level. Reed’s musicians, including Kerry Marx and the Blackmon Brothers, were aces, and playing alongside them meant Roe was, too.
Roe says from then on, his career had “a movement to it.” After working with Reed, he joined Chet Atkins for a short stint (“It doesn’t even feel like I was really there,” he admits), and for the next 20 years, he worked the road with a rotating cast of country greats: Mel Tillis, Dottie West, Vince Gill, and Faith Hill all tapped Roe for touring. By the early ’90s, he’d begun doing session work in addition to touring gigs.
Roe was on a break from touring with Vern Gosdin in 1992 when he got a phone call at home that changed his life. On the other end of the line was an unmistakable voice. It was Johnny Cash. Cash’s publicist had jammed with Roe around town and mentioned him to Cash, who wanted Roe to play with him. “He just said, ‘I want you to come and play in my band, and you’re gonna have to play upright bass,’” recalls Roe, who accepted immediately. There was one problem: He had never played upright bass.
“I think it was sort of understood that I would know the style, but I didn’t,” laughs Roe. He did what he’d always done. He figured it out on his own. He borrowed an upright bass and started to teach himself the slap-bass rhythms and plucking styles of Cash’s rockabilly-leaning repertoire. “I had to pull my bootstraps up and get after it,” Roe chuckles. As that first call was winding down, Roe told Cash that he’d see him at rehearsal. “He said, ‘Well, we don’t really rehearse,’” says Roe. “Then I said, ‘I guess I’ll see you at soundcheck.’ He goes, ‘I really don’t do soundchecks, either, so I’ll just see you there.’”
Roe was encouraged to play the upright bass by a call from none other than Johnny Cash. Here, he cuts a track at Dan Auerbach’s Easy Eye Sound studio in Nashville. He is a frequent contributor to Auerbach-produced albums, including Auerbach’s own Waiting on a Song and the Pretenders’ Alone.
Photo courtesy of Dave Roe
Roe describes the first gig with Cash, around a week later in Charleston, West Virginia, as “completely flying by the seat of my pants, with my ear. I didn’t feel good at all. I just felt like I wasn’t the right guy.” But Roe kept working at it. He credits Cash with giving him a shot even though he wasn’t experienced. “He was very patient with me, and the rest of the guys in the band helped me along to develop that style,” says Roe. “There were other guys here [in Nashville] that were already doing that [style]. They could have easily got them. I can’t tell you to this day why they hung in there with me, but they did.”
Roe played bass with Cash until the Man in Black’s retirement from live performances in the late ’90s, and did session work on the singer’s intimate American records. For the first of the series, 1994’s American Recordings, Roe joined Cash and producer Rick Rubin to rehearse and feel out the songs before Cash ultimately recorded them solo. They practiced and recorded at Cash’s cabin studio near Hendersonville, Tennessee, and Roe joined them later when they did overdubs at Rubin’s Hollywood studio. The working relationship was one of the most profound and important of Roe’s career. “Johnny was sort of a Buddha to me, man,” says Roe. “He’s the nicest man I’ve ever had in my life. I learned a lot.”
Working with Cash marked another important transition period for Roe. Back in those days, he says, a professional musician moved to Nashville with the understanding that they’d work the road until they could land a studio gig and settle in one spot for a while. For Roe, that happened after he was hired by Cash and country singer Dwight Yoakam, with whom Roe played for four years. Given Yoakam’s and Cash’s high profiles and the proportionate pay for their musicians, Roe had more time to himself and less need to get back out on the road for another paycheck. Not that he didn’t like the road, though. “To be honest with you, if I had been offered another good road gig, I probably would’ve taken it,” says Roe. “But it just worked out this way.”
Dave Roe and his frequent collaborator Kenny Vaughan at Dee’s Country Cocktail Lounge in Madison, Tennessee, with their band, the SloBeats.
Photo courtesy of Dave Roe
Full-time session work required yet another pivot. Studio players in the city communicated and played with the Nashville Number System, a method of transcribing music by denoting the scale degree on which a chord is built, and thanks to his time in Hawaii, Roe was prepared. Some of the older jazz players back home had introduced him to the system when he was starting out, so he hit the ground running.
Roe spent the next 10 years doing session work and around-town gigs when his next “big break” came. The Black Keys’ Dan Auerbach called him up in 2015 and asked Roe to join a crew of veterans to back him up on his Easy Eye Sound recordings. It turned out that Cash’s engineer, Dave Ferguson, had recommended Roe to Auerbach. Roe became part of Auerbach’s in-house band at his downtown Nashville studio, where he got to work with a lot of the “old-timers”—like Bobby Woods, Russ Pahl, and Billy Sanford. Before long, though, he had joined their ranks. “I’m an old-timer now,” he laughs. And Roe considers his performance on Auerbach’s “Shine on Me,” from the Waiting on a Song album, among his best recorded performances.
Like most musicians, Roe has spent the last few years off the road. He’s focused on demo and custom tracks via work at his own studio, Seven Deadly Sins, and remote collaborations on platforms like AirGigs. He played on Brian Setzer’s 2021 solo record, Gotta Have The Rumble, and his long-time Nashville outfit the SloBeats, with guitarist Kenny Vaughan and Average White Band drummer Pete Abbott, is stirring from its hiatus. His son, drummer Jerry Roe, has worked his way into becoming a coveted Nashville session player. The apple didn’t fall far.
Like all great Nashville session bass players, Roe has the ability to learn tunes and adapt to different styles quickly, whether it’s blues, rock, country, R&B, or even improvised music.
Photo by Anthony Scarlati
Thinking back on his career, Roe is quiet, almost confused, like it’s all a dream he’s just woken up from. “I find myself always being in a state of awe, you know?” says Roe. He’s toured the world and made friends with the biggest names in American music. (He names CeeLo Green—whose track “Lead Me” is one of Roe’s favorite recordings—as the most talented artist he ever worked with, and Chrissie Hynde, Faith Hill, Ray LaMontagne, Carrie Underwood, Kurt Vile, Bahamas, and many others are also on his session resume.) Roe has come a long way from his makeshift Silvertone bass back in Ewa Beach, but that same do-it-yourself, fake-it-’til-you-make-it ethic has guided his career to soaring highs.“It always felt totally lucky and serendipitous to end up in those positions,” he says. “There’s always been people around that could have played those gigs better than me when I was doing them. But somehow, I ended up there. I just did the best I could.”
Marty Party 1995 - Johnny Cash & The Tennessee Three
Dave Roe’s experience of playing with Johnny Cash in the ’90s was just one of many remarkable successes in his long and fulfilling career.
Now, after more than a decade on indie labels and major-label subsidiaries, he’s back on Reprise. Yet in some ways, Yoakam falls as far outside the Nashville mainstream as he did back in the 1980s. In contrast to the Auto-Tuned, arena-rock sound that’s been ruling the country charts, Second Hand Heart sounds pure, direct, and unvarnished. The songs, written mostly by Yoakam, are built on a classic country-rock foundation of twangy guitars, first-position chord progressions, and, of course, Yoakam’s hillbilly-tinged vocals. But they’re also full of enough little surprises to keep you guessing—and enough rocking riffs to make you want to grab an axe and play along.
at lead runs.”
On the phone from Los Angeles, Yoakam had the easygoing enthusiasm of the guy sitting on the next barstool, sometimes making his points by singing them. It’s obvious that even after nine platinum albums, two Grammys, and countless other career milestones, the man from Pikeville, Kentucky, remains an ardent student of American roots music.
If I didn’t know better before hearing Second Hand Heart, I would have thought, that’s a good band album. How did you get that sound?
You’re hearing a sense of abandon. Starting with [2005’s] Blame the Vain, I’ve used my live band for recording. And I kind of “cast”—for lack of a better term—the musicians that suit what I’m trying to do. I worked for many, many years, successfully and with great pride, with Pete Anderson. Then I decided to make a change. I’d left Warner Bros., I was kind of doing an indie thing. Pete and I did one indie album [2003’s Population Me] and a few years went by before I began to do the next one [Blame the Vain] for New West. I was performing at that point with [lead guitarist] Keith Gattis. We did a little acoustic duo run together, back in early 2003. And that bled into the following year and then I said, “You know, I’ve got to go out and do dates that were booked this summer, and I need a band.”
It’s not common for solo country artists to use the same players on tour and in the studio.
That’s the thing that was distinctive about Buck Owens’ music when he exploded onto the scene. He took his live honky-tonk band into the studio. His touring band was his recording band. So that’s why those records sound like that. And that’s what I did on the first two albums.
Dwight Yoakam credits Beck with inspiring him to play more electric guitar in the studio.
Your guitar playing is an important part of that sound.
Believe me, I know my limitations. You’re not going to see me out there sliding across the stage on my knees, flailing away at lead runs. I’m not a soloist, but I’m okay at my rhythm and riff thing.
What inspired you to play more electric?
Beck [Hansen] and I collaborated on “A Heart Like Mine,” the first track I recorded for 3 Pears [2012]. We were kicking around a couple of ideas in his home studio. I said, “I’ve got this thing, let’s put it down.” I played an electric rhythm track that I thought was a scratch—a guide for somebody like Keith Gattis. But Beck said, “We’re going to do another track of that guitar. Look, you and I could each call five guys to come in and play this note-for-note, but Dwight, it wouldn’t be that.”
I knew what he meant: It was the intent. We ended up building the track out of my parts, and there’s just a certain recklessness to it, because I’m an acoustic guitar player—basically a bluegrass player.
Pete Anderson used to call from the studio and say, “You’ve got to come in and play the acoustic.” I’d say, “Well, maybe.” On my records there’d sometimes be these fingerpicked parts that I wanted very beautifully articulated. Great studio guys would play this stuff. But for the most part, anything that was hillbilly or bluegrass, I had to play. Pete would just look at me and say, “You’re going to do it.”
Because your playing may have something the studio guys can’t capture.
I don’t fingerpick, I flatpick. When I play bluegrass, I use crosspicking, and I approach my songs the same way. It creates a different attack. I don’t have that kind of beautiful, elegant virtuoso rolling like Pete does with his fingerpicking, but Beck made me believe that maybe what I did was halfway worthwhile.
Yoakam’s go-to electric is the Epiphone Casino Elitist—the Japanese-made copy that is modeled after the original Casinos from the mid ’60s. Why? “Those P-90 pickups,” he says.
What was your go-to electric guitar on Second Hand Heart?
My Epiphone Casino. It’s an Elitist model—the Japanese-made copy that’s true to the original Casinos from the mid ’60s. I love that guitar, the sonic soul of it is all over this album, and was also all over 3 Pears. Those P-90 pickups—hey, you know, if it’s good enough for the Beatles on Revolver all the way through “Revolution,” I guess it’s good enough for me to trash around with. I use heavier strings on the electric. Years ago I started stringing up with jazz sets that include a wound G, but I’m still not in Stevie Ray Vaughan territory.
How did you approach tracking the guitars on this album?
I came back to [lead guitarist] Eugene Edwards, who’s played with me now since the release of 3 Pears. We went in as a unit and recorded as a band. I didn’t overdub the countermelody stuff—I let them play it. That’s what I think you’re hearing—and I’ve come full circle now on that first question!
Can you share a memorable moment from those sessions?
On “Liar,” I was showing the band the progression while we were getting mic sounds. I was in the iso room at Capitol Studio B singing, and the guys were out there live. I looked at [engineer] Marc DeSisto and said, “You know, you oughta record this anyway, just for kicks.” He hit record, and that’s the track. What you hear is the first time we played “Liar” as a band. I played electric rhythm guitar using that Casino through a Vox AC30. It’s Eugene out there with the “Dwight Trash” Casino that Epiphone made for me.
The Dwight Trash Casino? Please explain.
I loved my Casino so much I had them build another version. I said, “I’ve got an idea. I want to monkey around a little bit. The [Gibson Firebird] reverso headstock ... can you put that on the Casino? I’d like to see how that looks.”
So they made it for a couple of years. The headstock change altered the tone a little bit. I found that for my sound, the Elitist with the original headstock still had a little more of the brashness, the breakup. But this one was wildly great. I played it on 3 Pears, but then I gave it to Eugene to use as the lead guitar on this album. He used it on “In Another World”—pretty much everything. There are only a couple moments of Tele lead. I think Brian Whelan played Tele on the lead for “Man of Constant Sorrow.” Almost everything else is that Dwight Trash Casino doing the lead guitar part.
Dwight Yoakam's Gear
Guitars
2001 and 2004 blonde Epiphone Elitist Casinos with P-90s
1978 sunburst Fender Telecaster with three-piece ash body
Two 2011 Gibson J-200 True Vintage series acoustics
Amps
Vox AC30 with Blue Bulldog speakers
Fender Super Reverb reissue
Fender Deluxe Reverb reissues (modified by Robert Dixon)
Acoustic Amps
Fender SFX (used as a preamp)
Crown XLS 1500 power amp
Peavey speaker cabinet
Effects
Morley ABC Selector/Combiner (amp switcher)
Strings and Picks
D’Addario EJ21 Nickel Wound Jazz Light (.012–.052)
Martin Marquis 92/8 Phosphor Bronze (.013–.056)
Fender 351 medium picks (tortoise shell)
How did Chris Lord-Alge become co-producer?
He was going to mix the album and said, “I want to come by the studio and watch what you’re doing in there, see how you’re delivering this to me.” I’d cut the song “Believe”—another guitar part with the Casino—and I was going to have Brian play Telecaster, but Chris interrupted. He said, “You just did it. We like what you just did. Just play it on the Tele.” We ended up doing a second track like that. People think it’s a 12-string, but it’s actually two 6-string Telecasters. He took over the session, and that’s how he ended up co-producing.
You’ve always had strong riffs in your songs.
With the Beatles, it wasn’t just about the lyric and a melody, but their riffs. Whether it’s “Ticket to Ride,” “Day Tripper” [sings the guitar part]—hey, all the way to Neil Diamond writing “I’m a Believer” for the Monkees. These songs all have killer opening riffs.
The riff is like the musical spiritual guide. When I’m ripping on the riffs, it takes me to the emotional place of the song. I think it’s because I’m a singer. It’s also coming out of organized music in some fashion, marching in school band and listening to swing, which has a lot of riffs. I don’t read charts, but I was a drummer and there were always those kinds of parts in swing music.
A lot of the songs on Second Hand Heart include acoustic, electric, and baritone guitars. What inspired you to use that instrumentation?
To me, it’s about having an Appalachian foundation, hearing music in thirds, and hearing drones. And that comes from the Scottish, Welsh, and Irish music that, in America, evolved into commercial country music in the early 20th century ... the Carter family, the Everly Brothers. I’m talking about the border of Kentucky and Virginia, where I was born, Pikeville. It’s just there in the DNA. You hear it in the Beatles interpreting the Everly Brothers with “Love Me Do”—those droning thirds. Certain instruments just work with the baritone guitar. I can be the counterpoint to the melody in a droning fashion, while simultaneously being percussive.
Yoakam on his playing style: “I don’t fingerpick, I flatpick. When I play bluegrass, I use crosspicking,
and I approach my songs the same way.”
Describe your songwriting process.
“In Another World” began as a little riff on my J-200 that I first captured with my iPhone and then re-recorded in the studio. I finished it as a track first and later developed it into a full-fledged song. It’s almost like being able to cowrite with myself.
Do you mean getting ideas down on tape or iPhone, and then coming back later to flesh them out?
That’s right. I began that process years ago when I was working on films in the late ’90s and knew I couldn’t set aside three months to just write songs. I was on a movie set, and I wouldn’t have time to finish a song. I found that if I captured the inspiration when it happened, I could pick it up months later with a different mindset—like it was another person contributing. It allowed me time to germinate ideas and gain objectivity through this germination.
I’d teach the band the idea I’d written and build the song out from there. And after hearing them play, I’d say, “Let’s do it differently, let me reshape that.” The album A Long Way Home had a lot of that on it.
Do you work out the arrangements ahead of time?
I’m very spontaneous. I don’t sit down and map it in any way, shape, or form. I kind of let the song lead me. I go, “let’s play this” and I’ll just start listening. If I have a bunch of guys who I’ve worked with enough onstage, who I trust to give me something that’s representative of what I’m hearing in my head, I’ll go with that.
YouTube It
In this live version of the title track from Second Hand Heart, Yoakam strums the Epiphone Casino he's paired with on the album's cover.
Most modern Nashville records sound highly produced. This record sounds polished, but also organic and live. How did you accomplish that?
Just by using tubes and knobs. To me, that’s where it really lives. It’s what I hear; it’s what I dig.
So no Auto-Tune or time correction?
To me, an effect like reverb or echo is intended to emulate something that occurs in nature when you sing in a glorious room or outside in an open area. Those systems that “correct everything” are not something of nature, so they affect the integrity of the music’s imperfections. The integrity of the imperfections—god, I want that.
I like the honesty of breath, of air, so I wouldn’t allow any compression. You can ask Chris. When we started mixing 3 Pears, I said, “You’re taking all my air away, man!” So when we started on Second Hand Heart, he just laughed and said, “More elbows and sharp, pointy edges, right?” And I told him, “Hell yeah, give me some hillbilly elbows and edges.”