Rooney

Rooney have always been that cool band that was the soundtrack to your teenage years and Robert Schwartzman was the ultimate frontman of your dreams. After taking a long hiatus, the band returned in 2016 fully recharged as ever. The pure charm of Rooney is that, unlike their peers, they fully embrace their nostalgia brand and by doing so, they’re able to thrive in a world that would’ve normally put an expiration date on them.

You guys took a long hiatus and then came back a couple of years ago. Ever since then, I feel like it’s been nonstop. What has made you want to keep going instead of it being a one-off return and retreating back again?

In taking time off, I just had a new appreciation for Rooney as a project. I felt excited that this thing existed and that I could pick up where I left off. I felt really lucky to have a band like Rooney. There’s so many bands out there just trying to get on the path in some way and it’s so hard to do and there was a lot of time put into this project so it feels nice to have a home base to come back to. It’s easy to take things for granted and after doing it for so many years back then, I think taking a break was really necessary. After leaving I feel almost excited and recharged to be back where I am.

How do you think you’ve evolved as a band?

Maybe this is just my theory, for some bands, the word “evolve” is thrown around a lot because people want to evolve as artists and a lot of the time people like artists who have done a lot of different stuff in their music. Throughout history, there are a lot of people who have changed — maybe sometimes for the best and maybe sometimes for the worst — but I also love artists who do their thing and you know kinda what you’re going to get, and that’s okay. I’ve come to appreciate that type of evolution, like this is who I am and this who I need to be to survive in this climate. In some ways, I’ve done that with Rooney. I always try to stay true to what I think the Rooney project is. I just don’t want to abandon what I’ve done in the past. I don’t want to avoid what people want to hear.

And you want to celebrate that.

Totally. I think the trick there is wanting people to be accepting of us to be able to evolve. Because sometimes fans don’t want bands to change; they want you to remain the thing that they started liking you for. A lot of the time, I see people on social media wanting to relive that day in high school or 18-year-old them at a show — and that’s fine. Whatever makes people happy is all that matters but from my perspective, we’re not just here to make the 18-year-old version of you happy. We want to make you happy now.

Which I think is a good philosophy to work with. Going off of that, the music industry has evolved and changed so much.

So much. Especially since we started — like night and day and that’s no surprise. When we first start, Napster had just come out.

Oh my god, you’re right. That’s exactly when it happened.

Right when it happened! Before we got signed, these Limewire, file sharing sites started popping up but Interscope still signed us and gave us a good record deal because they believed in the band. So we were able to navigate a little better during that time. But yeah, you used to ship CDs out and you would try to do pre-orders with maybe Best Buy and they’d tell you, “We shipped X amount of CDs.” We’d do in-stores at CD stores but that was a whole ‘nother time. Music has always been music. What we’re doing tonight is no different than it was 18 years ago.

It’s just the way it’s being serviced that’s different.

Every band used to play live. Technology has changed so you can do different things on stage. The biggest difference is that CDs went away which means albums went away. CDs were created to store a lot of information — it’s like a hard drive. Today a lot of stuff is in the cloud. The need for space has gone away because you have access to everything all the time through good connection. Music is just following technology. Were there ways to prevent this? I don’t know.

For someone who has been in the game for so long, left but then wanted to come back to it and now has stayed in it, where do you see Rooney going now?

When the band was on hiatus, there wasn’t really a dialogue with fans — the socials were basically frozen. It’s like leaving a car out in a field and it gets rusted and it might not start anymore. Like you get into the car and the engine doesn’t work anymore.

Whatever makes people happy is all that matters but from my perspective, we're not just here to make the 18-year-old version of you happy. We want to make you happy now.

That’s really sad.

Yeah it sucks! But I hope we were able to start it again and give it a good wash and it’s still in good shape. When we did this whole Rooney re-release in 2016 with Washed Away, it was sort like a reboot.

Did it feel like a debut album?

Kind of. It was a new batch of music for people. We didn’t re-record an old Rooney record, you know? I’m constantly trying to figure out what to do next with Rooney. Times have changed and I’ve always tried new things like right now I’m directing movies and I get to write music for those movies but it takes time away from being a full-timed band person. There were times where I felt a little burnt out on Rooney and it started to not be fun. I didn’t understand what it meant. Sometimes you just have ask yourself why? Why am I still putting time and energy into this thing? It took me a minute to come back to and see the parts that I do love about it and embrace those parts. I just want to put music out so I’m not sitting on it, which I what I was doing for years. To tour frequently, on my own terms so to speak. To headline and play the venues I want to play and really be in charge of the messaging. I think that’s the new version of Rooney and taking a project that was from the major label world — it did start off independent actually and got signed to a major but we operated as an indie within a major. But I wanted to bring it back to full independent and here we are being fully DIY. It’s really challenging but rewarding

Is there anything else you’d like to accomplish?

I’ve directed a new movie coming out in February and I want to shoot another movie straight away. I’d love to a Rooney LP. I really want to do a Rooney cover album.

That would be SO GREAT. I think your fans would love that. I would love to hear the Rooney spin on so many tracks.

The cool thing about covers is that you can take something that people know but expose them to parts of it that they might not have noticed. I’d love to do that.

PHOTOGRAPHY MACEY J. FORONDA WORDS APRIL SALUD