Song Premiere - Roe Knows Best "Capture the Flag"

Pop punk. New Jersey. Ace Enders. If any of those nouns caught your attention, I've got just the song for you.

I was lucky enough to cross paths with Roe in online music communities, and I was impressed when I first hit play on her Muscle Memory EP back in 2020. In those songs, you could hear the many nights and weekends she spent growing up in New Jersey, learning piano, studying music theory, singing in choirs, falling in love with pop-punk, and writing music through the lens of that lived history. Since then she’s released a second EP plus a couple other singles, and now she’s back with a great new song.

Writing this song felt “like magic,” according to Roe. “This was one of those rare songs that songwriters get every so often that was fully formed the evening it arrived. And when that happens it does kind of feel like magic. Like something mysterious is moving through you and making itself known.”

It’s a song about hope, optimism, and reassurance, things we could all use in the year 2024. The story behind the song spans the last few years. The song was actually written late one night in 2021 when she was working on her Northbound EP with producer Ace Enders of The Early November. About a year later, the two were working together again at his studio in Ocean City, New Jersey, and that's when they revisited the song and recorded it. You could say it was then that they, working together, made their way into enemy territory, grabbed the flag and safely made it back. Victory.

The recording process was spontaneous and quick, only adding to the magic. “I played it once, and [Ace] and Dillon [Wray, touring bass player for The Early November] began setting up microphones to record it. The process was pretty quick! I did a few guitar takes, then vocals, Dillon crushed it on drums. I really think his performance gives the song an awesome Jimmy Eat World Dashboard Confessional feel. And then Ace ended up adding these really awesome guitar and bass parts that just totally transformed the song from the humble acoustic version that had existed before. I love the way it turned out and I hope the listener loves it too.”

She says the song “is a letter written to our younger selves with the promise that despite the unavoidable turbulence of youth, they will overcome, and everything that seems insurmountable and impossible will work itself out in the end.” She goes on to say the song “is a powerful anthem to the lost parts of our youth that still live inside us, still crying out for reassurance, love, and acceptance.”

Check it out for yourself:

PERSONNELAcoustic guitar + vocals: Roe O’BrienElectric guitar + bass: Ace EndersDrums: Dillon WrayMixed + mastered by Ace EndersCo-produced by Ace Enders + Roe O’BrienSong + lyrics written by Roe O’BrienRecorded in Ocean City, NJ in August 2022

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