Role Model walks into the damn, rustic setting of his MTV Push live performance of “Sally, When the Wine Runs Out” with a hoot and a howl. Cloaked in denim, the musician goes back to his roots as he channels the country-tinged music he heard while growing up in Maine with the help of his three-piece band.
“Sally” isn’t a full-blown honky-tonk staple, but Role Model — who is named the MTV Global Push Artist for the month of July — cranks up the theatrics as he recounts one fateful night at a dive bar. “Sally, that feeling’s coming around/Please don’t go falling in love/Then disappear when the wine runs out,” he sings. “Sally, I’ll buy a couple of rounds/Don’t let me think I’m enough/Then disappear when the wine runs out.”
“I think that Sally is maybe like the most boring how-it-was-made story of all the songs,” Role Model shared in a statement. “That was a very last-minute add — it was on the deluxe for my album, and we kinda had everything. We had three songs, and then I invited Annika Bennett, who is an amazing artist and helped a lot with Kansas Anymore, and then we had Harrison Whitford in there too, who’s like an incredible guitarist. And we just kinda built from the ground up.”
The deluxe edition of the singer-songwriter’s second studio album Kansas Anymore arrived earlier this year. “The album just took forever. Like, I had time, I guess — there was no rush or anything,” Role Model said. “I had put out my first album, whatever, and then there were just like two years of pretty much throwing paint at the wall and figuring out what it was going to be, like everyone goes through that.”
He continued: “And finally, I just kinda took a break, went home a lot, just kinda came to realize — I have a lot of comfort albums that I listen to, that I love, and that ground you a little bit. And I realized that maybe I just want one of my own — something that reminds me of home. I think that was the one goal: just have a comfort album. And I still listen to it, so I guess I did my job. I achieved my goal.”
The music he spent the most time with while growing up reflected the grounding nature of his environment. “Growing up in Maine, I was outdoors — it’s the most beautiful place on earth, especially in the summer. You have the ocean and beaches and mountains and lakes,” he said. “I think a lot of the music that I heard growing up kind of felt like the surroundings and the environment. Everything was very folk, definitely some country — a lot of that Americana folk music, you know.”
