Rob Noyes, June Artist of the Month

Interview with Rob Noyes as told to Gilmore Tamny.

What upcoming projects do you have that you're excited about?

I have an LP coming out on Poon Village records. Hopefully that'll be out in a few months.

How do you describe what you do when nice people ask?

I have to imagine there are drawbacks to being a nice person. One of them must be when you politely ask someone what they do and they try to get you to listen to their instrumental finger-style acoustic guitar demos on their Soundcloud page. (note: please see links below)

How long have you been playing acoustic music? What did you do before then?

I've been playing solo acoustic guitar in front of people for about 2 years. Before that I played bass in a number of local rock bands.

The work of yours I'm familiar with is all instrumental, and I was thinking in a sense I experience parts of it as lyrics--as the ah--commo se dicci?--lines or threads of music work like words in that I almost could sing along--but as we're talking about lyrics: did you ever write lyrics? Do you ever wish people would knock off all the lyrics? Have a favorite lyricist?

I probably write/perform in a way that compensates for the lack of vocals in some way. Hopefully it's something people aren't thinking about when I play.

Do you have a routine around practice? Or only under certain circumstances (show coming up, etc.)?

I wish I could have more of a routine. I just practice whenever I can.

How do you deal with show nerves presuming you experience them?

The first year or so I was playing solo I had really bad nerves. It seems like I've gotten a lot more comfortable. I think the way to deal with it is to feel lousy to whatever degree you feel lousy and then play and then it's fine.

Have you ever been heckled?

I guess I haven't been playing this kind of music for very long but this hasn't happened to me yet. I like to think I'm good at being funny/mean to someone who's yelling at me but it seems really fortunate that this hasn't come up. I bet heckling an instrumental acoustic guitar player is really effective. Like say some sap is trying to get through his quiet instrumental acoustic guitar set and you're trying to take the wind out of his sails, yelling a bunch of cruel garbage over it is the easiest way in the world to do that I bet. All the hecklers who take themselves seriously are probably going to harsh noise shows.

If you are in a room with a guitar is it hard not to look at it?

If it's the shiniest thing in that room, then yes.