LLTM: Is there a special meaning or backstory on the name LJR?
LJR: It’s my initials, Luke Justin Roberts. I used to go by my full name, but it was a mouthful to say and also hard to make designs with. LJR was much simpler and easier to say and remember.
LLTM: Of all the singles on your upcoming debut album “When The Sky Began To Fall”, which song means the most to you and why?
LJR: This is hard to answer. I like them all. I would say if it’s the one I play the most it’s probably “Need a Little Lovin’” (track 3, releasing Aug 6) because it’s the most exciting and I love the culture blending with my style and my college roommate and American Idol contestant Gurpreet Sarin’s voice and tabla. However, if it’s the one that emotionally gets me every time, it’s a track called “Save” that comes close to the end of the album. It’s about my loss of faith and the deep pain from that experience. It still deeply moves me and usually brings me to tears when I listen to it, so I can’t listen to it very often, but it’s one of the songs that connects the deepest with my heart.
LLTM: Who had been some of your biggest musical inspirations, and what about personal inspirations and why?
LJR: Musically Peter Gabriel, Lifehouse, Coldplay, and Hillsong are the biggest, combined with The 1975, and more recently The Band Camino. I also have a few tracks influenced by the X Ambassadors on the album. With Gabriel, I love the culture blending he does, bringing out the incredible beauty and connection we share all being humans together. Lifehouse, Coldplay, and Hillsong are probably the ones that bring in my nostalgia and longing vibes with walls of sound; and The 1975, The Band Camino, and the X Ambassadors bringing a lot of upbeat energy and power that defines how I choose to live my life. Personally, my biggest inspirations are researchers, therapists, and business leaders. One is Jonathan Haidt, an incredible moral psychologist behind the book “Righteous Mind,” which presents a compelling theory for why people function the way we do and a descriptive definition of morality from a research perspective. Next, I would say Bessel van der Kolk, author of “The Body Keeps the Score,” a breakthrough book on the prevalence and impact of trauma and cutting edge treatment methods that have the potential to change the courses of our lives and those of future generations for the better. Third, Nicole LePera, the holistic psychologist on Instagram, for her work in helping to bring awareness to our own trauma, validating it, and providing doable and practical methods to facilitate our own healing. There’s plenty more for me, but those are some of my biggest, especially right now.
LLTM: Who have the fans compared you to musically, and do you agree?
LJR: I get a lot of comparisons. Oftentimes I don’t hear it, but there’s a number of times people have said they hear a lot of Peter Gabriel or Lifehouse in my voice and style. Since I literally tried to model my vocal tone off theirs, this was really cool to hear.
LLTM: Not to sound dark, but if you knew you only had 1 day left to live, what would you do differently in your last 24 hours?
LJR: I think it would free me to care less about the shame narrative that’s controlled my life from religion growing up, and I would be much more present and intentional and confident in all of my interactions with people. Some people say coming to terms with and accepting that we will die one day is what provides meaning, and I think there’s a lot of truth in that.
LLTM: Of all of the covers you’ve recorded, which one was the most challenging?
LJR: Probably the ones I never released haha. I tried a bunch that simply didn’t come together in the end, so I never put them out. Of the ones I released, I’d say probably “Stay,” as I was still mixing my own stuff then (now I work with Felix Nieto, and the results are so much better), and there were a ton of parts to get right.
LLTM: What is something you wish you could speed up and what about slow down, and why?
LJR: I wish I could speed up how fast I can learn new vocal techniques, and I wish I could slow down aging. My voice is where I find a lot of my artistic fear lies, so it’s hard to spend a ton of time there feeling like I suck when I practice, and I wish we had more time to live younger, having the opportunity to be in the body of my youth with a healed mind and heart, and not one viscerally controlled by unidentified and unhealed trauma.
LLTM: If you could do a collaboration with anyone, who would it be and why?
LJR: Probably Chris Martin from Coldplay. I just love the emotional energy behind everything he creates.
LLTM: Now that live music is picking back up, what does the touring schedule look like?
LJR: Right now I’m doing everything online to build a fanbase, but I’m hoping to start putting a band together this fall and tour by sometime in 2022.
LLTM: When can the fans expect “When The Sky Began To Fall” to be released?
LJR: I am releasing the album one song at a time per month (each with an accompanying sci fi video series episode), so with 12 songs the whole album will be released around June of 2022.
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Peace, Love and Music
Hope Romine❤
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