Kenny Roby, the lead singer of the acclaimed roots band 6 String Drag, joins us for this Home Studio Session. Roby recently released his latest solo album, The Reservoir, a heartfelt, personal work channeling the spirit of his longtime friend and musical partner, Neal Casal, who passed away in August of 2019.
Roby described Casal’s influence on the project as tantamount to the emotion of the album:
“It got us both excited… I [knew] he had been dealing with some stuff and it seemed like he was kind of on track [and] feeling better… He said that working on the record and the excitement about it was really helping him push through some things, [but sometimes] you think they’re doing really great and obviously things were too much [for him].”
Casal was intended to produce the record and assisted in much of the early decision making and development of the project. As the first singles off the record began to come out, Roby says it became difficult to separate the songs from Neal, and a flood of emotions came with the release of initial single “History Lesson”.
After Casal’s passing, Roby reached out to Dave Schools, the bassist, founding member of Widespread Panic, and bandmate of Casal’s in Hard Working Americans, to produce the record. Only after sharing a few songs did Schools realize that Neal had already shared them with him before he had passed; the new pairing felt right.
Deeply connected to Neal Casal, Kenny Roby’s latest solo album The Reservoir is an intimate journey through a troubling time in his life. Plagued with his separation from his wife and the passing of his friend, Roby entered a period of heavy personal growth that ended with the creation of The Reservoir, a beautiful homage to a late friend.
Written by Jacob Collier.
