We had the good fortune of connecting with Rebecca Roudman and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Rebecca, we’d love to hear about how you approach risk and risk-taking
Our current risk taking failure to success ratio is about 8 out of 10! My band Dirty Cello travels the world and makes a living playing our unique spin on blues, rock and Americana. Leading a band this unique, and making a living from it, has meant living in a world of risk-taking – and most of those risks pay off.

My life as a professional musician started off in a very traditional sense. I went to middle school and high school where I played the cello, then went to college for music, and then started my career playing in San Francisco bay area orchestras. About a decade into an approved-of and fairly standard career, I had a desire to try something more.

This meant taking a big risk, and that risk was tossing my classical life out the window, and learning how to rock on the cello. On a list of instruments that rock, cello is pretty far down, ranking slightly above harp and French horn.

The first big risk was to enter a very local talent show called Vallejo’s Got Talent. At this show, I began by playing a beautiful classical piece, then cued the sound guy to hit play on a backing track for the song, “Rock You Like A Hurricane,” where I did my best impression of a shredding guitarist. After the show was over, two things happened. The first was I won first place. With a grand price of $50, I narrowly edged out an eight year old girl singing Disney songs. The second thing that happened was the audience asked for another rock number, which I had to decline, since I only knew the one.

What quickly followed after this, was a whole lot of guitar style cello shredding, which earned some disapproval from my classical colleagues, and then a briefly disastrous stint on America’s Got Talent. After being Xed off of the show, and rudely insulted by Sharon Osbourne, I spent a couple days moping on the couch wondering if I had made a mistake.

After recovering from America’s Got Talent, I decided to risk it all and go all in on creating a band called Dirty Cello. The first year of this project had a giant amount of ups and downs. There were gigs that paid in pastries, and then the coffee shop ran out of pastries. There were shows where people clapped in the middle of the song, something I was unprepared for from the classical world, and there was a giant learning curve about how to manage a band in a rock and roll world.

Building on some early successes, the band was offered a major leap of faith with a giant tour to China that was controlled and funded by the Chinese government. This crazy adventure was one of those frightening moments that paid off. There were giant crowds, financial rewards, and now I could call the band an international success.

What followed our China tour, was the beginnings of a great deal of International touring which continues to be a great joy for everyone in the band, but also comes with some frightening risks. In the music world, the pay comes after each performance, but the cost for flying a 5 person band with instruments, with hotels, with rental cars, and with a lot of hungry band members, entails a lot of financial faith in how the shows are going to go. A big audience means a big payday, but a rained out show or poorly advertised event can mean a big financial hit.

Our most recent tour this summer was one of very frightening risk since a majority of the shows could be politely described as non-traditional and could be considered a bit crazy. The tour was to Iceland and was built around an Icelandic movie star Ilmur Kristjánsdóttir’s request to have us perform at her wedding. This wedding was to take place at one of the most Northern most points of Iceland in a hotel made from a converted school house. The rest of the tour consisted of a normal jazz club, a giant hall used to hold funerals, a performance at the Eurovision Museum, and a show on a whale-watching boat as it motored around a fjord looking for whales. Spoiler alert, whales don’t like rock and roll cello. Despite the non-traditional nature of this whole tour, it worked, although there were a few exciting moments including a missing promoter, a drum set that threatened to roll off the whale-watching boat, and parts of the Eurovision sound system that turned out to be purely ornamental.

Risk taking in the band has led us to mostly success, but many low points as well. For every great show, there have been some where band members outnumbered the audience, more was spent on feeding the band than we were paid, and other excitement like trying to rock out while the band has food poisoning. Overall however, the rewards have outweighed the risks and the Dirty Cello band will keep on rocking and swinging our way around the world.

Let’s talk shop? Tell us more about your career, what can you share with our community?
Why not? This is the guiding principal of my career as a non-traditional musician. After all, why shouldn’t a cello lead a rock and blues band?

My band Dirty Cello is all about boundary-pushing while having fun. We take the idea of a wailing lead guitar, ala Jimi Hendrix and replace it with my cello. This has created my band’s unique sound and led to a lot of success and occasional jealousy from traditional musicians who can’t quite keep up.

With over 100 shows a year and tours from the middle East to the Midwest, my Dirty Cello band has enjoyed a lot of success. One of the things that sets us apart, other than the cello, is a very old school look at how to produce a show. When we walk on stage, we have a plethora of fun songs and that’s about it for planning ahead. Depending on the audience reaction, we select the next song and in a world of highly produced music, we don’t know how many verses or choruses are coming up, and our endings are generally spontaneous.

The Dirty Cello band also focuses on having fun while we play, and hoping the audience can feel our happiness. A good way to get a sense of our band is when promoters offer us alcoholic drinks before the show, we instead ask for coffee and come on stage with big smiles and a whole lot of energy.

Let’s say your best friend was visiting the area and you wanted to show them the best time ever. Where would you take them? Give us a little itinerary – say it was a week long trip, where would you eat, drink, visit, hang out, etc.
When we are in the Denver area, we love to visit the History Colorado Center and then head on over to a stroll down the main street in Lafayette, and then finish the evening with a show at The Muse.

Who else deserves some credit and recognition?
I come from a musically supported family where my musical career, whatever route it took, was supported by my parents with lessons and instruments.

Website: dirtycello.com

Instagram: instagram.com/dirtycello

Twitter: twitter.com/dirtycello

Facebook: facebook.com/dirtycellomusic

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/rebeccaroudman

Image Credits
Jason Eckl

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