Local artist Rosie performed a solo show at the new Greenway Recording studio on Wednesday, playing new music acoustically for an intimate crowd.
The 20-year-old indie-pop musician, Rosie Castano, began performing two years ago after spending most of the pandemic writing music.
“I was in my house, and I had a lot of feelings and writing was my way of expressing that,” Rosie said. “That was the turning point. I was just writing a lot of music and singing every day.”
Pulling from her musical inspirations RAYE, Remi Wolf and Dominic Fike, Rosie merges her sound influences with jazz and R&B for her live performances. However, she describes her recorded music as “nature pop.”
“It’s like you’re outside in a field, and there’s pretty flowers, and it’s a nice summer evening, but everything is electric. That’s how I want my music to sound,” Rosie said. “Everything is glowing and electronic.”
Her first performance was at a friend’s house show in 2023 along with five other bands in a tiny basement.
“We had like 100 people in this basement, and like, people were crammed on the stairs, and my friends drove from Duluth,” Rosie said. “It was a very important night.”
That year, Rosie played a total of 39 shows, sometimes playing two shows a week, and described it as “crazy but so much fun.” Now, she plays with band members Kellan Ireland-Niemeyer, Gavin Taylor-Stark, Evan Espinoza Robles, and Matt “Freakwhensee” Greene.
Drummer Espinoza Robles first saw Rosie perform at the Green Room.
“Something about how she likes to create and her aesthetic, how she’s very authentic to her music. I was like, ‘Oh, she’s gonna make it big. I can tell,’” Espinoza Robles said.
Espinoza Robles said that playing with Rosie encouraged him to be more precise in his playing.
“It’s really cool to have that kind of more supportive background role and serve the singer as the front person,” he said.
Guitarist Ireland-Niemeyer praised his bandmates’ talent, saying their abilities make him want to play better.
“When we perform, we tear it up,” he said.
Looking to the future, Rosie hopes to add to her live performances and incorporate her pop-music roots.
“I’d love to have backup singers,” Rosie said. “But also incorporating pop and dance music.”
