The Songwriter Speaks: Rob Romano on new Chico Romano x Professor Caveman catalog
Interview by Bennett Kelly
Rob Romano slashed into the NJ indie scene in the mid-2010’s with the Rutgers-basement trio Professor Caveman. The Mason Gross attendee won mosh pit affection and battles of the bands that led to the live-studio EPs grape. and Vol. 2 in 2014. The lineup and sound shifted in the 2020’s to Chico Romano, with explorations into hi-fi recording. Romano talks here about another shift with his latest EP, Making a Racket, released on June 6th. He also peers through his songwriting catalog all the way back to grape. and to the hallowed ground of second-grade rap battles.
Early Days
I first picked up a guitar in second or first grade. My dad plays classical guitar, and my brother also ended up playing guitar. I picked it up at that age, and I was just not into it. My parents signed me up at a rec center. It was pretty lame. I hated it. And then I didn’t get back into it until I was in like seventh grade, with bass, and that kind of started everything.
I was always into music, and before guitar and all that, I wanted to be a rapper. I wrote a lot of raps.
The first song I wrote was a battle rap for my two friends and I, probably second or third grade. I wrote it for them to rap against each other, but then it never happened because their parents found out [laughs]. We got in all this trouble cause I was singing very profane things about their parents, like potty humor, who your mom’s kissing. [You should throw that on the next EP, we say.]
More a spontaneous or regimented songwriter?
I go through both phases - it just depends how busy I am. I'm always playing guitar, so I'll be playing all day and writing stuff. If I'm busy, I usually don't have time to record, to actually manifest it. But I do have a routine. I kind of just write all the time.
Inspirational sources from Mason Gross days and New Brunswick DIY scene?
There were a lot of really good local bands. It was so cool. I don't think there's as much of this anymore, but I feel like bands that are bigger now, Frankie Cosmos, and a lot of these Double Whammy and Exploding in Sound bands. Those labels would all play in New Brunswick, and it was a pretty big deal. I remember being super inspired by Frankie Cosmos, Palehound, Told Slant, Palm, just all these on the come-up DIY bands, and seeing them in a small basement, I take that for granted.
What really inspires me, not that I make art like him, but I love Juan Wauters. I think Juan Wauters, his whole ethic definitely inspired the aesthetic of my music and a little bit of my style. He has a very cohesive aesthetic. And, you know, I went to Rutgers for printmaking. That's what the Making a Racket cover is. For almost all the Professor Caveman things, I usually made the art for it. I think Vol. 5 I didn't make the art. Vol. 3, Vol. 4 are both linocuts, like a woodcut, printmaking. That's what I did at Rutgers. So I kind of went back to my roots on this one. Making a Racket is a linocut of my tape machine.
I read how you said Chico Romano was a bit of a refreshed aesthetic from the Professor Caveman band. I feel this new EP is now a refresh within the Chico Romano aesthetic, like a stripped-down Beatles’ White Album coming out of their psychedelia era, would you say?
Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. I think you hit the nail on the head there. It is a refresh. And if you see us live, we're completely playing a refresh, and kind of softer, somewhere between jazz and twee. People have been saying we sound like Moldy Peaches now [“anti-folk”], which, you know, I don't mind.
For this EP, I played all the instruments on the record and wrote everything. I usually do write a lot of the stuff, but this is the only time where I was playing the drums on my own record and truly doing every part of it. And that's another reason why it sounds the way it does. It's funny because this music is kind of old, and so the next EP will also be a refresh. I'm not sure where it'll go, but it's going to be pretty different, I think.
A lot of your songs historically are short durations, 1:10, 1:17, and here as well. What do you like about that format?
One thing I don't like is songs that are like five minutes. I mean, I contradict myself, because I listen to Yes and prog rock. But I generally don't like songs that are five minutes. I don't like to repeat parts for no reason. I’m usually just trying to go straight to the point, and get the song out.
I love 60’s music. I love songs that end at 2:56 seconds or whatever. I don't know who said it, but that's like the perfect time for a song. So I'm still working my way up there [laughs].
And also, one to two minutes was as long as I could play the drums before I would mess up. I'm recording on tape, and actually on this record, I know it sounds crazy, but I didn't edit anything really. Everything was played in one take. So one to two minutes is about as long as I can go on the drums [laughs].
Your first couple of EPs, I think you also more or less recorded those in one or two shots, too.
The first two Professor Caveman EPs were pretty much entirely live. The whole band would play it live except the singing. And those also had minimal edits. So a little bit of what I was trying to go back to is just the rawness. I realized that the overproduced stuff, I don't know, takes a lot more energy and sometimes doesn't yield as good of a result anyway.
Have you done a full-length album?
No. And I feel like I should, and I want to.
You like the EP mode?
I like the EP. I mean, it feels a little more stressful making it a whole album. I'm not sure. I feel like maybe when I drop the album, I'll do it hi-fi or something. I want to make it really big when I do the album. So I'm kind of just working my way up to that [laughs].
“I Think Ur Crazy” kicks off Making a Racket. I think it's more or less a Spanish guitar or a classical guitar? It reminded me of “And I Love Her” by the Beatles.
It has that sound. This album is definitely very like that era of the Beatles. It's inspired by “Till There Was You” by the Beatles. But do you want to know what it really is a copy of? “A Summer Song” by Chad & Jeremy [1965]. That is like, I'm afraid to say this because, you know, they might come after me [laughs]. The guitar intro, like verbatim. It's not the same thing, but it's very inspired by that.
“Chico’s Lament”
I was trying to sound like Harry Nilsson, but it ended up kind of coming out more like Syd Barrett. That song is kind of about a long-distance relationship I had. And I felt like for once, I'm bad at writing lyrics, but for that one, I felt like the lyrics kind of came to me in a very natural way that it just felt like.
“New Booker T” - Very funky, bass and organ, even some James Brown-esque strums in there.
Booker T and the MGs, they're quintessential 60’s funk and R&B. That is really formative to me. My high school friends and I used to play 60’s garage rock and 60’s R&B. This is kind of an ode to the old stuff I used to play. I love Stax [Memphis label featuring Booker T].
“U R The Best Friend I Know,” plus “Ur My Best Friend” (2022). What does your best friend make of all these tributes?
Oh, oh, I bet that friend has probably blocked me on all socials [laughs]. I mean, these are kind of about the same person, which is why I like to use that title as a callback. So you could say that's maybe a sequel to “Ur My Best Friend” or a continuation of the story. But yeah, hopefully she won't read this [laughs], but yeah, it's like, I use that to kind of indicate to myself that these are both about the same person.
“Last Surf,” plus “In Your Eyes” (2024) share some pitch/warp effects.
I record on tape machines, so I guess I did the kind of pitch bend. There's a big pitch knob on the tape machine. I did that as a little gimmick. They're not really, I mean, I don't know. All these songs are kind of just experiments that turned out good, I guess. But they're not related aside from that.
Going back a bit now. “Who Said” (2022), you sang “You are so life-like in a funeral home, girl.” What's the root of that lyric? That one’s just so good to me.
Man, I don't know. I think that song might be kind of about, maybe paranoia, like a bad acid trip or something. And I think sometimes you start to see people as zombies; it's easy to get jaded from the world and start seeing everyone as NPCs or zombies or whatever. And this is just about when you see that special person, that they're radiant, they're so life-like in a funeral home, they stand out so much in this world of monotony.
That's probably one of my favorite songs I've ever made. And I have, man, maybe I'll go back to that a little more on the next record, but I have a lot of songs in that style. That needs to come out eventually.
On lyrics being hard
Usually, I'm one of those dudes that they hear the music. Some people hear the lyrics first, some people hear the music first. I always hear the music first. So that's part of why it's so hard. But with “Who Said,” I don't know where I read this, but I was just kind of trying to grunt the noises, trying to find the range where my voice sounded best. And I think that's why the lyrics are kind of weird.
Oftentimes, I just make sounds and then I try to put the words to the sounds. And then rarely, like on “Chico's Lament,” I came up with the words first. I'm trying to get more into the lyrics-first thing. But usually I just make noises.
“Lemon Water” (2017). I like how it's a little incongruous. The momentum builds and builds through the end and it's very triumphant, but the whole time you're singing about lemon water.
This is another thing where I struggle with lyrics, so just repeating the same phrase over and over, that's kind of easier for me. And I don't know, it gives people something to cling on to. I knew what I wanted to sing, but I just needed something with the right syllables, and that was just what I came up with.
Vol. 2 (2014), “Puffin’ Down the Dart,” “Toca La Guitarra,” “Cavewalkin.’” What do you make of this EP, ten plus years on? Do you listen to it?
I used to have this problem where I listen to it and I just hear all the mistakes. Because that and the first one [grape.] were very much done all in one live take and minimal overdubs. I used to be a little embarrassed by it.
I don’t really like to listen to my older stuff, but now I hear it, and it's like that’s a different person. And I actually really like it. We did a reunion show and it was really gratifying to play the songs again. But it's funny, I realized that those mistakes that bothered me so much, that was part of the charm of it.
That’s what I’m getting back to with this new one, where I'm not really caring so much about having mistakes in the music anymore, and I'm just trying to have the charm and the energy be right.
How about the Vol. 2 songs? You’ve got two of the biggest songs from your catalog on there [Puffin’ Down, Toca].
Yeah, I mean, those were very powerful. I had been writing those for a while. That was at the beginning of me releasing music as Professor Caveman. So those were songs I had years and years and years to work out.
You were deep in the basement scene at this time. Were you writing songs that worked for that environment? Was that the inspiration there?
A little bit. I think my tastes were just different, too. I was really into math rock from being in high school, and I just still had that angst. I think I still have the angst. I'm thirty now, maybe we don't have the same kind of angst. I still do have angst.
But especially “Puffin’ Down the Dart,” that was a song that got everyone going. And you're right, that was written for that. And I think as I got older, I was like, I don't want everyone to mosh and stuff like they used to. So I started to chill out with the songs. But I do want to get back to that honestly. You might see the next EP be like that.
Making a Racket was released on June 6th, 2025. You can purchase it on Bandcamp or stream it on your platform of choice. Keep up with Rob Chico Romano by following along on Instagram.
