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SANDEN TOTTEN: The Roe Family Singers write songs that could have been penned 100 years ago. It's old music, rootsy, organic. It's the kind of stuff you'd imagine families playing in their living room to keep themselves entertained in the days before TV and radio. And you know what? That's kind of how the Roe family write their songs too.

QUILLAN ROE: I'll be sitting on the couch with a banjo and I just start playing.

[BANJO PLAYING]

SANDEN TOTTEN: That's Quillan Roe on the banjo.

QUILLAN ROE: Often, I'll hear him singing along, you know, from somewhere else in the and then one of us will just start to come up with words.

KIM ROE: Quillan is the wordsmith. I just brainstorm. Hey, how about this? Hey--

SANDEN TOTTEN: And that's Kim Roe.

KIM ROE: --what about this?

SANDEN TOTTEN: They've been married and playing together as a band for five years. Kim sings in the group and keeps rhythm with a washboard or an autoharp. They both admit there's definitely a signature sound to the Roe Family Singers. There's something creepy and out of place about their music. It's like hearing a radio signal from the past. Quillan says that's because for him, their songs don't start with music. They start with an image.

QUILLAN ROE: In my head, I see rolling green valleys and hills in the mountain fog is there and the words are-- they're in the air. They just exist. [CHUCKLES] That's where all these songs start for me in my head. Like, I play the banjo and that world opens up inside my head.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

SANDEN TOTTEN: Quillan Roe says his band has a way of taking songs from other musicians and making them their own. He's got a good feeling that he'll be able to do that with these lyrics.

KIM ROE: Take a walk to a bus stop, wait a while. See the driver coming up on 1,000 miles.

QUILLAN ROE: Nature starting up or shutting down at summer school. Kids on skateboards take the residential corners so fast, they watch each other like a comet from the distant past. I would never write anything like this. It's just an imagery that's totally foreign to me. It's sunny. [CHUCKLES] I don't write sunny songs. And this song-- this song is a neighborhood. I don't write neighborhoods. [CHUCKLES] I can't relate to people that well.

SANDEN TOTTEN: He says setting these words to music will be tough, but that's not the part of the process he's worried about.

QUILLAN ROE: The hard part will be finding it inside of ourselves, you know, in a place that we can relate to it. I think The Owls are going to do a great version of this. I think it's going to be really awesome.

SANDEN TOTTEN: That's Quillan Roe. And speaking of The Owls, that's the band Larissa Anderson has been following for our project. And Larissa, you're here with me now.

LARISSA ANDERSON: : Yep. Hi, Sanden.

SANDEN TOTTEN: Hi, Larissa. So for someone who's never heard them, describe to me what The Owls sound is like.

LARISSA ANDERSON: : Well, The Owls make these great pop songs. They're a melody-driven band. They've got lots of layered vocals in their songs. And sometimes, they even kind of have a sweet dissonance to them. Listen to this one.

[THE OWLS, "DO YA?"]

The poor sick thing, do ya? Do ya? Do ya? Do ya? Do ya?

LARISSA ANDERSON: : This is a band with a lot of songwriting muscle. Three out of the four members are songwriters. There's Alison LaBonne.

ALISON LABONNE: I'd say I'm a lyric-driven songwriter. So that's a little bit different than what Brian does because he usually starts with a chord progression.

LARISSA ANDERSON: : She's talking about her husband Brian Tighe, another Owls songwriter.

BRIAN TIGHE: I have these really sort of hyperactive times when I'm churning out lots of ideas and I just record them on my minidisc, like, having just a bunch of canvases around and just doing quick gestural studies.

LARISSA ANDERSON: : And then there's Maria May. Her songs don't come in quick bursts like Brian Tighe's. May's style is more like--

MARIA MAY: What would it be? Not really a lightning bolt. More like a nightlight or something. [CHUCKLES] But if I'm really, like, being aware of it, if I'm quiet, then I can notice that there's this thing that needs my attention. And then usually, those are the ones that really pan out for me.

LARISSA ANDERSON: : But when the nightlight dims or somebody hits a creative block, the others help out. And working together like that seems to be what The Owls like best about songwriting.

MARIA MAY: We all enjoy singing together so much that we really try to work that into all the arrangements.

LARISSA ANDERSON: : When they got Stephen Burt's lyrics and saw what they'd be singing, something clicked.

BRIAN TIGHE: I'm already kind of hearing-- I mean, this is definitely an upbeat song. It's very poppy.

MARIA MAY: You know what's interesting about it? Is that it has this sort of darkness. I really enjoy this too lyrically. If there's a sort of obvious surface to something that's very bright but the subtext, even if it's just mentioned once, is actually wickedly dark and it's in here, it's in here.

LARISSA ANDERSON: : So we leave The Owls today giddy with possibility. They're all very excited about the project. But we'll turn now to Chris Roberts who's been following veteran songwriter Matt Wilson. Hi, Chris.

CHRIS ROBERTS: Hi, Larissa.

LARISSA ANDERSON: : So talk about Matt Wilson a little bit. I know he's had a long career in the local music scene.

CHRIS ROBERTS: And he's done a lot of different things. People may remember him as the front man for the quirky art rock group Trip Shakespeare. He was a solo artist for a while. He's been a member of the acoustic duo The Flops.

LARISSA ANDERSON: : And would you say that he was as excited as the other bands about this project?

CHRIS ROBERTS: He was really excited when I approached him on it but he also expressed a few reservations. In fact, I think going into this, he probably had more doubts about it than the other musicians. But the one point I want to make from the get-go about Matt Wilson is, as an artist, he's always had one main goal.

MATT WILSON: I want to be involved in making something beautiful.

CHRIS ROBERTS: But Wilson's also pretty candid about how wrapped up his ego is with songwriting.

MATT WILSON: And then I want to publish it and I want everyone to know that I made beautiful music and I want to sing this beautiful music and be the face of it.

(SINGING) Cold last attempt from a man for the children's tents. Constellation lost in my head--

CHRIS ROBERTS: Wilson has rarely let his music be guided by anybody's vision but his own. That might be why he sounds a little hesitant as he reads Stephen Burt's lyrics out loud for the first time.

MATT WILSON: After noon sun. Take a blade of grass between your teeth, check the sun. It's all alone in blue with nothing underneath.

CHRIS ROBERTS: After just a quick glance at the words, Wilson can't hide his disappointment.

MATT WILSON: My first thought is that this is not me. I'm a little bit crestfallen. Frankly, it's a very static bunch of words, not a lot of thrust to them.

CHRIS ROBERTS: Wilson also thinks the lyrics contain language he would never use, words like residential and crisp.

MATT WILSON: Just that word crisp, I would never write that or probably even be a part of crisp.

CHRIS ROBERTS: Even though he was somewhat scathing in his critique, Wilson admitted Stephen Burt had captured a melancholic mood, almost like a forgotten childhood memory. The lyrics had set his songwriting wheels in motion.

MATT WILSON: I'm kind of calculating strategies in my mind how I can somehow chew through all these words and not have some kind of 10 minute monstrosity.

CHRIS ROBERTS: And that is where we leave Matt Wilson, a little disappointed in what he had to work with but determined to make it into something beautiful. With Larissa Anderson and Sanden Totten, I'm Chris Roberts, Minnesota Public Radio News.