September 2025
“There was nothing to do around there so I would go to the Coquille library and check out as many jazz CDs as I could and rip them to my computer. I just studied jazz ten hours a day because there was nothing to do.”
Charlotte McCaslin, the vocalist and primary songwriter of the group Roselit Bone describes the set of circumstances that led to her making music a focal point in her life. Maybe not surprisingly, that inspiration came from living in a place and feeling like there was little else going on, not a strange feeling amongst young 20 somethings. Only when McCaslin talks about this, she’s talking about living in a shack in the woods over five miles from the nearest town whose population resides somewhere south of 4000.
Roselit Bone is sometimes a trio, sometimes an ensemble of eight or so members. Their eerie take on western and blues music has been described as goth country or spaghetti western. Add to this that McCaslin identifies as trans and comes from a punk background, and the series of twists and turns leading to the group’s formation makes a little more sense.
“In high school I had a band but we couldn’t afford drums so we’d have to improvise, or we would hang a mic from the rafters of the garage because we couldn’t afford mic stands. None of us even had cars. So it was just too hard to get off the ground,” McCaslin says of growing up in Fullerton, California, a city in Orange County which claims a musical tapestry of punk bands like Social Distortion, The Adolescents and D.I.
“I got into the Gun Club my freshman year of high school. Once I was able to start going to shows in L.A., I’d see bands like X. You’d hear about the Gun Club but they were a lot less well known. But when I heard their album “Fire of Love” for the first time I think it changed my outlook on music. It was my gateway to American folk and blues, and I got heavily into Delta blues, I started studying the Delta blues guys like Charlie Patton and Robert Johnson.”
McCaslin and some friends left Orange County for more affordable pastures up in Portland, Oregon, however after having their rental situation fall through, chance brought McCaslin to the forests of coastal Oregon and the small town of Coquille. Here, in an era that predated online streaming of music, McCaslin visited nearby small town libraries where she could find a variety of music on CDs, while walking several miles into town for her dishwashing job. When she had saved up in order to move back to Portland, it stuck this time, and McCaslin, now a more competent musician, started putting together the pieces that would become Roselit Bone.
In Roselit Bone, McCaslin acts as the primary songwriter, often working out the songs slowly before presenting them to her bandmates. And while the band will record with instrumentation that includes slide guitars and horns, McCaslin emphasizes that she wants her music to retain a sense of rawness.
“There’s so much going on at all times that it’s hard to get it totally polished, which I think is good. Most of the rhythm parts we play live in the studio without click tracks, so that element of live energy stays in the music.”
Roselit Bone’s lyrics tend to have an almost literary tone to them – playing with words to create a sense of place and tone, though there is a bit of an unrefined element to these stories. McCaslin says this is also intentional.
“I think the initial writing stages are emotionally raw and I try to get it out as quick as possible. The lyrics can be intense at times, or they can be violent or disturbing. I think there’s that delicate balance of keeping that rawness and danger to the song without being – I don’t know if offensive is the word – I think I try to approach it with a more literary feel or goal than just shocking people.”
Roselit Bone’s latest release, Ofrenda, came out in 2023, and since that time the band has performed in Reno on several of their tours.
The band will be returning to to perform at the Reno’s 2025 OffBeat Music Festival, which will bring over 60 performers to several venues throughout the city’s Brewery District.
More information can be found at OffBeatReno.com
