Rob Taxpayer

#348: "All That We Wanted Was to Witness Something Beautiful"

I'm back from the west coast Taxpayers tour, and I gotta tell you - I have been feeling such creative exhaustion recently. Is that a thing? Has anyone ever felt that? Too many plates spinning, too many balls in the air. The mechanism inside me that helps make stuff is still there, but it is stretched very thin.

It was nice to cross paths with some of you Song of the Week Clubbers in California. In some ways, it felt like a tour from the old days. Partially that's because my pal Eri...

Punk Rock Integrity - Side Stage Conversations with The Taxpayers

Hey y’all! Just wanted to share this Circle Breaker interview from when we were in NJ.

We are in California right now gearing up for tour. Looking forward to seeing some of you! - Rob

https://www.theaquarian.com/2025/07/23/punk-rock-integrity-side-stage-conversations-with-the-taxpayers/

#347: "Purple Mountain Lies"

Hi folks! I'm back from the east coast Taxpayers tour. It was so great to see so many of you Song of the Week Clubbers.

This is one that I started working on before tour and finally got a chance to jump back into it. It would sound great as a full band one, I think. Got more editing on it to do still, but thought I'd share where it's at right now. Listen to that funky bass!

California Taxpayers tour starts i...

World Refugee Day Concert Livestream

Starting now...ish!

Protests, Moonlit Fishing, Philadelphia, and More

Hi folks!  Happy Father’s Day to the dads out there.

Been a wild week for the world, but when is it not these days?  Yesterday morning we were on our way to the Minneapolis No Kings protest with Zippy when we found out that it had been cancelled due to a shelter-in-place order.  A state senator and state representative had been shot by a far right terrorist impersonating a police officer.  The state rep, her husband, and their dog were killed.  Her name was Me...

Interview on Nola County Radio

Hey y’all! Here’s an interview I did with Jimi Palacios for American Roots Roundup and Nola County Radio.

Jimi is an old pal of mine from New Orleans who has become an omnipresent voice in the American Roots music scene. He hosts a ton of radio shows and Roots/Country/Folk music nights at venues in New Orleans. He’s a great dude.

Anyway, here’s the link, the interview part starts at about 2:13 (a quarter of the way through the episode), but he plays the songs from Circle B...

World Refugee Day Benefit Concert

Hey y'all! There is going to be a benefit concert on Friday June 20, 2025 that I wanted to invite you to. You can attend in person if you will be in Minneapolis on that day, or virtually via Livestream if you live elsewhere.

It's a fundraiser concert to help refugees from conflic...

#346: "Zero Gun Salute" and California shows and B-Sides!

The RIVER! One for the river. The Mississippi for me, but they are all great rivers. I owe many long overdue songs to many places and people and creatures and things, but the river has always been at the top of the list. I am glad to cross it off. I hope to one day play it for the river some day with a full brass band in a giant canoe.

I have made much of my life at both the beginning and the end of the Mississippi, from the lazy river gorge of south Minneapolis amid oak trees and ...

#345: "Hail Oxygen"

How exciting!  A truly strange one.  Been a while since one of these came out of me.  I was starting to worry that I didn’t have these in me anymore.

I can be so controlling with my creations.  Before beginning a song I will often think, “you are about this” and then will try to fit the song into that box.  And the song will suffer as a result.

But when a song is allowed to breathe and just be, without any preconceptions or thematic...

#344: "Clouds Forever"

This one has been kicking around in my head for the past few months, finally got around to finishing it tonight at the end of an appropriately cloudy day. Hope you all are hanging in. -r

Clouds Forever

(F#m) Blood on every doorstep.

Death on every door.

Buckle up, it’s coming like you’ve never seen before .

(Bm) Run if you’ve got money.

It’s here for the weak, the dumb, the (F#m) clever.

(C#) Help responding never,

(Bm) so bury you...

Interview on Witchita's NPR Station

Hey y'all! Thought I'd share this interview I did with Jedd Beaudoin for Witchita Public Radio. We talk about the process of songwriting, growing through traumatic events, and some of the formative years of Taxpayers touring.

Also, just added a San Francisco Taxpayers show in late July for those of you in the Bay area! 2025-05-02 00:18:42 +0000 UTC View Post

#343: "Truck's Dream (Instrumental)"

#342: "Tunnel Logic"

Hey folks! Here's a new demo I've been working on. It's called "Tunnel Logic".

It was great to see some of you at the fest in Los Angeles last weekend and you midwesterners the weekend before. The coolest part was seeing how many people already knew the words to the new Circle Breaker songs well enough to sing along. It still blows me away to see people singing along to words I wrote. What an honor.

Tons of lovely Circle Breaker reviews and interviews to share later this ...

Circle Breaker SHALL BE RELEASED.

Hear ye, hear ye, I hereby deem the new Taxpayers album, Circle Breaker, be released into the world.

Listen to it here on Bandcamp (or anywhere else you stream your music).

This album wouldn't exist without the support of you, the Song of the Week Club. You can hear the gestations of early demos of many of these songs if you look back through SOTWC posts over the past few years.

Podcast Interview With Rob and Noah

Here's an interview that me and Noah did with the podcast Back On the Grind about the new album, the philosophy of the Taxpayers, and more. Pepe, the host, is a longtime radical thinker, record label owner, and prison abolitionist, who spent 5 years in a federal prison on marijuana charges. His interviews are always thoughtful, compassionate, and eye opening, and it was an honor to be asked to be on his podcast!

There's also a little sneak peak of the Circle Breaker recording of "Nobod...

Some Reviews of the New Taxpayers Singles

Hey gang. Thought I would share some of the reviews of the new Taxpayers songs because, hey, it's pretty cool that people are taking the time to review these tunes.

https://beatsperminute.com/the-taxpayers-celebrate-the-imperfection-of-broken-things-on-at-war-with-the-dogcatchers/

"At War With the Dogcatchers” is a burn...