Lawrence Rothman Wants to Break Free From Music’s Ones and Zeroes — SkimNews
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- Lawrence Rothman released "Here Lies Love / Sawdust to Stardust," a 13-track LP via KRO Records, completing a trilogy that started with 2021's "Good Morning, America" and continued through 2024's "The Plow That Broke the Plains"
- Rothman defines Americana in 2026 as "everything that's associated with great American music, all rolled into one ball" — soul, R&B, singer-songwriter, folk, country, rock, and "a little bit of punk rock"
- Rothman traces the trilogy concept to Henry Miller's Rosy Crucifixion novels, saying reading "Sexus, Plexus, and Nexus" as a 17-year-old inspired the goal of making records the way Miller made books
- The new album's "Karmakaze," co-written with Jillian Jaqueline, functions as the second half of "Thrash the West," which Rothman first recorded with Amanda Shires on the 2021 record
- Floria Sigismondi, Rothman's wife and creative partner, directed the "Karmakaze" video, set against a desolate rock-walled desert backdrop
- Rothman will tour through September and October, with stops including Groove in New York City and Chief's on Broadway in Nashville
- Rothman argues live performance is the essential counterweight to digital life, telling Rolling Stone: "now is the biggest time in human history for artists to perform live, with their hands on a microphone"
Why it matters: By completing a three-album arc that explicitly folds punk attitude into the Nashville Americana fold — with repeat collaborators including Amanda Shires and Katie Pruitt — Rothman stakes out a genre-fluid identity inside a scene that prizes traditionalism. The September–October tour, plus the album's stated themes of confronting generational trauma and an "AI-dominated era," positions Rothman's live sets as the project's commercial proving ground.
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