Michael Roe proves he still has it

It’s a good time to be a Michael Roe fan. Besides leading the Christian rockers the 77s for the last 44 years, Roe has been a member of the supergroup Lost Dogs for the last 35. Both acts have new albums, and both albums are really good.

“I’ve been really grateful that the response has been overwhelmingly positive to this record,” says Roe of the 77s’ 7 (Fools of the World/Mezzo), “because it’s been over 20 years since we made a full original album.”

To be clear, the 77s have released albums during that span, and exciting ones at that. But they were cover projects such as Holy Ghost Building (gospel blues, spirituals) and Gimme a Kickstart (pop, rock, indie, and folk, both famous and obscure).

“When a band goes away for that long and you’re going to bring them back,” says Roe, “you have to bring them back better. If we put out an album that isn’t any better than our old albums or is not quite as good, then people say, ‘Ah, they don’t have it anymore.’”

The 77s—Roe (vocals, guitar), Mark Harmon (bass), Bruce Spencer (drums)—still have it. Available as a seven-song vinyl LP, a 10-song CD, or an 11-song digital download, 7 offers everything that makes the band special: galloping rockers (“Saddle Up”), transcendent pop (“Heart Back,” “Hand to God”), free-range boogie (“Weedzlers”), and wisdom (“Be Still”). Not that the album had an easy gestation. The trio worked on it off and on for 13 years.

“We ended up with probably between 15 and 20 basics,” says Roe. “This new record was culled from those. And we have another whole record in the can.”

Until that album comes out (its title: 7s, so you can put its cover side by side with the cover of 7 and see “77s”), there’s Lost Dogs’ Trick of the Light (Fools of the World). Mellower on the whole than 7, it finds Roe, the Choir’s Derri Daugherty and Steve Hindalong, and Daniel Amos’ Terry Taylor melding melody, melancholy, and meaning with ease. In particular, the title cut memorializing departed friends and family and the godly-woman tributes “Here and Now” and “I’ve Been Workin’” belong on the Dogs’ ultimate best-of.

The songwriting didn’t break down democratically. (Of the 11 songs, Taylor wrote eight.) But then, where the Dogs are concerned, it never does.

“We got lazy a lot of years and let Terry write all the songs,” says Roe. “If you stay in a band long enough, you understand that the guys that are the most driven are going to be the ones that dominate the art, and the ones that are lazy are not.

“So there you have the true reason why a lot of times things happen the way they do: pure laziness.” Roe laughs. “I have no excuse.