The newest artist emerging from our friends at Old Bear Records is Roemer, which is the moniker that songwriter Benjamin Roemer Seidle has been recording and performing as for the past 10 years. Ben is an American who in 2004, moved to Berlin, Germany to minister in a German church that was in its infancy. There, in 2005 he met and married his wife Jasmin. He has fashioned a unique, intelligent, and at times unnerving release with Straight Bars & Guns (available here on Spotify). The EP contains powerful lyrics that pull no punches while tackling important and timely topics. And the music, while being folk-based, is layered and complex in a way that will grab your attention. We flew to Germany to sit down… no we didn’t… but it felt like we sat down with him.

UTR: The whole world is in the grips of the COVID-19 pandemic. How is this impacting you and life in Germany?

Roemer: Well, my wife, Jasmin, and I live in Berlin. We are all under Kontaktverbot – a no contact order … something like a weird restraining order that involves everyone in Germany. So no more than two people from differing households are allowed to congregate and always with 1.5 meters between them. We, like many folks I would imagine, are learning to navigate the new normal. In some ways it is business as usual as we both work from home and are introverted. That being said I am learning to lower the bar and give myself a lot of grace. How to be healthy, productive, wise, a good friend and partner are very fluid at the moment. Right now the death toll in Germany has been rather low in comparison to our neighboring countries.

UTR: The songs on Straight Bars & Guns are very well-written. Can you tell us about your songwriting process and how long you have been writing songs?

Roemer: I picked up the guitar in 2000 during my freshman year in college. Back in the day, I played the trumpet and though I have the body of a high school band teacher, I knew I did not want to teach music or really play the horn professionally. At the time a buddy of mine was writing tunes and encouraged me to start. Over the last twenty years, songwriting has been a way for me to process thoughts, rearrange my mental furniture and practice a sacred imagination. I write songs for me and mainly on my sofa in my office. It’s as if a water faucet has been turned on and all the books I’ve been reading, conversations I’ve had and life experiences all rush out at once but filtered through melody, chord progressions, and rhyme schemes over time on a small body 12 fret acoustic guitar.

UTR: How did you choose the songs on the EP?

Roemer: These five songs that make up Straight Bars and Guns are actually, in my mind, part of two other projects. One called There Goes Jericho and the other I Can’t Impress You With Words. They all came out of a season of songwriting from 2014 to 2017. Money was an influence on how many songs would be recorded at Old Bear. We landed on a deal that we all felt good about and we agreed that the project would be five songs. But I wrote 16. I picked the five that seemed to fit into a narrative that I wanted to tell and was wrestling with at the time.

UTR: We found “Dark Side of Grace” to be a particularly poignant song. What is the backstory for this?
Roemer: “Dark Side of Grace” is one part Joni Mitchell’s Case of You (“Oh, you are in my blood like holy wine”), mixed with Welsh poet George Herbert’s The Agony (“Love is that liquor sweet and most divine, Which my God feels as blood, but I as wine.”), on top of the Nicene Creed (“We look for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come.”). Add in that folks back in the first century thought the early Christians were incestuous and cannibalistic, calling everyone brother and sister and greeting each other with the Holy kiss – which was an open mouth kiss. And they would eat the flesh and drink the blood of their leader. The song is three vignettes wrestling with and reflecting on soteriology, ecclesiology and the Eucharist while speaking to sin, sorrow and death. Making allusions to substance abuse and alcoholism is intentional but used as a metaphor and not confessional. I suppose it’s a way of saying being a Jesus follower in the Church is very messy, full of questions, unsettling, tragic, nuanced, familiar with grief, not for the faint of heart and yet exactly for them. It’s an escape or rescue to a new way of being human, lived out in sacred relationships betting on the hope that the resurrection is true.
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UTR: You recorded this release with Old Bear Records in Batavia, NY. How did this come about and what was it like recording with them?
Roemer: Chris Hoisington reached out to me a while back over Facebook. We have some mutual friends. I posted a video of a very rough draft of the title track Straight Bars and Guns. He wanted to know if I had any more songs like it and pitched me the idea of recording at Old Bear and being a part of the label. I’ve had limited studio experience. The majority of the other releases I have recorded have been rogue and mainly done in my flat in Berlin with the help of an audio engineer friend and a handful of other musicians. I’ve always been attracted to a LoFi Avant Garde recording style. That being said working with Chris and the folks at Old Bear was a ton of fun. On day one Chris and I laid down the scratch tracks of all five songs in about an hour and a half. I was super impressed that he knew my demos inside and out, and mapped out how he thought the production would work in advance. It was a breeze to work together and I was impressed with all the other musicians. It was a fun few days in the studio.
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UTR: Can you share some about the ministry you are involved in? 
Roemer: I work with New International as Regional Director for Europe serving NI’s cross-cultural workers, helping them navigate the waters of language learning and enculturation while cultivating a robust missiology tailored by them and their national partners. I am also the worship coordinator at Projekt:Kirche, a German church that meets in a local art gallery. As Music & Worship Arts Coordinator, I help Projekt:Kirche create weekly liturgies and worship experiences while fostering relationships with singer-songwriters in the Berlin music scene.
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UTR: Any future recording plans on the horizon?
Roemer: Well as a matter of fact the next two projects are written and one has been recorded already at the historic Funkhaus Berlin. This full length album to be called unaccompanied is 10 stripped down confessional based songs just me and the guitar. I am hoping to release it in the late fall/early winter. The following project I would love to do at Old Bear Studios. We will just have to see.

Roemer (Ben) and his wife Jasmin live in Berlin, Germany – and more info can be found at his website.  Straight Bars and Guns is available on all major digital streaming and download websites.