Get Your Ticket to 'Now Arriving… at Secaucus Junction': An Interview with Roe Knows Best
- Isabella Basile
- Nov 19, 2025
- 15 min read
No stranger to The MIC Mag, Roe O’Brien, best known as Roe Knows Best, follows her latest EP, Weekend at Mauchie’s…Vol. 1, with her debut album Now Arriving…at Secaucus Junction, released November 7th. The nine-track album is a statement of Roe’s personal growth through her experiences with love, anxiety, fear of rejection, addiction, nostalgia, loss, and “how sometimes traveling outside your home state makes you realize just how good you have it.” Frequenting Secaucus Junction many times throughout her life, seeing all sorts of unique situations and characters on her daily commutes, it was only fitting for Roe to write a song about this ever-present junction.
IB: Hi Roe Knows Best, we are so excited to chat with you today!
RB: Likewise! Thank you so much for having me.
IB: How did your musical journey start, and what was the first show you ever performed at?
RB: Oh man. What a question. Music has always been a part of my life, ever since I was a little kid. There’s a great family home video of me when I was just a baby; My mom’s singing Christmas songs to me, and my mouth is agape in awe and wonder. And honestly, that awe and wonder has never truly left me. Maybe that’s where it started. There were also certainly a lot of great tunes always being played in the house or in the car when I was younger. I have vivid memories of listening to cassettes of Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours and Billy Joel’s River of Dreams, both artists (and albums) that still have a profound impact on me to this day. My musical inclinations were always encouraged and supported by my parents. I began taking Suzuki piano lessons when I was just 5 years old, dabbled in the instrumental music program in elementary school, but always really loved to sing and was deeply involved in the choir program from 7th through 12th grade - I even took a semester or two as an elective when I attended Ramapo College (shoutout Ramapo Chorale)!
But the main arc in terms of how I got into the music I play now all started with Green Day’s American Idiot. I saw the “American Idiot” music video for the first time in 2004, and I became immediately obsessed. Reflecting on it now, I think the reason why I got so into that video, band, and album is that, as a child in the Tri-State area, living through the national moment of 9/11 was incredibly difficult. When I think back on that moment (and the moment after, the world being forever changed), I think “American Idiot” (both the song and the album) appealed to me because it gave voice to my emotions, put words to my rage, and ultimately made me feel less alone in my feelings and experiences. It gave me permission to feel and be upset with the state of the world. I was nearly 14 at the time and had never had that kind of connection with music up to that point. It was a lifeline for me. Around this time, my piano lessons had begun fizzling out and getting less interesting for me. I spent many an hour attempting to learn the bassline to “Longview” on the piano, but it just didn’t hit the same. A few months later, I begged my mom for a guitar and she eventually obliged. Using my ear-training I learned through the Suzuki piano lessons, along with the help of learning how to read tablature on the Internet, I began to learn Green Day’s entire discography, built up my finger callouses by learning power chords, and soon thereafter began writing my own songs on guitar.
As a piano student and choir kid, there were certainly many concerts and recitals I performed at throughout my life, but the first show I ever performed at was likely with my high school band, Vreeland (where I played bass, sang lead vocals, and was the primary songwriter). I believe we were together during my freshman and sophomore years of high school (2005 - 2006, thereabouts). The exact details are fuzzy, but the first show we played may have been a Battle of the Bands at our school (Nutley High School), but it also certainly could have been at the now-defunct Bloomfield Ave Cafe in Montclair, NJ. There was also a birthday party we played for a friend of ours, and we were loud enough that the cops got called. Haha!
IB: On a similar note, would you rather perform for a big crowd like 5,000 people or a small and intimate crowd of 100-200 people, and why?
RB: Ooh, good question. I think I’d pick the intimate crowd of 100-200 people. As a music fan, I’ve always appreciated more intimate gatherings. I think there’s more of a likelihood of authentically connecting with an audience that way, both during and after the show. The energy of a crowd of 5,000 is probably incredible to experience, but it’s just not as personal as 100-200 people.
IB: Who are your musical influences, and what kind of music did you listen to growing up?
RB: Well, you already know about Fleetwood Mac, Billy Joel, and Green Day - Definitely biggies for me beyond the albums I mentioned above. Good Charlotte was another band that really captured me, pre-American Idiot, too. Towards the end of the school year in 6th grade, my elementary school music teacher (shoutout Mrs. Carollo), for some reason, gave us the class time to bring in music from home that we liked. At that time, I really wasn’t much into anything besides Britney Spears, N*SYNC, Backstreet Boys, and whatever other pop music was major at that time, so I didn’t bring anything in. But some of the boys in my class brought in 2 CDs that day that lowkey changed my life: One of them was Sum 41’s All Killer No Filler, the other was Good Charlotte’s self-titled album. That day was the first time I heard “In Too Deep” (Sum 41) and “Little Things” (Good Charlotte), and it changed me. That truly might’ve been my first exposure to pop-punk music. Good Charlotte was also the band who got me interested in writing songs. After that life-changing moment in music class, I eventually went out and bought the [Good Charlotte] album, and I would study that lyric booklet like, for fun. It was like a game for me! And I would study the format of Verse-Chorus-Verse-Chorus Bridge-Chorus and basically use that as a map, guide, and template to write my own songs. Once I got that down, I began to write my own songs, even before I taught myself guitar. It was just all a cappella melodies.
Whereas most of the artists and bands I was into had a pop-punk lean to them, nowadays my musical influences are truly so vast. Here are some of them (in no particular order): Kevin Devine, Megan Thee Stallion, Something Corporate, Jack’s Mannequin, Andrew McMahon, The Early November, Ace Enders, The Front Bottoms, PUP, Tom Petty, Roy Orbison, Fountains of Wayne, Motion City Soundtrack, Paul McCartney, The Beatles, Wings, Elliott Smith, Jawbreaker, Jimmy Eat World, Into It. Over It., Bikini Kill, oso oso, Jenny Owen Youngs, John-Allison Weiss, Weezer… I could go on. There’s so many. I’m such a big fan of so many artists. Haha.
IB: Who was or is your biggest supporter?
RB: My family has always been incredibly supportive from the very beginning, so they probably have the number 1 slot. However, I would be remiss to not also include my friends - Some from my college days, some even as far back as high school, who still come to shows and stay in touch. I would be nothing without their support, and also the support of so many new friends I’ve made in the local New Jersey music scene. Everyone plays a part.
IB: Do you prefer working solo or with another artist, like you did with MAUCH on Weekend at Mauchie’s…Vol 1?
RB: There certainly is a nice rhythm, flow, and satisfying mental exercise to writing songs solo, but man, oh man, was it fun to work with Max Rauch (MAUCH, LKFFCT) on the Weekend at Mauchie’s project. There truly is nothing like collaborating with your friends and coming up with tunes together. As I’ve gotten older, more experienced, and more comfortable and confident in my songwriting, I find myself more and more eager to collaborate with others because it just opens up a whole other world of possibilities. I also think I’ve been writing solo for so long, to co-write with someone else (especially someone whose work you love, admire, and respect) just feels like a real treat. And usually, the songs you write with another person would never have existed had you attempted to write them alone. That’s the beauty of collaboration.
IB: How would you say Weekend at Mauchie’s…Vol 1 differs stylistically from Now Arriving...at Secaucus Junction?
RB: When Max and I wrote Weekend at Mauchie’s, I think we were trying not to be so serious (perhaps with the exception of the last track on the record, “To Be Loved” - which truly came about unintentionally) and just try to manifest whatever was emotionally present for us in the moment. We were also actively recording while we were writing. It was really the first time I had ever done anything like that. And because there was really no expectation on what we were writing and creating, we felt free to do what we wanted and just follow our impulses, which meant penning songs like “Friends with Aliens” and “Shark Attack!!!”, which came out way more poppy, probably than anything either of us had ever written up to that point. Even being goofy on songs like “Ghost Town” was great. Ultimately, there was an uninhibited freedom there that was liberating and so much fun.
On Now Arriving…at Secaucus Junction, the songs there take on more of a serious nature, simply because they are, at the root, autobiographical material and deal with real themes such as love, anxiety, rejection, addiction as escapism, etc. Also, whereas Weekend at Mauchie’s has a more poppy lean, Secaucus Junction, I think, is more “pop-punk” / “pop-rock” focused. The Secaucus songs also make up a collection of tunes that I’d been working on for a long time. They’d been pressure-tested at open mics for the past few years as I continued to perfect and make changes to them until I felt they were airtight. After demoing the songs at home, I then took the stems to Doug Gallo at Retromedia Sound Studios in Red Bank, NJ, and we started building the record (and the final product of what you hear on the album) from there.
IB: How did you pick the name Now Arriving...at Secaucus Junction for your debut album? Does it hold any special meaning?
RB: Good question! Secaucus Junction has always been a common location present throughout my life. I’ve been riding trains into New York City from Essex County, NJ, since I was 15 or 16 years old, and Secaucus Junction (to those uninitiated) is one of the main train transfer points to get from New Jersey to New York Penn Station. Once I had finished writing the song “Secaucus Junction” and knew it was going to be on the album, it just made so much sense to make that the focal point of the record. Since it’s my full-length debut, I liked using “Now Arriving” in the title because it announces myself to the larger NJ music scene, as it were (and satisfies the train theme). They say necessity is the mother of invention, so once I had decided on Now Arriving…at Secaucus Junction as the album title, it just made sense to use Secaucus Junction as a location for album art and press photos, and the like. Being a DIY artist and being the captain of your career or artistic journey, you have to make many decisions, and it frankly can get overwhelming. Personally, I attempt not to overthink anything (it’s an active practice), so when it all just clicked in my brain that the title could work on multiple levels, I didn’t question it and just embraced it and went for it.
I’ll also say that there is another thread at play of trying to identify and establish myself as an artist (whether that’s in the New Jersey space or beyond) and always thinking about what could I do or write about to set myself apart from other artists, but still preserve my authenticity? What can I do or say that will make me unique or stand out? What has no one done before or spoken about before? Well, no one has had an album or song about Secaucus Junction, this location that’s been present throughout my life, this purgatorial waiting room of train delays and hellish commutes, where sometimes late at night you encounter folks from your past you’ve had falling outs with and no longer speak to, yet still feel compelled to do that weird dance of awkward social acknowledgement among strange midnight veils of twisted serendipity (which is what the song “Secaucus Junction” is about”).
IB: How do you typically start writing a song? And how did you write the songs for Now Arriving...at Secaucus Junction?
RB: Great question. I will say that when I started recording the album, I actually intended it to just be an EP. I came to Doug Gallo with 4 songs, “Spent the Summer Alone” had already been recorded and released as a single. But those early recording sessions went so well, I remember saying to Doug, “You know, I think I could give you 4 more songs”. And so we booked some more time together, I brought the next batch in, and voila! The record was born.
With that said, these songs are honestly a collection of my best material at the time of recording. Some are older than others - “Spent the Summer Alone” I originally wrote in 2018 and didn’t revisit and eventually record it until 2023; “Outta Touch!!!”, “Smoke in the Furniture,” and “Secaucus Junction,” I had the beginnings of for a long time, but it took a while to figure out their choruses and structure after the first initial verse or two. The first sentences to “Suffocate” and “NJ > LA” existed in my Notes app for a while before I began to expand on them while recovering from a surgery. But in regard to making this record, I basically took a look at all my material and selected what I thought were my best bits of songwriting (most of which I was already playing live acoustically at the time) and ran with that!
The way I start writing a song is always a little different, but ultimately, I think it comes down to just being present with whatever you’re singing, playing, thinking, or writing. You just have to follow the idea and see where it leads you. And sometimes that means following it as far as you can for a day and then coming back to it tomorrow. It’s important to be gentle with it. I’m always singing little melodies and then recording them into my phone to revisit later. Sometimes I’ll have a thought and jot it down. It can start with a riff or chords, too, sometimes, but mostly it starts with lyrics or melody for me. Sometimes, if I get stuck lyrically, I’ll do a 10-minute freewriting exercise, and usually something will shake loose from that and I can move on to a 2nd verse or a chorus, you know? It’s all about knowing how to troubleshoot and hack your creativity.
IB: What was the first song you wrote for Now Arriving...at Secaucus Junction?
RB: “Spent the Summer Alone”
IB: What did the recording process look like for Now Arriving...at Secaucus Junction?
RB: It was an awesome time, but also filled with a lot of hard work! Doug Gallo and I really flung ourselves into it (which is one of the many reasons why I love working with him). We recorded 8 songs in 10 days (“Spent the Summer Alone” had already been recorded and released). I demoed everything at home and brought the stems, chord sheets, and lyric sheets to Doug. I had also shared the recordings of the demos with him before we met, so he had an idea of what I wanted to record and what it might sound like. The demos were pretty bare bones, no drums or anything. Just guitar, voice, maybe bass, and other little synths or things I was hearing. We’d usually work from 11 AM to 7 PM each day. We kicked off the sessions by Doug tracking drums to the demos, and just building from there.
IB: You have said that Now Arriving...at Secaucus Junction “gives fans and listeners a look into the many songs Roe has been performing solely acoustic for the past year or so, but with 4K clarity and full band arrangements.” What inspired you to make your debut album with a full band arrangement rather than an acoustic arrangement?
RB: While I had been performing the songs acoustically at shows, I really heard them all as full band songs in my mind. I knew that was their final form. Where we’re at with technology these days, it’s very possible for two people to make a full band record in a studio environment like Doug and I did. I knew the end results would be satisfying, and (if I may be so bold) I believe that they are. Acoustic can be great too, but for these songs, I knew making them electric would give them so much more life, energy, and depth, and I was really excited to explore that in the creative process.
IB: What is your favorite song on this record?
RB: Man, it does change from day to day. Right now, at this moment, “Suffocate” has really been hitting for me. I really feel like we nailed the energy of it.
IB: For “Secaucus Junction,” was the intro and outro audio from the station?
RB: Yes, it is! This was something I asked Doug to add in the mixing phase - which I don’t usually do! Usually, the mixing phase means, “Don’t add anything else!”, but I was listening to mixes and thought, “Man, wouldn’t it be cool if we could disperse some real Secaucus Junction audio into this to make it really come alive?” I usually take the bus into New York City for work, but this past February (2025), I commuted a few days via train and recorded train sounds and announcements (what you hear in the song) on my phone. I then would go through the recordings, mark the time codes, and write down what I wanted Doug to pull from the recordings and where I wanted him to put them in the track. He really helped that vision come to life, and I think we really succeeded at really setting the scene for that song.
IB: You use a lot of names in “Smoke in the Furniture.” Are these names of people you know, or just made-up names?
RB: “Smoke in the Furniture” is a funny one because the 1st two verses I subconsciously wrote in a meditation. So I was not in control of what manifested, if that makes sense. It just arrived. Both those verses popped into my brain, words and all, I sang them into my phone as quickly as possible so I wouldn’t forget them, and I (consciously) wrote the rest of the song based on those two verses. They are made-up names, but I’m sure if we dig deep enough, they probably do represent real people, or perhaps a combination of energies of people I met. I also like to believe that “Aimee” in the 3rd verse is the same Aimee in my song “Aimee, I” on my Northbound EP (if I may be so bold to play with my own song lore). Haha.
IB: Television and social media have such a negative effect on our brains, and in “TV Tyranny,” this is made clear throughout the song, especially with the lyrics “it’s only getting worse now.” In what ways do you break out of the constant cycle of being sucked into the news, social media, and other activities that drain and overwhelm you?
RB: It definitely feels difficult to find space sometimes. But honestly, I do try to intersperse activities in my life that do not require screens. So whether that’s taking the dog for a walk or reading a book… I also love playing Dungeons & Dragons with friends. Granted, I do sometimes have an iPad pulled up for that to access my character sheet, but it’s not as intensive or distracting as, say, doom-scrolling. Haha.
IB: If you could tell your younger self anything, what would it be?
RB: Your anxiety doesn’t have to dictate your life. It gets better. Trust the process, be present, keep an open mind, have confidence in your abilities and experiences, and never be afraid to speak your truth.
IB: If you could go back and change something you did within your music career, what would that be, if anything at all?
RB: Nothing! I think everything happens for a reason, and any notions of failure are just opportunities for growth to springboard you into the next thing.
IB: If you could tell an aspiring artist anything, what would it be?
RB: First off - If you’re an artist, you’re not “aspiring.” You are an artist! Second, it’s all about community and consistency - Set aside a little time each day to work on honing your craft. Get to know other creatives in your community and you’ll be surprised at the magic that can happen!
IB: What is one song you wish Roe Knows Best wrote?
RB: “What Beats Within” by Jenny Owen Youngs
IB: What’s next for Roe Knows Best?
RB: I’m looking to play more shows with my newly-assembled full band in 2026, and now that Now Arriving…at Secaucus Junction is out, I can’t wait to start writing new songs for the next release!
IB: Thank you so much for chatting with us!
RB: Thank you so much for having me! I really enjoyed talking about Now Arriving…at Secaucus Junction with you. Readers, if you haven’t listened to it yet, you’re in for a real treat! Find me on Instagram (@roeknowsbest) and let me know what you think! :)
Stream Now Arriving...at Secaucus Junction below!
Linktree | Spotify | Instagram | YouTube | Apple Music | TikTok | Bandcamp | Bluesky | Facebook | Threads
Credits:
Lyrics, Vocals, Rhythm Guitar, Keyboard/Synth & Piano: Roe O’Brien
Lead Guitar, Bass, Drums, and Percussion: Doug Gallo
Production: Roe O’Brien and Doug Gallo
Engineering: Doug Gallo with assistance from Hannah Wrocklage
Mixing and Mastering: Doug Gallo
