Dylan Rockoff started his music career opening for Bon Jovi at Madison Square Garden. Where do you go from there? Rockoff, a Northeastern alum, talks about his upcoming third album and how to sustain a music career.
Most musicians don’t start their music career at Madison Square Garden. Most musicians don’t start their careers with a chart-topping single. But Dylan Rockoff hasn’t had a normal career in music.
Rockoff, a Nashville-based singer-songwriter, rocketed to early success in 2017 with a sound that drew inspiration from the likes of John Mayer, Jason Mraz and Ed Sheeran. When Rockoff opened for Bon Jovi in front of 10,000 people at Madison Square Garden –– after winning a Live Nation competition –– he had already seen the first song he ever released, “Feeling Fine,” shoot to No. 51 on the iTunes singer-songwriter charts in one day. He had seen his song chart alongside those of his heroes.
And he was still studying for finals as a finance student at Northeastern University.
With all that early success, where do you go from there? It’s the question Rockoff has been answering ever since, as he charts his own path as an artist through the modern music industry.
“In every way, I’m super, super grateful for the success I had right off the bat because I think that informed my belief in myself and my confidence to know this stuff that I’m creating is really resonating with people,” says Rockoff, who is releasing his third album this month. “That belief and that confidence is something I’ve really held on to because, obviously, in this career there’s a lot of ups and downs. It gave me the courage and the confidence … to move down to Nashville and take it on.”
Since starting his career with a bang, Rockoff has seen fair share of ups and downs.
After graduating from Northeastern in 2018, he moved to Nashville and has been recording and gigging constantly. He’s performed at high-profile festivals like the Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival and legendary venues like Nashville’s Bluebird Cafe.
His 2016 debut album, “These Old Streets,” which he released when he was still a Northeastern student, cracked the top 10 on the iTunes singer-songwriter charts. His second album, “Semicolon & Parenthesis,” which he released in 2020, charted alongside Selena Gomez and Harry Styles, and several of his songs have millions of listens on Spotify.
Most recently, he was one of three finalists in CBS Mornings’ Mixtape Music Competition.
But the COVID-19 pandemic also slowed a lot of the momentum he had going into the next stretch of his career, he says. A tour that would have seen him opening for Travie McCoy was canceled, and he struggled to adapt to an online-only ecosystem.
Like most artists, he hustled and pivoted his way through the roughest parts of the pandemic and came out the other side ready to take his career to the next level.
“I’m very fortunate to have been an artist for so long and I want to take this as far as I can,” Rockoff says. “I want to headline Madison Square Garden. That’s the goal for me. I really, really want to be one of the biggest artists in the world. Who doesn’t?”
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Rockoff has been playing music since he picked up a guitar at 14. He ended up taking classes at the Uptown Music Collective in his hometown, Williamsport, Pennsylvania, where he not only honed his craft as a musician but developed a wide-ranging taste in music that stretches from Motown to classic rock.
But it wasn’t until he arrived at Northeastern in 2013 that he found his voice as an artist. Inspired by modern singer-songwriters like Mayer, Mraz and Sheeran, Rockoff started writing and recording his own music, often using a technique called live looping that lets a musician play, record and layer music in real time.
By the time he graduated in 2018, Rockoff was spending more and more time in the studio and preparing for his move to Nashville. For him, the move represented a new kind of dedication to making music not just a side gig but a career.
I’m very fortunate to have been an artist for so long and I want to take this as far as I can.Dylan Rockoff, a Nashville-based singer-songwriter
I’m very fortunate to have been an artist for so long and I want to take this as far as I can.
He still has a part-time job at one of his Northeastern co-op sites, Boston-based tax and accounting firm Paul McCoy Family Office Services, but he fits his work in between tour stops and recording sessions.
Coming out of Northeastern with a business degree certainly helped him adjust to the demands of the modern music industry, which involves just as much social media savvy and self-starting business acumen as it does artistry.
“Being the CEO of my business and my LLC, I have to think about things as a business all the time, and my experience at Northeastern, through the co-op program and my part-time job in tax and accounting, has really informed my ability to be able to run things as a business,” Rockoff says.
“Now [the industry is] more about the brand first and the music second,” he adds. “I still want my music to come first. … But it is something you have to think about and stay on top of your brand because you can make the greatest album ever, you can make the greatest EP ever, but if you don’t have a way to hook people and get them interested, then it’s not going to reach as many people.”
As he gears up for the release of his third album, “Evergreen,” on Sept. 20, and an accompanying tour, Rockoff says it feels he’s just now hitting his stride creatively and professionally. “Evergreen” is, in many ways, the culmination of his sound, combining the soundtrack of his youth –– indie rock –– with his own pop singer-songwriter sensibilities.
“Ever since I picked up a guitar when I was 14 years old, it all led me to this point,” Rockoff says. “This project in particular is closest to feeling like this is me and this is what I sound like and this is what I want the combination of all these different influences to be.”
This album is more personal, in more ways than one. Rockoff, along with his producer, Micah Tawlks, play most of the instruments on the album, and the lyrics dive deep into the anxieties and nostalgia that comes with Rockoff edging toward his 30s.
“There’s a lot of desperation in there and there’s a lot of nostalgia in there,” Rockoff says. “It’s trying to find a way to hold onto my youth and the things of my youth and that kind of nostalgia while also being able to move forward and be excited about the future.”
The future is very much on Rockoff’s mind –– what he wants to achieve, what new doors he wants to open –– but he says he’s never lost sight of what made him start writing music in the first place: connection.
“I really, really want my music to resonate with people and I want it to make a difference in their lives,” Rockoff says. “I want them to feel that when they’re coming to one of my shows, they’re part of a community.”