Having his name in lights, being front and center on the stage or on screen was never part of Role Model‘s plan. Mostly because, “I don’t like anything planned in a show,” he admits.
That might seem a bit stressful for someone who’s juggling a new album, a global tour and his upcoming acting debut in Lena Dunham‘s Good Sex. But the 29-year-old artist, whose real name is Tucker Harrington Pillsbury, works better just rolling with the punches.
“People who have been to my shows know this is not a perfect show and there’s nothing planned and there’s nothing perfect about it,” he confesses while chatting with The Hollywood Reporter over Zoom from his Los Angeles home, days before Chuck On Tour kicked off last month. “I think if there had to be all these planned bits and moments, then I would be nervous because I’m not good at that.”
It seems Role Model’s always been this way, even going back to his college days. While he initially went to Point Park University in Pittsburgh to study film, he didn’t anticipate what would happen next.
“While I was in film school, I stumbled across kids that were recording themselves, which I had never seen — just having a mic and Logic in their dorm rooms,” he recalls. “They were like, ‘You should just write a song and just try it.’ And I did and I fell in love with it.”
It wasn’t until the first song that he released under the moniker Role Model, “Cocaine Babe,” caught wind on SoundCloud in 2017 that he thought, “Oh, maybe this could be a thing.” He released his debut EP, Arizona in the Summer, that same year, which later caught Mac Miller’s attention. The late rapper helped turn his hobby into a full-fledged music career, leading him to later sign with Interscope Records.
Fast forward nearly a decade, several viral hits (“Blind” and “Hello!,” specifically), three EPs and two albums later, Role Model released his third studio album, Chuck Timely & the Hourglass, in August.
The concept was several years in the making, as he had been wanting to work on a secret side project and release music under a group called Chuck Timely and the Hourglass Band without telling his label. “That never happened,” Role Model says. “And then I was like, ‘Wait, this is a great name for an album.'”
While the singer never got to fully adopt the alias Chuck, that didn’t stop him and his producing team from channeling him throughout the creative process. “Every single day in the studio for months, all we would do was talk about Chuck and make up stories,” he tells THR. “It was a thing to represent what I was talking about on the album and also how we were producing it, but also it was just a fun thing to talk about. We were referencing a made-up human being in the studio of like, ‘Oh, that’s such a Chuck move or that’s such a Chuck guitar tone.’ And it made it fun.”
Below, Role Model opens up about how he approached his third album differently, unique ways he sparks his creativity, preparing for his upcoming acting debut, his biggest pet peeves and more.
Talk to me about how you approached Chuck Timely & The Hourglass differently from your past two albums. Did you experiment with any new sounds or genres?
[My second album] Kansas Anymore did well for me, and it was cool. It was very inspiring to see young people connecting with music that’s inspired by Tom Petty or Neil Young and the real GOATs of Americana. So I had real clarity going into this album of like, ‘OK, this is cool. Now how can we elevate it?’
Americana is such a broad thing. It’s just this palette that I loved of live music. And there were little pockets along the way in the ’70s and stuff with yacht rock, and I was obsessed with the way they played the keys in yacht rock music. So I wanted to take that little bit and apply it and also bring in some of these country guitar tones and the Dire Straits plucking stuff to give it this almost danceability and bounce.
Do you feel like each album is an opportunity to rebrand yourself, especially since you’ve started leaning into more rootsy-folk sounds with your recent music?
I suppose it is a rebrand in a way. I guess that’s what you’re supposed to do to make it feel exciting for people. And it’s like, oh my God, this is a new era and all these things. I lost the cowboy boots and I lost the hat, and now it’s just sunglasses and this weird pathetic drunk guy character. It’s exciting for me to start new. I think Kansas Anymore was a massive rebrand sonically and everything. This [album] was a little bit less. It was more just image and stuff.
Do you have any unique or unusual methods to spark your creativity when writing and creating music?
Something that helped me a lot this time around, which I had never done, was that before even making the songs, I spent a couple of months curating a very specific playlist for some of those things I was talking about earlier with the keys from yacht rock. And then a mood board for everything, for music videos, for outfits and the sunglasses. I had a bunch of pictures of Paul Newman for the sunglasses and style and album cover and screenshots of the photographers that I wanted to maybe involve. All that stuff really helps create the world before even producing the album, which was cool.
When you write and release new music, how does your relationship or perspective change on your old music? Do you find yourself looking at it differently?
It’s different now because I love Kansas Anymore. And I’m going to play those songs forever. I love them. Everything between my first EP, called Arizona in the Summer, which is just something I made by myself in a closet, and then Kansas Anymore, I’m never going to play again. I don’t identify with that (Laughs). Whoever made those songs, I don’t identify with. And I’m pretty public about that. I think people have given up the fight of trying to hear those songs. But as far as Kansas Anymore goes, I’m lucky that I still want to play those songs, and I think I always will.
When it comes to performing, you created such a viral moment on your last tour when you would bring a celebrity or fan onstage as your Sally for your song “Sally, When the Wine Runs Out.” Did you ever expect that to become such a phenomenon?
The Sally bit was not planned at all. That was such a happy accident. The first time we did it, we were three shows into the North American tour, and Jake Shane happened to be in Dallas, and I was like, “Hey, would you want to come out for a song?” And there was some other song that I wanted him to come out for, and then he was like, “Well, what about ‘Sally?'” And I was like, “Sure, you can come out for ‘Sally.'” And he did, and people loved it. And then we were like, “Well, maybe we should just do this every night with a fan.” And so that was just truly an accident. That taught me that you can’t really plan these things. These things happen if it’s meant to be, and they don’t if it’s not.
When it comes to social media, you seem to have a pretty playful relationship with it and the TikToks you make. Are you pretty open to anything or is your team like having to convince you to make some of these?
The extent of them making me do something is like, “Hey, you need to just post something.” As far as what I’m putting on the internet usually is coming from my brain, unfortunately, but if I had it my way, I wouldn’t be posting at all. I don’t love it (Laughs).
Turning to your acting debut, how excited were you to join Lena Dunham’s Good Sex, especially since you initially went to college to study film?
It was cool. I mean, it’s weird. I went to school to be on the other side of the camera, so it’s interesting. I’m really excited. The way that that opportunity came to me was really once in a lifetime, and I’m very grateful that Lena reached out and saw me for that part. I can’t think of a better director and actress to work with for the first time. The first day was really, really nerve-wracking for me, but Lena instantly made me comfortable. Natalie [Portman] instantly made me comfortable. They both held my hands through it the whole time and walked me through it. And everyone on that set were people that Lena’s either been friends with or worked with on Girls or past projects, so it was truly a family that was already there and then just adopted me.
As fans learn more about you, what’s something people would be shocked to know about you?
I think they’d be shocked at how upkept and clean my home is.
What’s something you absolutely cannot live without?
An iced Americano.
What are your biggest pet peeves?
When people talk over you… Oh, I have so many. People pretending to be angry about something on the internet, people pretending to care about something that they don’t actually care about. I feel like I have a list of thousands in my head and I can’t find the list right now. I guess also bad drivers. The one gene I got from my dad is a little bit of road rage. I’m that guy who’s just like, “What the fuck are you doing?”
If you had to describe what makes Role Model, Role Model, what would you say?
The way I move my hips on stage.