Aviv Roth

“A witty, soulful songwriter and performer who really knows his way around the frets”

Fresh on the New York music scene, Aviv is not your standard singer-songwriter. He likes “songs that are unusual, musically interesting or really, really funky.” The growing number of people who’ve had the experience of hearing him play tend to say things like, “smooth”, “soulful”, “dark, with that off-beat sense of humor” to describe him. Usually they say, “a lot more than you’d expect out of one guy with a guitar”.

Aviv (that's "uh-VEEV", like "Tel Aviv") has fronted rock bands in the past. He has succeeded (where many have not) in compressing that all guns blazing kind of band energy into a solo torpedo. Sometimes crooning, sometimes grinding, but always entertaining – the voice is big, in the deep way, not the loud way; the guitar work is master quality but never showoff. He interweaves his envelope-pushing originals with GenX nostalgia favorites reworked through what he’s learned in the years between.

Whether it’s with corner-of-the-eye social commentary in songs like “Managed Care is Evil” or the heartbreaking “Used Cars”, tales of love gone right like “You’re Home” or all the way wrong like “Whiskey”, to straight-up rock n’ roll with “Get Off Your Ass” and “Freezing”, Aviv’s songs deliver funny, thoughtful stories with complex melodies that never forget where the beat lives.

Aviv lives in Brooklyn with wife Piper, their three cats, and his four guitars. Born and raised in New York City, he got out of town to do the College thing, spent a couple years as a Microserf in Seattle, moved on to Cambridge, Massachusetts, from there to Takoma Park, Maryland, before finding his way back to the Big Apple. Like many of us, Aviv moved down the block the long way around.