The Roseline’s Colin Halliburton wrestles his demons on Townie

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On “Clean Lines,” a song from the Roseline’s June-released album, Townie, lead singer and guitarist Colin Halliburton describes the moment that he thought he was going to die, sitting in traffic one day, caught between the steely grips of addiction and depression. I’ve swallowed pills for the past six years, I felt so hollow when I mixed them with beers, he sings, his voice smooth and assured. It took my love, my faith, but not my fears.

The rest of Townie‘s 11 songs touch on similar themes. Against a backdrop of warm and spacious Americana, Halliburton lays it all out: the failed relationships, the struggles with mental illness, the drinking. He’s not shy about any of it — on record, at least. In person, it’s somewhat more difficult for him to describe the period in his life that gave him those songs.

Following the release of the Roseline’s 2012 record, Vast as Sky, and a monthlong tour, Halliburton — then 30, and feeling discontented in Lawrence — moved on a whim to New York City. But relocation was not the cure-all he was looking for, and within a month he was back home.

“That may be a new world record,” Halliburton tells me wryly. “I had kind of a complete mental breakdown. After that, I guess I felt defeated. I didn’t really know what I was doing with my life. I just had this sort of crippling existential dread. I was just in a weird age in a college town dealing with mental illness. I’ve dealt with panic attacks since I was 13, and they kind of come and go in waves, but it got really bad for that year after, and that always leads to depression. I was sort of stupidly self-medicating with too much booze. That’s where a lot of the songs came from. A lot of them came out because I felt guilty of how I was dealing with stuff.”

Halliburton pauses, shifting his feet. He speaks quietly, as though he’s unsure how much detail to go into now. The gazes of his bandmates and my note-taking are likely not helping. “I don’t know,” he says, flicking his cigarette. “It’s sort of hard to talk about.”

Besides, he adds, the songs on Townie are two or three years old at this point — a couple of them older. Halliburton, now 33 and living in Kansas City, has since emerged from his dark days.

“It was a combination of therapy, the right drugs, not drinking as much, exercising — you know, all the normal things they tell you to do,” Halliburton says. “They actually work.”

The light is fading outside Lawrence’s SeedCo Studios, where the band — the current incarnation includes drummer Aaron Pando, keyboardist Sam Goodell, guitarist Kris Losure and bassist Heidi Lynne Gluck — usually holds a weekly practice. Tonight, they’ll run through the set for the Roseline’s upcoming album-release show Friday, October 23, at Love Garden Sounds. Playing Townie‘s confessional material doesn’t seem to rattle Halliburton the way discussing it does.

“I’ve been playing these songs for so long that I don’t think about the emotional weight of them anymore,” he says. “It’s more about the execution. I mean, playing some of these songs locally is sort of weird because Lawrence is such a small town, and certain audience members are going to know what I’m talking about or what I’m referencing. You don’t want to offend anyone but you also don’t want to have to self-edit.”

That Halliburton prefers the anonymity — and modest turnout, he admits — of a show outside the area is a large part of why he postponed the album-release shows for four months. Plus, he tells me, practices and shows can be hard to manage. (“It gets hard as you get older to get five adults in the same room for two hours a week,” he says. At this point, a decade into the band’s existence, the only original member of the Roseline is Halliburton himself. Though he has known his current bandmates for years, the process of rebuilding the outfit took time. For what it’s worth, the four people helping him achieve his sound now practically recruited themselves.

“I put out feelers for drummers, and Aaron would hit me up, and I literally thought he was kidding,” Halliburton says. “He’s more of a heavier metal dude, and I was like, ‘Ha ha, I get it, you want to play drums in my stupid folk band. I’m lame.’ He was finally like, ‘Dude, I’m serious.'”

“I’ve always been serious!” Pando says. “I heard the twang and the sadness in it, and I heard the call. When he moved back to town, I was hounding him. I enjoy what the music does. It’s heartfelt stuff. It was a trying time for him, and it’s good to hear these songs now, at this point.”

Townie is the Roseline’s fourth record, and it might be the band’s strongest release yet. The lineup helps — particularly Gluck. A talented singer-songwriter in her own right, she complements Halliburton’s pliable tenor with shimmering harmonies on the majority of Townie‘s tracks. No matter how dark Halliburton gets, his songs feel light and easy, as comfortable as coming home. There’s a good deal of sorrow and misery, but at its core, Townie is about survival: Its struggles are all past tense.

“I’m in a far better space right now,” Halliburton says. I watch as he stamps out the bright-orange flame of his cigarette in the dirt. He smiles. “And I promise a lighter fifth record.”