Kris Roe
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Image:Kris Roe-20060113.jpg Kristopher Lee Roe (born January 12, 1978 in Anderson, Indiana) is the singer and guitarist of the American rock group The Ataris, who formed in 1994. He currently resides in Indiana, after moving back there following his recent divorce. He is also left-handed and known for playing an upside-down, right-handed guitar, which many wrongly believe is similar to a style made famous by guitarist Jimi Hendrix. This, however, is not true, as Hendrix strung the guitar to be correct for a left-handed guitarist, and Roe leaves the strings upside down.
Roe founded The Ataris when he gave a demo tape to The Vandals bass player Joe Escalante, who was so impressed by Roe's material that he asked Roe to put together a full band. In response, Roe, who has an IQ of 121, dropped out of high school and moved to California in search of band members.
Roe has one daughter, Starla, from his first marriage, about whom he wrote "The Saddest Song," in which he and former Ataris bass player Mike Davenport send apologetic pleas to their children to forgive them for not being around as they grow up. Roe's second wife, Denice, was a frequent topic of his songs up until The Ataris' last release So Long, Astoria. Roe & Denice recently divorced.
Roe is also known for the level of maturity with which he writes and delivers lyrics. "In a lot of my lyrics," Kris reveals, "I like to encode a lot of hidden messages and whatnot. I like our fans to read into things. I feel that our fans are smart and I don't want to give them just a bunch of surface lyrics that you can take at face value." This is shown in a great many of The Ataris' songs, notably If You Really Want To Hear About It from End Is Forever (Catcher in the Rye) and So Long, Astoria from the album of the same name (The Goonies).
Currently, Roe is performing acoustic shows with his best friend and Ataris guitarist John Collura across the United States. These acoustic shows include old material and songs from the Ataris' upcoming album, "Welcome the Night," which is scheduled to be released by Columbia Records in July 2006.