Bayonne

Austin, music theory, and a name change

Roger Sellers is from Austin, Texas, and studied music theory at Texas State University, where the formal training ran against what he actually wanted to make. He put out four albums under his own name between 2010 and 2014 — a self-titled record in 2010, Moments on Pau Wau Records in 2011, 8 Songs issued as weekly free downloads through to 31 December 2012, and Primitives on Punctum Records in 2014 — in a mode AllMusic filed as electro-acoustic avant-folk.

The rebrand to Bayonne came in 2016, partly to put distance between the new work and the folk material. Primitives was reissued that year through Mom + Pop in the United States and City Slang in Europe, and it functioned as a debut for most listeners. PopMatters' Magdalen Jenne gave it 8 out of 10 and called it a phenomenally crafted first statement. The same year, the track Appeals appeared on the FIFA 17 soundtrack, which did more for the name than any amount of touring at that stage.

The method was fixed early and has barely changed: rather than a band or a laptop set, Sellers records parts into a looper live — percussion, keys, guitar — stacks them until the instrumental exists, then sings over the top. NPR's Robin Hilton once described it as making live looping look like an endurance sport, which is close to literal.

The records that built the catalogue

The I Know EP followed on Mom + Pop in 2018, and Drastic Measures arrived in 2019 on the same label. That record reached the top ten of Billboard's US Dance/Electronic Album Sales chart and remains the source of several of the songs that get played most often live.

Sellers signed to Nettwerk in 2022 and released Temporary Time in 2023, a more openly pop-facing record. He revisited it in 2024 as Temporary Time (Orchestrated), reworked with composer Nathaniel Earl, and in 2025 cleared out the archive with Early Recordings (2006–2012), a compilation covering the years before the Bayonne name existed.

Filters, and the grief behind it

Temporary Time was shaped by Sellers' father's cancer diagnosis in 2019 and his death in 2022. Filters, released by Nettwerk on 4 September 2026, picks that thread up on the other side of it. Sellers has described the album as a continuation of Temporary Time but carrying more positive energy, concerned with acceptance rather than the loss itself, and has explained the title as being about finding ways to get through rough times and filtering out some of the negative things in life.

Ten tracks, just under forty minutes: Unexpected, Good Enough, Remedies, Gamut, Multiphase, Oxygen, Forget, Alone For Now, January and Everything's Alright. The dominant pairing across the record is a resonating piano set against vibraphone, with synthesisers, harp, pedal steel and field recordings underneath, and Matt Toman on drums throughout. Rain turns up repeatedly, as subject and as texture. The video for Good Enough was directed by RUFFMERCY, who had previously made the clip for Drastic Measures.

Reviews have been warm with a consistent reservation. PopMatters' Jeremy McDonagh scored it 8 out of 10 and called it an undeniably pleasing record, often an astonishingly detailed one, while noting that its control is so complete he occasionally wanted one of its elements to refuse to cooperate — the best moments, on his reading, are where the polish cracks into digital distortion or overdrive. Writing for Melodic Magazine, Ezra Kendrick heard a return to the ambient and experimental synth territory that Temporary Time had moved away from, praised the production, and flagged the first half as repetitive, with too many tracks bookended the same way by acoustic instruments before the second half opens out.

Autumn 2026: where the project actually stands

2026 is the tenth year of the Bayonne name, and the touring behind Filters is the heaviest run the project has done. The album cycle opened in Europe with a 2 September date at Paradiso in Amsterdam, followed by UK and EU shows, before the North American leg began on 27 September at Beer City Music Hall in Oklahoma City.

From there the route ran east and south through October — Indianapolis, Ferndale, Lakewood, Buffalo, Somerville, Philadelphia on 8 October, Le Poisson Rouge in Manhattan on 9 October, Union Stage in Washington on 10 October, then Richmond, Durham, Asheville, Atlanta, the Blue Room at Third Man Records in Nashville on 17 October, New Orleans, Dallas, and a home-town outdoor show at the Mohawk in Austin on 24 October. The western half picks up on 10 November at Meow Wolf in Santa Fe and runs through Denver, Boise, Seattle, Portland, Eugene, San Francisco and the Lodge Room in Los Angeles before finishing on 24 November at Valley Bar in Phoenix.

Demand is outrunning the room sizes in places: the all-ages Washington show on 10 October sold out ahead of the date. Sellers has said a Mexico City show is set for December 2026 and that further 2027 dates are being put together.

What the show is now

The format has loosened. For years Bayonne was a solo act with a looper; now a drummer plays alongside him, which frees him to sing more and spend less of the set hunched over the pedals, though he still generates almost everything else in real time in front of the audience. The Filters run also carries new lighting production, the first time the project has toured with anything substantial in that department.

The crowd response has changed with it. Sellers has noted that it is new for him to have people dancing at his shows, and that he welcomes it — a reasonable reaction to a set that now leans on Good Enough, Multiphase and Gamut alongside the older, more hypnotic material.

Sets run to roughly thirteen songs. A representative night on this tour opens with Unexpected and Good Enough, works through Perfect, I Know, Multiphase, Gamut, Oxygen and Solo, then pulls in the back catalogue with Appeals, Fallss, January and Abilia, with Right Thing, Words and Drastic Measures in rotation. Setlist.fm's running tally has Appeals as the most-performed song in the project's history at 37 documented outings, ahead of Drastic Measures on 30, Fallss on 25, and Right Thing and Sincere on 24 each.