Inside ‘Keep On Rising’: Mrs. Henry’s All-In Rock Opera Gamble
Mrs. Henry don’t ease you into ‘Keep On Rising.’ It just drops you in the middle of it. Thirty-eight songs, three acts, one overstuffed rock opera about a character who wants everything and keeps pushing anyway. Fame, sex, meaning, whatever’s next. It’s a lot, and they know it.
The band pull from everywhere. Glam, funk, sludge, gospel, piano ballads. It shouldn’t hang together, but it mostly does because they treat it like a single story instead of a playlist. “The sonic landscape is the soundtrack to the story,” guitarist Daniel Cervantes says. That’s the logic. Just momentum.
The main character, their “twenty-first century rising star,” isn’t exactly a hero. More like a mirror. Cervantes shrugs off the idea that it’s fictional. “You have to do whatever you have to do to do what it is you do. Everything and anything.” That line lands harder than most of the theatrics. The album keeps circling that idea without resolving it. Wanting everything is the engine, but also the problem.
Structurally, it leans on the usual rock opera tricks. Recurring themes, shifting perspectives, a loose kind of narrative glue. You can hear echoes of ‘Tommy’ or ‘The Wall,’ but they’re not trying to recreate those records. Cervantes calls it a “road map,” which feels right. It gives them somewhere to go without boxing them in.
They also made it harder on themselves by recording the whole thing to tape. “That brought its limitations, but that is exactly how we wanted it,” Cervantes says.
Somewhere late in the process, it clicked. Cervantes talks about an “aha!” moment where a few songs finally pulled everything together. One of them, ‘A Kid at Heart,’ ended up reshaping the whole arc. Suddenly the story needed a beginning, not just a climb.
For all the excess, the album works best when it keeps things simple. ‘We Are a Rock N Roll Band’ is blunt to the point of absurdity, a chant more than a song, but that’s the idea. Elsewhere, voices stack up around a single mic, drifting in and out like a Greek chorus, sometimes backing the protagonist, sometimes calling him out. Nothing sits still for long, which helps.
Cervantes keeps coming back to one word: “Hope.” It feels almost out of place in a record this wired on appetite and excess, but it’s there, buried under all the noise. Not the soft kind, either. More like something you hang onto when everything else starts slipping. ‘Keep On Rising’ doesn’t sell the dream so much as circle it, poke at it, and ask what’s left once you get there.
“It is about nothing but about everything.”
‘Keep on Rising’ is packed with different styles, from glam metal to funk to something more psychedelic. How did you make sure all these different sounds still felt like part of the same story? Was it more about the emotion of the songs or the story you wanted to tell?
Daniel Cervantes: The sonic landscape is the soundtrack to the story, all through the lens of Mrs. Henry, the collective consciousness of a rock ’n’ roll band that grew up in the ’90s. We are one of the few generations that experienced the analog-to-digital revolution, and with it came the onslaught of every kind of music you can imagine. There is a through-line, of course, since it is a rock opera and not a rap opera, but the goal was to showcase that influence and inspiration across the board. Leave no stone unturned on this run around the sun.
The protagonist in ‘Keep on Rising’ is this figure who’s willing to do anything for fame and glory. How much of this character reflects your own experiences in the music business, and what kind of statement do you want to make about the pursuit of fame?
I think you can ask any artist in pursuit of their dreams this question, and you’ll get the same answer: you have to do whatever you have to do to do what it is you do. Everything and anything. The goal is to do that without compromising your artistic integrity. There will always be a compromise in some way, shape, or form, but you have to give it all. You have to want it all. It is a deal with the devil… so to speak.
It’s clear that rock operas like ‘Tommy’ and ‘The Wall’ had a big influence on this project. What parts of those records inspired you most, and how did you try to put a modern spin on the idea of a rock opera?
The parts of those records that had an influence on us would be the structure and general road map of how to get from point A to point B. How to tell a story, our story, and give it handles for others to grab on to and give it enough density to float. The Who, Pink Floyd, Genesis, I like to think that they looked at it the same way that we did: let’s make something bigger than ourselves, that others, including us, can look back on as a milestone or marker and call it a mountain. I always loved the theme and development of ideas, the echoing of parts that happens throughout rock operas, and we absolutely borrowed from those books.
We gave it our modern spin, as a rock band, given the context of who we are as a rock band. This isn’t a rock opera by Nine Inch Nails or The Weeknd, it is a rock opera by Mrs. Henry, so it is as modern as it will get given our approach. We recorded this entire album on a 24-track tape machine, and all to tape, so that brought its limitations, but that is exactly how we wanted it to be made and to sound.
The story in ‘Keep on Rising’ is pretty intense, filled with all kinds of highs and lows. How did you go about writing this narrative? Was there a turning point in the process when the whole story really came together for you?
It is intense. Life is, isn’t it? The narrative is speaking from the collective whole of the group, and at a certain point, the narrative became the reality, a sort of Don Quixote concept of mirroring our own journey. It is about nothing but about everything. It is a rock opera about a rock opera, in a nutshell. There was a certain point, I’d say three-quarters of the way into the completion of the project, where everything came into focus—an “aha!” moment—and we recorded four to five songs that glued the puzzle together. The song ‘A Kid at Heart’ is one of those songs that came together at the very end, realizing we needed a beginning. There had to be a virgin at some point.
“I think rock ’n’ roll by nature should be larger than life.”
This album has the feel of a big, dramatic rock opera, but there’s still a lot of personal moments in the music. How did you strike a balance between making something that feels larger-than-life and keeping it grounded in real emotions?
I think rock ’n’ roll by nature should be larger than life. The people playing it are humans with emotions, but they look like superheroes on stage or on the screen. That is the balance.
Tracks like ‘We Are a Rock N Roll Band’ and ‘Better Make It Count’ feel like they’re tapping into the spirit of some of the biggest rock moments. Can you talk about how these songs came together and how they fit into the bigger story you’re telling? Did any song surprise you in how it turned out?
Everything was written with an intent and a place in the story, for narrative or development of character. Both those songs are manifestos, and throughout the rock opera there is a specific use of the classic Greek tragedy device known as the “chorus.” The chorus would normally be sung with all of us around a single microphone, and it takes on a third-person narrative. Sometimes the chorus is the actual chorus of the song, and sometimes it is a voice of reason or an almighty voice counter to the protagonist. The way we recorded it—the technique and the timbre—all play into the story.
The story’s about a character who’s chasing after everything: fame, love, freedom. Do you think this mirrors the kind of rock-and-roll lifestyle we still see today, or has the idea of the “rock star” changed over the years?
I think it does. Some might pretend it doesn’t, or there is a glamorized rock star novelty—everybody is a rock star, your neighbor plays in a band. Even the good guys are bad in some way to somebody. They are all humans at the end of the day; there are no immortals in this game. Ask Josh Homme or Dave Grohl if they need saving.
Alan Forbes did the artwork for the album, and his illustrations are full of detail and symbolism. How did you work with him to bring the visual side of this story to life? What do you think his artwork adds to the experience of the album?
Alan is one of the most artistic artists I’ve ever known. He didn’t need to do this work, he didn’t have to take this on, but he did it to do it because it called to him. In his words, he listened to the album and saw himself. He heard his story. When he told me that, I knew Alan was the right guy to bring this to life. There is a lot of symbolism in the artwork, in the illustrations, and in the design of the word art itself. There wasn’t much back and forth when it came to the illustrations; Alan drew what came to him in a visionary sense, and I only chimed in if I felt like we needed more to see. When Alan puts pen to paper, it is for good. I’ve had the opportunity to see him work, and he takes his time to think about what is there, and then meticulously goes at it. The works are almost like flash sheets for tattoos.
It feels like ‘Keep on Rising’ pulls from everything—old-school rock, funk, punk, and more. How do you approach mixing all these influences? Is it more about pushing your creative limits, or do you see it as a way to keep things fresh and exciting?
We saw it as a way to keep things interesting, but honestly it is just the music that comes from our hearts. There are bursts of many genres, and all of them are as true to us and as authentic to us as the next. You can’t fake punk rock energy or a funk feel. It is or it isn’t. The spectrum of styles was a juggle for our mixing and mastering engineer—how do you keep all this chaos contained under one roof? I think Stephen Kaye and Joe Bozzi did an amazing job at that and at keeping the album sounding like a cohesive record from metal to country.
You recorded ‘Keep on Rising’ during 2020, a time of a lot of uncertainty. How did that time influence the music? Did the lockdowns and isolation make you feel more pressure to create something big, or did it let you focus in on your ideas more clearly?
The timing was the spark. There has never been a time like it since, and hopefully there won’t be. We didn’t choose to be locked down and in a global pandemic, but the lockdown and global pandemic we lived in created the work of art. The opening song of the album, ‘A Time Like This,’ is the first backdrop of the story and was written as a sort of state of the union. Riots, death, virus, war, chaos, and then here we are—a rock ’n’ roll band trying to make sense of it all.
The only reason we had a year door-to-door to make this record was because of the timing, and there will likely never be another time like it to do so. We never thought it could (or would) exist, but then there we were: no tour, no jobs, nothing but government money and the happenstance of living in the part of the universe where three world-class, all-analog recording studios existed, along with three engineers crazy enough to man the helm.
Rock operas are a huge undertaking. Did you ever feel like it was too much to handle, or was there a point when you knew you were all-in with this project and had to see it through?
A little bit of both. Once we started, we had to finish it. The amount of work involved was daunting—write one great song, let alone put them all together into a cohesive narrative and make it sing. At a certain point, the clock was ticking, the world was opening up, and we needed to finish this album or it could go on and on and on. We set what seemed like an arbitrary date, June 1st, 2021, to call it a year in the making of this album. Most of the weight came down on my shoulders to finish the lyrics, finish the story, and see this thing through. Be careful what you wish for; I started writing a rock opera, and so I had to finish writing a rock opera, and so I did it.
The record talks a lot about desire and ambition—things everyone can relate to in some way. What do you want listeners to take away from this record? Is there something specific you’re hoping they think about after they’ve heard it?
Hope. Hope is the central figure, character, and the word. A constant flame throughout. That is the takeaway. Hope.
The band has this amazing ability to switch between epic, anthemic moments and quieter, more intimate songs. How do you decide when to go big and when to pull back? Does it come naturally, or do you work through it as the story develops?
The dynamics of the album came naturally, organically. The group, as a live band, had always been known to have whisper-to-a-scream dynamics, and we got to play around a lot with that on the rock opera. From a pin-drop quiet to explosive. The dynamics help give to the story. It would be a boring road if it was a flat one-lane highway with nothing to see; you gotta have switchbacks and pitfalls and rocky hills along with soaring eagles and hellfire demons chasing you.
You’ve said the protagonist could be anyone from Jagger to Bowie to Prince. Given how much rock-and-roll culture has shifted, do you think the idea of the rock star is still as important today, or do you see that role evolving into something new?
I think it is pretty much the same—those are just names as much as Lady Gaga or the gal from Wet Leg (sorry, I don’t know it off the top of my head and I’m on a plane), Cardi B, or Billie Eilish. They are heroes or archetypes and bigger-than-life personalities. Mystery and wonder are what create the stars as much as edge and stage personas. Guitars and platforms, or thongs and baggy pants.
If ‘Keep on Rising’ were to be turned into a stage show or a film, what would it look like? What kind of visuals and atmosphere would you want to see in order to match the energy of the music?
I’d love to see Keep On Rising turned into both—perhaps a film and then a stage show. I love the way Guillermo del Toro brings a fairytale to life, or one of the many incredible directors with A24 films. The album itself is so over the top it would need someone who is willing to go all out, not worrying about offending anybody or holding back. I think you’d have to be willing to take the veil off sex, drugs, and rock ’n’ roll, and de-glamorize the reality. Don’t go Disney on it.
Make it hurt. Make it cry. Go for goosebumps and raw emotion, and you’ll get the rock opera.
What’s next for you? What about future gigs?
Next is this: Keep On Rising. Continue to show the world what this album is, what it gives, and what it can do. We want people to hear these songs, hear the words, hear the anthems, and experience the story. To 2025, to 2026, to 2027, to beyond.
Tell us in detail about the Limited Edition Rainbow-Wrapped Box Set…what can fans expect from it?
The box set is the first definitive work for this album. It is the visual to the auditory experience and the height of the project. For those truly looking to understand and experience Keep On Rising, the box set is the only way to go!
Klemen Breznikar
Headline photo: Mrs. Henry (credit: Christopher Edmonstone)
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