Steve Roggenbuck
by Dillon Geshel
For the first hour and a half my nerves sat edgy like a rock face ready to crumble. The brief pauses between songs on Justin Bieber’s new album, Believe, or the sudden end to a raging Skrillex song always brought on an unmatched silence, ending with me looking in the rear view and catching Bryan’s eye, both of us looking away quickly before our nervous smirks turned into flushed smiles — an unavoidable gateway to giggles. It was only that morning that we drove the six hours from Houghton to Milwaukee, all of us not quite ready to believe that soon we’d meet Steve and bring him home with us. I was nervous.
We picked him up him at the Amtrak station, running across the street to meet him, embracing in a group hug. We’d all followed his work for the last year or so online, and I never really thought we’d meet him in person. But here we we’re, six months into Steve’s traveling, and he was finally able to make it to upper Michigan. We talked a lot about making a complete itinerary of events for his visit, of all the cool shit we wanted to show him around here. Our own procrastination got in the way of that, and we never really put anything together at all. But we didn’t need it.
Steve Roggenbuck is probably the hardest working person I’ve ever met. When he decided he wanted to start traveling, to meet all his online friends and create a community in and outside the realms of the internet, he went for it. He sold nearly all his possessions and hit the road with the intention of creating culture and making people happy. Most days when I’d come home from work, he’d be nestled into the couch engaged with internet things. And when he’d opt out of beach days or wedding receptions to keep plugging away, I’d always return to find him still busied in the glow of his macbook. His dedication alone was inspiring to me. Steve decided what he wanted to do and made the leap. His intense dedication to his fans and community coupled with his intent to continue to create have helped provide him with a space to be heard, and one that he overwhelmingly deserves.
If this is your first time hearing about Steve Roggenbuck you’ve got some catching up to do. But no worries, his work as a poet, video blogger, and all around contributor to the betterment of humanity is incredibly accessible. It’s accessible not only is the sense that there is loads of it out there (videos, macros, books in print and digital), but its appeal stems from the premise that it’s fun and engaging.
I remember when we first got back to Houghton. We we’re just outside of town, closing in on the Portage canal from the east as we came upon Michigan Technological University, and the Justin Bieber album was winding down. It was almost done playing through for what must have been the fifth time on the trip. The last song on the album, Believe, was just starting to play. Through the wind chimy, subtle chants of believe by Justin, and the snapping fingers somewhere behind it all, the song opens with the lines: I don’t know how I got here. I knew it wouldn’t be easy. And under his breath, grinning across from me, Steve echoes his hero with an assuring “666“.
Nearly every week he puts out a new video, usually consisting of himself and the friends he’s met along the way. A lot of this video was filmed when we all hung out in Houghton, Michigan, which, lucky for us, happened to be on the fourth of July weekend. Dear God.
Steve’s 6th episode of the Illuminati Power Hour, an hour long web-series where he updates his friends and fans on writerly updates, his new dance moves, and other rambunctious acts, was broadcast from Houghton with a few of us present. There was a lot of mountain dew and dancing. There should always be a lot of mountain dew and dancing. Steven Michael filmed some of the broadcast, and what follows is some of our selected clips from episode 6.