ROSTAM TUE, 23 JUN 2026 at 08:00PM EDT Ages: All Ages Doors Open: 07:00PM OnSale: Fri, 13 Mar 2026 at 10:00AM EDT Announcement: Tue, 10 Mar 2026 at 12:00PM EDT Rostam Batmanglij was born on a foggy day at the end of November, 1983, in the nation’s capital, Washington D.C. In 1979, his parents, newly married, fled Iran separately—travelling apart for security reasons—they reunited in southern France, where they claimed refugee status. His mother was pregnant with his older brother Zal at the time. Less than four years later, they left France for the United States. Rostam’s mother was once again pregnant— this time, with him. “I was born in the United States, sort of just barely,” Rostam says. “It's something I think about. I could run for President, the rest of my family wouldn’t be able to. Growing up in D.C., you are saturated in the political.” “I was often asked as a kid, ‘Do your parents work in politics?’ What they chose to do professionally has a purpose to it, but they don’t work in government.” Rostam continues, “My parents founded a publishing company called Mage Publishers in 1985. The company’s mission statement was ‘Bridging East and West’. The early eighties were a complicated time to be Iranian-American. The only things Americans learned about Iran were connected to Islamic Fundamentalism,” he says. "My parents wanted to cut against the grain of that perception and highlight the depth of Persian culture. Persian poetry, mythology, philosophy, cooking, and music go back thousands of years. My parents felt like Americans had little-to-no sense of Iran’s cultural heritage.” In this duality, lies the crux of Rostam's third solo album, American Stories. “At some point in making this record I realized the album I wanted to make was one that reflected my identity as both Iranian and American,” says Rostam. “Pushing the most Iranian elements right up against the most American ones brought me a certain kind of joy. The first time I put microtonal saz melodies over Western guitar chords, I was thrown off by the way the two rubbed together. But the more I listened the more I became drawn to that rub. I became addicted to it.” “My primary collaborator on the Persian elements of this album was Amir Yaghmai, who is a member of The Voidz with Julian Casablancas. Both of us grew up in America learning and teaching ourselves rock music. But whereas the last thing I studied academically was classical music at Columbia, Amir’s final academic pursuit was studying Classical Persian Music at CalArts. What I know about Persian music is self-taught. It cuts deep for me but I could hear the Persian elements going even further with Amir. The microtonal elements of Persian music exist in the spaces between the black and white keys on a piano, bringing to life these melodies requires instruments and knowledge that are rare in America.”
The album quilts together elements of Americana and Persian music, at the same time the lyrics interweave his own experiences as an American.
“There’s a lyric on the album, ‘My father carries the name of a prophet, but Dad was no believer.’ That’s all true” he says. “Early in the process of making this album I thought a lot about how important storytelling was to me as a songwriter. At one point, I thought a concept for the album could be that every song would be a story-song. By the end I felt like I had abandoned that concept, but looking back on the lyrics, the songs do tell stories. And the stories on this album are true stories; ‘The Weight’ takes place on college campuses in America in the spring of 2025. ‘Forgive is to Know’ is a song about real events and my experience processing them. It’s also a song about songwriting.
“Hardy,” a duet that reunites Rostam with Clairo after producing her debut album Immunity, is about making sense of the end of a relationship, and thinking about how we all have to contend with an uncertain future as a human race. Rostam adds, "Perhaps the narrative isn’t so clear on that one. I’m okay with some ambiguity. Ultimately I hope people find some comfort in this record and I want to leave listeners with a feeling of optimism.”
Working for the most part at his own studio, Matsor Projects in Los Angeles, Rostam’s vocals are complimented by his own playing across the album - on acoustic guitar and piano- and in places - drums and percussion. He was also joined by a plethora of talented friends, including Clairo on vocals (for “Hardy”), Amir Yaghmai on electric and acoustic saz, violin and guitar, Daniel Aged on upright bass and pedal steel, Paul Cartwright on violin, Gabe Noel on cello and upright bass, Hamilton Berry on cello, Henry Solomon on flute and clarinet and Andrew Tachine and Joey Messina-Doerning on drums. Additional recording was done at NYC’s Electric Lady & Big Mercy Sound and Valentine Recording Studios in Los Angeles. Produced by Rostam - his 14th full-length album as producer - almost every track was mixed by mutli-Grammy winning mix engineer Tom Elmhirst and mastered by Grammy-winning mastering engineer Emily Lazar. With most of the songwriting credited to Rostam, there are a couple of co-writing appearances for Grammy-winning songwriter Tobias Jesso Jr.
The album’s cover is the American flag presented upside down. Rostam discusses the intentionality behind this choice:
“My whole life I’ve felt conflicted about the flag. I’ve wondered if I should feel connected to the symbol— or even if I was allowed to. The American project has always struggled to deliver on its promises. But, I don’t reject that behind those promises, lay good intentions. I am making a conscious choice to bring my own version of the American flag into the world of the Rostam project. The presentation of the flag upside down is something that the Left, the Right, and the Native American Land Back movement have all made use of. It’s a symbology that’s shared by all these groups and yet could mean different things to each of us. I’m interested in that conversation; that conversation is fundamentally American. Using the American Flag while placing it upside down, is to me, both a reclamation of the symbol and an acknowledgement that there is more to do, for all of us, as Americans”
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