Hi Mike,
I believe it's either one or the other, at least in my experience in using different themes that has been the case.

If you choose to have a static home page, the blog roll won't show up as the front or home page.

You can set it to have your blog roll show as your home page by going to your WordPress Dashboard and in the left menu go to Settings and next go to Reading...from there you have two choices at the top to pick from...

"Your latest posts" which is the blog roll,

"A static page" which is for setting it up as the static home page.

You'd need to choose the first one, "Your latest posts" to begin a blog roll and also remember to click the "save changes" button at the bottom. You should be able to write posts which will go to this page automatically then.

Let me know if you have any other questions...I'd also do a backup first if you've already started adding much content there. Just to be on the safe side.

Best wishes :) ~Sherry

Mike, Not sure if this will help. Also if you search "static home page" there are a few other training guides. Setting A Static Page In Wordpress