Self-taught. Still learning.
From a borrowed guitar on the Canadian Pacific Railroad to a studio in Nashville.
Robert is the oldest of eight children, raised on the prairies of southern Alberta. At fourteen he laboured at a steel mill, then became a heavy equipment operator. At twenty-one, he wrote his first song.
His love for the blues began with the radio. What caught his ear was Eric Burdon's "House of the Rising Sun." He had no idea it was the blues, he just had to learn to play it. A friend and co-worker at the Canadian Pacific Railroad, Butch Williams, loaned him an electric guitar and amplifier and taught him how to use them.
Robert became fascinated with the earthy beat and emotional pull of the blues, playing along with B.B. King, Howlin' Wolf, Willie Dixon, Muddy Waters, and Freddie and Albert King. A lounge-musician roommate turned him on to jazz: Tom Waits, Mose Allison and Fats Waller, then Bing Crosby, Dean Martin, Benny Goodman, Cab Calloway and Louis Jordan. Growing up on the edge of Calgary, Hank Williams, Hank Snow and Marty Robbins were always playing in the background.
When he heard Bonnie Raitt in the early '70s, he had to learn that "slidey" sound for himself. He worked out slide tuning on his own and "made a lot of racket for a couple of years" until the dobro became part of his voice.
Influences
Robert writes when a song comes to him, about one a month. "The best ones often come the fastest." His world view is simple: love and harmony are all, and it is the little things in life that matter most.
