Robert Finley Interview
When bluesman Robert Finley entered Easy Eye Sound’s Nashville studio to record his fourth album, he had one goal in mind: To “tell the truth.”
Finley didn’t have much material prepared at first, preferring instead to create the new music organically. During a recent phone interview with Blues Rock Review, Finley recalled how the creative atmosphere helped him record 11 new tracks for the Dan Auerbach-produced Black Bayou quickly—even faster, Finley said, than it would have taken if he’d gone in with a more concrete idea of the music he wanted to make.
Black Bayou is special to Finley for another reason: His daughter, Christy Johnson, and granddaughter, LaQuindrelyn McMahon, both joined him in the studio to record backing vocals. “A lot of parents can’t get along with the kids, a lot of kids never visit parents,” Finley said. “But to have kids by your side and support you, 100 percent—that’s a blessing within itself.”
The album is packed with raw emotions ranging from happy and playful to sad and frustrated. There is one notable exception: The story told in “Alligator Bait,” a talking blues-style narrative track in which a young boy’s grandfather uses him as “bait” to catch alligators, was invented. Finley laughed as he recalled the fun of creating the story surrounded by his band in the studio.
“It was all just imaginary, on the alligators,” Finley said. “But everything else on the album, pretty much, is about reality.”
There are so many strong emotions on this album, from the loneliness on “Nobody Wants to Be Lonely” to the frustration on “Waste of Time” and the wanderlust on “Livin’ Out a Suitcase.” Did those emotions feel present and immediate while you were recording?
You put yourself in that position, and the thing is, you have to stay humble and stay focused at the same time. So many times people’s ego takes them further than they’re supposed to be. But if you just stay humble and focused, people can understand. Just stay real to what comes from the heart, and people can relate to what you’re talking about. When you say, “nobody wants to be alone,” sometimes it takes that to make somebody go back to the nursing home, check on grandma or grandpa.
I’ve read that most of the material for this album was created organically in the studio, rather than being mapped out ahead of time. What was that process like?
To be honest, none of the songs were written out. They were just actually made up. The band was playing, and I was making up the songs as we’d go. It was a historical moment, because we did in hours what it should have taken us days to do. Everybody would just go into the music, and we just picked the areas that we wanted to sing about. I was kind of open to anything, because there ain’t much I ain’t been through in life, you know.
We didn’t take pen and paper and write down anything. We just went in the studio and we recorded the music and the lyrics. And then my daughter and my granddaughter came in and added the background vocals. So we actually got three generations on one album.
It was great to get my daughter in—on America’s Got Talent is when she actually started, and then she went on the next album, Sharecropper’s Son. And now her and her daughter, my granddaughter, are on my new album, Black Bayou. They’re doing all of the background singing. It’s just great to have my daughter and my granddaughter sing on the same album.
Will they be going out on the road with you as you tour?
My daughter goes everywhere I go. But my granddaughter, she’s a young mother and she has a local job. So she does more of the local shows, and not so much of leaving the country for months at a time, like we tend to do now.
It must be so special to have your daughter with you out on tour, both to have a close family member to rely on and to create new memories with.
Yeah. That’s a good part about it. It brings about unity. A lot of parents can’t get along with the kids, a lot of kids never visit parents. But to have kids by your side and support you, 100 percent—that’s a blessing within itself.
You’ve collaborated with Dan Auerbach on previous albums, and you reunited with him for Black Bayou. How did the partnership work on this album compared with previous projects?
As a producer, basically he just wants you to be you. And that’s what makes it so easy. He doesn’t try to make me into what he wants me to be. He just wants to produce me as I am.
This album tells a lot of things that should have been said a long time ago. “What Goes Around (Comes Around)”—that’s no secret. “What goes up must come down.” “Nobody Wants to Be Lonely,” that’s no secret.
It’s so important that you just be real. People can’t deal with reality, or realize that it is what it is. If you change your story, then somebody’s going to notice a sudden change. Just stay focused and stay humble, and everything else will work out.
When you first started work on Black Bayou, was there one song or one idea that kicked things off?
Let’s see, I don’t know what it would have been. We had too much fun. I was just looking forward to getting back together and getting to actually record again. Pretty much all you had to do is strike out and record and do something. And everybody, once they figured out what you were doing, they’d do what they do to make it right. It was a chance for every musician to use their own ability or ambition to do what they felt. Nobody was programmed and nobody was told what to do.
That sounds like a dream recording scenario.
Everybody had a chance to express themselves through their music, and nobody was under pressure. It wasn’t like it was the first time we’d all jammed together. We’ve been on tour together, we’ve done shows together, besides all the time we’d spent in the studio together. It was like just having a family reunion, coming back together.
Black Bayou ends with the talking blues-style song “Alligator Bait,” in which the narrator recalls how his grandfather used him to attract alligators. Is that a real story? If not, where did it come from?
That was an imaginary story. I never actually met my granddad on my mother, my father’s side. But from sitting around and listening to them tell stories—my uncles and my dad—they would laugh around the fireplace, telling jokes. And so I came up with an imaginary [story]. But I do know they did do alligators, and we ate everything. And I knew some of the things we were eating would eat us, too.
We just made the song up. Then they were playing the music, and I just made up the words. We never sat down and wrote anything with paper. I guess it was just a miracle from heaven that the words popped in my head.
Was everybody getting a kick out of the story in the studio?
Everybody was enjoying it as we were creating it.
This album has been described as a tribute of sorts to Louisiana, where you grew up. What do you love about Louisiana, and how has its musical melting pot influenced your own music?
I’ve been so many places, but this is just where I’d really rather be. I’m very “don’t forget the bridges you’ve come across,” and “never forget where you come from.” But at the same time, in a small town, everybody knows you. In the big city, everybody doesn’t know everybody. So I think it’d be better to be a big fish in a small pond than to be a fish in the ocean. In the city, everybody’s a star, but in a small town, everybody is not doing the same thing. So you get a chance to speak and be heard, and try to be positive about what you speak about.
If you get the world’s attention, then you need to say something that’s going to try to better the world. Sometimes we don’t sing about the right thing. Sing about violence, and that puts violence on some people’s minds. But if you sing about love, I think it makes the world a better place.
To be able to sing some music that will make grandmamas, children, grandchildren all dance to the same music? That’s a miracle. Because you have closed the generation gap. I’ve had kids come out with their grandparents to the show and have front-row seats. But if I was singing the wrong type of message, grandpa wouldn’t want the grandchildren to hear.
What else would you like our readers to know about Black Bayou?
This album is speaking out on truth and reality and things about life. And if that’s what the people want to hear, and the truth sets them free, and I can do it through my music, each album would be more and more outspoken about the realities of life itself.
I don’t know how to say it; I’m not the one to decide when I sing gospel, when I sing blues. I just sing the truth. And if you’re singing about the realities of life, people will label it as gospel, blues. If you say, “Oh, baby,” it’s blues, and if you say, “Oh Lord,” they’d say it’s gospel. But basically it’s all about the same tune.
