[00:00:00] Speaker A: Some guy named Rob, a musician active in Arkansas since 2010, joins me today for the What's Up? Podcast. He performs frequently around the River Valley, and today we get to know the man behind the silly moniker and hear a song or two.
Thanks for joining me today, Rob.
[00:00:25] Speaker B: Hey, what's up, Monica?
[00:00:27] Speaker A: Nothing much. How has your Friday the 13th been.
[00:00:30] Speaker C: So far, so spooky.
[00:00:31] Speaker B: The weather's perfect right now. It's ominous. The sky is kind of gray. There's a nice Christmas coming, and falls colors are creeping in. We just went for a walk, so if I'm out of breath, I forgot how steep Dixon Street was coming back up. It was a lot of fun. Beautiful.
I played here so many times in the past, but usually I'm here perform and then gone. So it was nice to walk around.
[00:00:56] Speaker A: Yeah.
Last night I got to see Sting.
[00:01:00] Speaker B: Me, too.
[00:01:01] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:01:01] Speaker B: So we're still on a Sting high right now?
[00:01:03] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:01:04] Speaker B: What was your favorite?
[00:01:06] Speaker A: Well, my favorite song by him is Every Little Thing She Does is Magic.
[00:01:10] Speaker B: Which was, like, the third song, right?
[00:01:11] Speaker A: Yeah. So I was like, this peaked. Right. But everything is downhill. Everything's downhill.
[00:01:18] Speaker B: Sorry, Steve. Every breath you take you can keep it I've already heard Every Little Thing She Does imagine.
[00:01:23] Speaker A: No, actually, that was one of the times that I really enjoyed that song because normally it's one of those songs that I've heard like, 90 million times since I was born. Right.
But last night, it was cool to see it and hear it in that context, especially with all the clouds coming in.
[00:01:44] Speaker B: Absolutely. So you have to ask me what my favorites were.
[00:01:47] Speaker A: What were your favorites?
[00:01:48] Speaker B: I'm glad you asked.
[00:01:48] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:01:49] Speaker B: Because I'm a Sting fan. I've been a fan for so long, and when I was just a kid I'm talking, like teenager, he released the Soul Cages, which is a brilliant album. Way ahead of its time, actually. It's kind of a timeless album because it's so ahead of its time. And last night, he played three songs off that album. The one about his father, why Should I Cry for You All This Time, which was the single off that album. And then the mad about you, the one about King David and Bathsheba. And it was just like I was in heaven and then Heavy clouds with no rain. And his backup band was just like, wow, so good, man. I'm going to be on high for the next I'm performing tonight in Fort Smith, so it's going to be all Sting tonight. Even though I'm an original singer songwriter, I can't not do Sting now.
[00:02:35] Speaker A: That's a good segue for us. So I looked at your website and came across that you got a new song out right now called Conjecture and Speculation.
[00:02:47] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:02:48] Speaker A: And that you released an album, the Adventures of Indie Boy, last year at.
[00:02:51] Speaker B: The beginning of 2023.
[00:02:53] Speaker A: Yeah. Okay.
[00:02:54] Speaker B: Yeah. I released the single, some of the singles last year, at the end of last year. But the 2023 was the beginning of Indie Boy. Yeah, so let me tell you this story.
Once upon a time, there was a songwriter and then I was touring everywhere. Had 2020 planned out. It was going to be amazing. I mean, I was playing some festivals that I had never been invited to before. Super excited. And then this thing called COVID-19 happened and I learned what it was like to lose thousands and thousands of dollars in one day. March twelveTH, I think it was a Monday. Yeah, everything just came. I got so many phone calls, I stopped answering the phone. It's like, sorry man, we got to cut it down. Sorry man, sorry. We got to close it down. We're not. So everything got closed. And just prior to that, 2018, I had written an album called The Folkster. And The Folkster is more like this really thoughtful, acoustic warm album that's meant to lift up and encourage and the whole album is full of these little yeah, but Indie Boy was what happens whenever you take the foekster and you stick him inside quarantine for a year and a half. And so Indie Boy is definitely more of a rock and roll album. It's more weird, it's more interesting. So that's what's came out of that. And then the songs I'm releasing now because I'm a songwriter and I'm prolific, what I've decided to do is starting October 2, release every Monday until the end of the year.
Release a new song.
[00:04:19] Speaker A: How are you going to do that? Do you already have most of the songs written?
[00:04:23] Speaker B: Yeah, I've got them recorded and mixed and mastered. And I'm always writing and I'm always recording. Have a home studio as well as I work with other studios in the States. Part of The Folks tour actually was written, I mean, was recorded at Sun Studio in Memphis, Tennessee, where everybody it was an honor to be able to play there. It was really great to put that on The Folks, too.
[00:04:48] Speaker A: I bet.
Okay, so just give me a little bit of background. Where are you from? Are you from rock and Richard.
[00:04:54] Speaker B: I am. I'm from beautiful. Russellville.
[00:04:56] Speaker A: Russellville, okay. All right.
[00:04:58] Speaker B: That's not too far from Hour and 45 southeast. Yeah.
[00:05:02] Speaker A: So where are you playing nowadays?
[00:05:05] Speaker B: Man, this summer has been crazy. That 2020 summer that was so booked up, ended up being this summer of 2023. Went as far out as Vegas and played in Vegas, played Colorado. I was out there three times.
And I might even be out there once more in November. It just depends. I'm waiting for that's booking. You never know. Sometimes you don't know at the last minute. So, Colorado, New Mexico, Oklahoma.
I love Arkansas. But here's the problem. For some reason, whatever gene, the country gene, like the pure country western gene I didn't get, you know, Arkansas likes both kinds of music, country and so to be indie, folk, rock, pop, with a little bluesy, occasionally reggae, I don't fit anywhere in this beautiful state. Musically. I will say that the state's opening up, especially northwest Arkansas, they're a lot more hip to kind.
[00:06:04] Speaker A: Yeah, I think northwest Arkansas came out of COVID with a bang, because it's not that COVID is actually over, but there's been so many concerts and so many new bands and so many new songs and it's so nice. It's great. It's hard to keep up with, but it's great. So how did you get started playing music?
[00:06:26] Speaker B: When I was about 13 years old, I was just a pure altruistic boy who's like, I need to meet girls.
Rock and roll, introduces me to girls. And so me and my best friend at the time, we asked for guitars for Christmas, got guitars, learned to play them very badly and formed a band.
And honestly, that was my very first band. And aside from that band, I think that lasted through college. And we had a great time, had lots of fun, lots of music.
But college, people get married, people go their separate ways. And I ended up taking some time to actually learn how to play the guitar, learn how to write songs and continue. And so I started down that path and it's led me to some guy named Rob.
[00:07:18] Speaker A: Okay, so how did you start playing music professionally?
[00:07:23] Speaker B: Well, I was 22, 23 years old, and I had always continued playing into college and through college. But I knew at that age I really needed I knew what I wanted to do. I was working four different jobs, very busy, making a great amount of money, but I wasn't really happy. I was very unsatisfied. And so I just decided, okay, I'm going to quit all my jobs at the same time and pursue music full time, which is a terrible mistake. If anyone's listening, please be smart. Just hang on to one of those four jobs.
But whenever you cut off all your lifelines, then you realize you either have to sink or swim. You have to fly or fall. So it became mandatory. I had to do that. And so that was the birth of it. Necessity started performing in coffee shops, and that was the late 90s. That was the 19 hundreds. Monica, I don't know if you remember. The late 19 hundreds was when I first began, let me drink. Take a drink from my non bottled carton water, cleanses the palate.
So, no, really, I think to me it's always been about, well, I say this, and then when you get married, things change and you have kids, things change again. So there's been an evolution of what I've done. And now that my kids are getting older, then now it's become, I can go out on these Las Vegas tours and I can go out on tour again.
[00:08:55] Speaker A: Yeah, tell me about some of your tours. I saw that you've toured overseas and toured here in the US.
[00:09:02] Speaker B: I got an opportunity to go to England and to perform at what was that?
It was the late 2010 teens. It was in the teens somewhere. So before 2020? Yeah.
[00:09:19] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:09:20] Speaker B: And I had plans to go again over in 2020, 2021. That was on my things to do list. But alas, the best late plans. But the tour, it took me over there, and one of my favorite gigs, quote quote, gigs I ever played was I was traveling about 120, was on a train outside of a car that was on the train inside a tunnel underneath the English Channel.
It's from the channels.
It goes from England to France. And I pulled my guitar and I started busking on this thing, and I couldn't think of anything to play. But then it hit me. What do you play on?
Really, really interesting, though, and so lovely to see where we came from. Whereas Americans, a lot of us, come from the UK, an area of the UK. So it's nice to have been there.
[00:10:23] Speaker A: So do these funny stories make it into your lot?
[00:10:27] Speaker B: See, that's the thing. I have a lot of serious songs, like, just really grotesquely serious. And then I've got stupid, stupid, stupid songs. Yeah. And I can't tell you which I enjoy more, I think. Sometimes I find myself writing a heavy song, and my soul is just like, okay, you need some levity. You need just have some fun. Here's a song called Hashtag Adulting. Here's a song called Ding about your phone dinging and you don't know what it is. Here's a song about just all sorts of silly songs and then all sorts of serious songs. So again, that makes it hard to peg down when you're booking. It's like, well, who am I booking? Am I booking the clown, or am I booking the serious singer songwriter? I'm like, well, which one do you want?
Comma comma, comma chameleon. That's what I've become.
[00:11:17] Speaker A: All right, so tell me a little bit more about the songs that you're planning on releasing. Starting you said you started October october 2.
[00:11:25] Speaker B: Yeah, with the song. She she okay, so that's just stupid romantic. It's just romantic drenched in love, and it's parabolic in ways, but that's for the listener to find.
Someone said, that's either the most secular or sacred song I've ever heard. I'm like, yes, that will do. The new song, Conjecture and Speculation was sort of a stream of consciousness writing technique. I just wanted to find out what was inside my head. So with someone who's seasoned and knows their instrument well, to sit down in front of an instrument and just push record and see what comes out. And the same thing, lyrically, was very stream of consciousness. And it ended up being that there's a lot of questions in this world and a lot of things that we believe are built out of conjecture and speculation. It can all be torn down and built back up a different way. So it's really an internal struggle that I was sharing with the audience. This next week is actually Monday. Coming Monday is a song called So Wrong, and it's just heart wrenching. There was some things that happened in our state, and it was something that I don't want to tell you what it is because it really doesn't matter what it is, because it can be replaced by so many other horrible things that happen to people. And I think there's just that universalism of bad things happen, and sometimes words just can't put it right. Paul Simon has a great line. It says, sometimes not even music can substitute for tears. Love that, too. Love that.
Yeah. And then to counter that, I'll have a little bit lighter song coming up in the next few weeks. So these songs belong in my mind. I still think in albums, but the world doesn't. The world thinks in singles now.
[00:13:10] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:13:10] Speaker B: So maybe later down the road, I'll build an album, maybe make a vinyl or something for those people that would really like that. But for the most part, I think singles are a great way to drop it into the Spotify algorithm and help people pay attention.
[00:13:29] Speaker A: Right, all right. And so it will be released where?
[00:13:36] Speaker B: Everywhere.
[00:13:37] Speaker A: Everywhere.
[00:13:37] Speaker B: Everywhere, yeah. So I go through a worldwide distribution company, and so it goes through Tidal, Deezer, Pandora, you can name them, fashion, YouTube, music, and all of the Spotify and all the streaming services and then some I haven't heard of, like Snapchat. Apparently I'm on Snapchat, too.
[00:14:00] Speaker A: Oh, okay.
[00:14:00] Speaker B: So snap me.
Use my music in the Snap. I should probably say more. Don't snap me.
[00:14:07] Speaker A: Yeah, I'm not really sure what that would look like.
All right, so what songs are you going to play for us today? Or song?
[00:14:15] Speaker B: I haven't even decided. I don't know. I guess I'll just have to wing it.
Actually. I wrote a song called Social Mania, and that's off the Adventures of Indie Boy and Social Mania is just what happened during the pandemic. People went crazy on social media, and so I just was like, this isn't media, this is mania. And so the first line is, if I don't have a guitar in my hand, I won't be able to remember the first line. I don't like this social mania where what you see is not what you get.
I'm just in it for the funny memes. You can keep your politics.
I was so sick of all that stuff.
And the truth is, what I really like about social media, social media is wishing people happy birthday and like, oh, your kid's beautiful. Congratulations.
[00:15:06] Speaker A: Yeah, that's my thing, is mostly just letting my relatives who live far away and my friends who live far away, I'm like, Look, I still have a kid and he's getting bigger.
And read my articles, please.
[00:15:20] Speaker B: Right.
Pitch your articles.
[00:15:22] Speaker A: Oracle, where can we find your
[email protected]?
[00:15:28] Speaker B: Which means if you're listening this, or if you're watching this, you probably have a link there.
[00:15:32] Speaker A: Yes, absolutely.
[00:15:33] Speaker B: My link is super easy, too. You can just Google some guy named Rob with two B's and you'll find me. Or you can just go to Sgnro bb.com.
[00:15:42] Speaker A: All right, sounds good.
[00:15:43] Speaker B: Cool.
[00:15:44] Speaker A: Great. Way to wrap it up.
[00:15:45] Speaker B: Oh, we're done. That was so easy. I thought you were going to place me under the firing light. Where were you the night of October 7?
[00:15:53] Speaker A: No, I don't dabble in hard news.
[00:15:56] Speaker B: We'll keep it lined.
[00:15:57] Speaker A: Thanks.
[00:15:58] Speaker B: Been a pleasure.
[00:15:59] Speaker A: Yeah, thank you.
[00:16:12] Speaker C: I don't like social mania. You. What you see is not what you get.
I'm just standing for the funny memes.
You can keep your politics.
I just want to see your face sometimes.
And I just want to watch. You smile?
Yeah, I just want to watch the world with you as zeros on by.
I don't want to be the one tell you, but I don't feel like I'm the cure.
And I don't think anyone's listening except for what they listen for yeah I don't tune into that frequency I don't think I'm coming through yeah I don't think nobody's vibing me except me before you, yeah wherever you go, come go with me and if you stay, then I won't leave. And if we're wrong? I guess we'll see. And if we're not, it's meant to be.
I don't want to say forever.
I know I said that once before, but I don't want to play. The fool this time. Don't want to be a weapon boy I don't want to leave you lonely as long as will you wanna be.
Yeah. I don't want to fill you up only to end up on empty wherever. You go, come go with me and if you stay then I won't leave and if we're wrong? I guess we'll see and if we're not, it's meant to be if you go, come go with me and if you stay then I won't leave and if we're wrong? I guess we'll see and if we're not, it's meant to be.
[00:19:03] Speaker B: In the.
[00:19:03] Speaker C: Breakdown everybody comes around in the breakdown everybody comes around breakdown, breakdown in the breakdown everybody comes around.
[00:19:30] Speaker B: It thank you.
[00:19:34] Speaker C: Close. Close.
