Robert Finley is very clear about what makes a good songwriter. “You have to have lived, to have been there or done that,” he says, his low voice a virtual growl, partly because it’s 10am in his native Louisiana and he’s only just got up. But if life experience is the secret, it’s no wonder that Robert is so well regarded by those who know and love their blues and soul.
Robert Finley A talented singer-songwriter in his younger days, he worked as a part-time street performer, as leader of the gospel group Brother Finley and the Gospel Sisters, and as a carpenter. Robert stopped playing for many years and he was 62 when he finally released his debut album, Age Don’t Mean a Thing, in spite of the fact that he had been declared legally blind due to an eye-condition. Now at 70 he’s got his fourth release - Black Bayou - under his belt and is in Manchester on Sunday, one of a series of highly-anticipated UK dates.
Like his previous album Sharecropper’s Son, Black Bayou saw Robert teaming up with the Black Keys’ Dan Auerbach who both produced and plays on the record. The way the pair devised the album would, I suggest, terrify many musicians with Robert heading in to the studio without a song having been written in advance. “I guess that would,” he chuckled, “but we’d just go in, pick a subject, play some music and go from there.
Dan came up with most of the stuff to sing about. He’d say ‘let’s do something about this’ and we’d just come up with a.