Robert Sarazin Blake

Robert Sarazin Blake will follow his exceptional show in The Shack last weekend by playing support to Stewart Agnew in the Passionfruit Theatre this Saturday night, January 31. A regular visitor to Athlone, Robert regularly plays to packed houses in venues across the town and has built a strong following here over the years. Robert Sarazin Blake is in this singer/songwriter thing for the long haul. Some people become themselves, later on in life. For Blake it was rather early, having first stepped onstage at Seattle"s Folk life festival when he was 15. In the years since then he"s been living the story of his music: from a suitcase and a guitar full of stories to share. He tells the kind of song that you hear on the radio during a late drive home: some sweet gruff voice out of nowhere singing to the still spot in your heart, the kind of song you turn up and sit in the car to finish, letting it all sink in. Singing, writing, and strumming songs of lost loves, bicycles, old hotels, politics and long hot drives, Robert Blake has rambled coast to coast, island to island and country to country singing in basements, bars, backyards, and holding cells. Blake"s musical and spiritual roots are in being a folksinger. He unashamedly draws from folk sources and at the same time brings a careful modern appraisal to the process. His music stems from old style influences from Woody Guthrie to the plaintive Leonard Cohen, Dylan, some Billy Bragg, some John Darinelle, and something Irish, but mostly your going to hear Robert Blake. With his majestic poetically endured songs reaching out and touching the listener, pulling them gently and ever so respectfully in, taking them on an embarking tour of self discovery. Robert took some time out this week to speak to the Westmeath Independent. When did you first realise you could have a career as a musician? Being a musician is a great life, but not much of a living. When I was a kid my father played guitar at parties. I refused to go to bed and stayed up with the music. At age 5 my father taught me the Shel Silverstien song "sing for the song boys, just like you did when you stood on the corner and you didn"t even feel the pain, sing for the song boys just like you did before all of the flashbulbs, and cocaine and bright painted ladies got a hold of your soul!" Favourite TV show? I can"t afford the license, and the commercials warning of inspection on the radio frighten me. Last CD you bought? Resurrection Fern! Favourite movie? the one I star in every day! Favourite food/drink? My friend Bill Davis in Austin writes, 'We"ll have beer with every meal and pray. There"s beer in heaven, may all of your beer dreams come true and may your six packs turn to seven. Of the beer in the world the answer"s clear to me the beer that tastes the best my friend is the beer that"s free.' Favourite holiday destination? Travelling musicians don"t take holidays, or rather we"re always on holiday. We stay home for a change of pace. Best advice you"ve ever been given? If I remember right, Johnny Cash said: 'I don"t give advice because the last time I did I told Roy Orbison he should sing lower.'