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 12 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.
Equipped with his solemn and only companion - his guitar. 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.
It has been said, that he is one of the finest entertainers of the modern folk movement to come out of America. What sets Blake apart from other songwriters is his ability to approach familiar strains with his speed strumming guitar style, wry humour, and superior narrative sense and sensibility. Blake has carved out a niche and an audience all on his own, full of punks, hippies, college students, country music fans, tree sitters, high schools, and their parents. Blake is bringing the folk song to a new place and to a newer, younger audience since 1997. And after 10 years on, he is only getting better. Don't miss out on this guy. Folk like these, well, you only come across by sheer chance, a few times in a lifetime.
Robert Sarazin Blake will play The Shack, Athlone on Saturday January 24, he will also be supporting Stewart Agnew in The Passionfruit Theatre, Athlone on Saturday January 31.
