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Category: Blog

4 Please follow me on Spotify!

  • November 18, 2016
  • Chris Robley
  • · Blog · Music · News

Click the button below to follow Chris Robley on Spotify.

Then check out Hits & Misses, a new Spotify playlist of songs from Chris Robley, Chris Robley & the Fear of Heights, and THE SORT OFs, spanning 2005 to today. 

If you listen to music on Spotify, there’s a small thing you can do that’d be a big help to me: FOLLOW me there!

Once I get to 250 followers, Spotify will “verify” my account, which opens up some cool possibilities for my music on that streaming service, and I’ll also be able to keep you updated whenever I release new songs on Spotify.

If you have a second, please click “follow” above. It really will be a huge help and I’ll send an immediate psychic hug in return. Thanks!

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0 Chris’ Tiny Little Tour

  • September 28, 2016
  • Chris Robley
  • · Blog · News · Shows

All things being equal, it’s been about 5 years since I’ve “toured.” Which I suppose I’m defining (for this purpose) as a string of more than three nights in a row in different towns.

So, the rust is gettin’ shaken off — and my friend Bob Dunham (frequent Fear of Heights guitarist) is flying East to play these dates with me. Super psyched. If you’re nearby, come visit with us.

Fall, 2016: a Tiny Little Tour…

9/29/16 – Chicago, IL @ Cafe Mustache w/ Matt Wheeler and Williwaw

10/09/16 – Winooski, VT @ The Monkey House w/ Loch Lomond

10/10/16 – Portland, OR @ Blue w/ Starcrossed Losers

10/11/16 – East Greenwich, RI @ The Nook w/ Buck Nature

10/12/16 – Dennis, MA @ Harvest Gallery Wine Bar w/ Monica Rizzio

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0 Chris performs on WCLZ’s Studio Z

  • August 29, 2016
  • Chris Robley
  • · Blog · Music · News

Last week I did a live in-studio at my favorite radio station in Maine, 98.9 WCLZ, taping three songs plus a short interview. Fun times, and host Brian Farrell was very kind.

View this post on Instagram

Just recorded 3 songs and an interview that will air later this week on @989wclz, irrefutably the best #radio station in #Maine. Here's host/engineer Brian Farrell and I in the studio following the session. #fun #chrisrobleymusic

A post shared by Chris Robley (@chrisrobley) on Aug 24, 2016 at 11:15am PDT

 

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2 New David Bowie cover song video premieres on Performer Magazine

  • July 18, 2016
  • Chris Robley
  • · Blog · Movies and Music · News

Oh! You Pretty Things…

Performer Magazine premiered a video (and David Bowie song) that Tim Huggins and I recorded recently.

Here’s what I said about the track:

Every February I go to Kansas City for Folk Alliance International. It’s a really special event, and it’s always inspiring — but after four days and nights of un-amplified acoustic music you kind of need a palette cleanser.

So for the past two years, on the last night of the festival, my buddy Tim and I have gone late-night to a local studio and recorded a bunch of 70’s pop and rock covers. We only have a handful of hours until dawn to get the takes, so we try to keep it un-fussy: put down the basics live, throw on some extra guitar, sing the vocals, mix the song, go eat breakfast. This year we did “Oh! You Pretty Things” and a swampy version of Badfinger/Nilsson/Mariah Carey staple “Without You.”

By next year we might have enough of these sloppy cover songs to release a whole record, but for now I at least wanted to put this video out there, since Bowie’s passing was still very heavy on our hearts when we went into the studio. It’s a song I’d covered live a few times, but we’d always done it the faithful way, with the drums only coming in on the choruses.

That night Tim got his friend Mike Patrum, who plays with Kerry Livgren, to come and record drums, and I figured if he’s gonna be here, we might as well have him play on the whole song… thus the bigger arrangement.

As for the song itself, the chords kill me. So good. Not sure Bowie gets enough credit for how genius his harmonic changes were. And the lyrics, so bizarre, with the Ubermensch starman stuff amidst the cozy domestic details…

I just watched the preview for Werner Herzog’s “Lo and Behold” and started really obsessing over the obsolescence of mankind. Gotta make way for the Homo Superior!

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0 Pop Matters premieres music video for “1973”

  • July 18, 2016
  • Chris Robley
  • · Blog · Movies and Music · News

The venerable PopMatters.com was kind to feature my new video for “1973” on their site.

Here’s what they said:

I’m firmly of the belief that a certain brand of nostalgia — that ever-present nag that music stopped being good when the ‘rents stopped being young enough to enjoy the new stuff — is toxic and has no place in our music community. Thankfully, Chris Robley’s “1973” is of the more pleasant sort, genially sepia-toned instead of acid-stained. It’s a self-admitted “fantasy”, a pleasant scene of how two folks met and made a kid that doesn’t actually exist in Robley’s true life, but oftentimes fantasy is compelling too. And “1973” certainly is compelling, charming wordless harmonies preceding a folk-rock stomp and killer psychedelic guitar solo. It might be a fictionalized portrait of the year it attempts to illustrate, but that fiction is a genuine joy—if a slightly depressing one—nonetheless.

And here’s what I said:

“‘1973’ is one of the songs on the record that has absolutely nothing to do with me. It’s complete fiction, a mix between ‘1941’ by Nilsson and ‘That Was Your Mother’ by Paul Simon,” says Robley. “It’s sung from the point of a view of a deadbeat dad returning after too long away to rationalize his absence. I have a great dad. I wasn’t born in 1973. But I had the chord changes, and when I started to write a melody those were the words that came.”

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0 Ghettoblaster premieres lyric video for “Silently”

  • July 18, 2016
  • Chris Robley
  • · Blog · Movies and Music · News

Ghettoblaster recently premiered the lyric video for “Silently.”

Here’s a few words about the song:

The first thing I always think to say about ‘Silently’ is that it features a guest choir of chickens. Well, not real chickens. Just… the band, doing our best chicken impressions. Because why not? Second, this was definitely my attempt to write something in the vein of the Great American Songbook, back when it was okay to use phrases like ‘quite remiss’ in a pop song. It was a ton of fun to record. Anders (the drummer on the rest of the album) had to leave early, so Rob Stroup, the producer, sat in for this last song, assembling a drum kit out of boxes and kitchen utensils. And the drunken barbershop call-and-response vocals were handled by Rob Stroup and Naomi Hooley hilariously holding their nostrils closed while they sang.

Chickens. Mouth trumpet. Kazoo. Nasal and inebriated backup singers. All fun ways to dress up a sad song about ‘How the heat of desire is akin to a warm winter fire that burns bright, then expires, silently.’ Even though I live in Maine now, I’m usually back in Portland, Oregon every three months or so. On my last trip I went up to Mt. Tabor — an old extinct volcano that overlooks Southeast Portland — and used Hyperlapse to shoot the sky at dusk for this video.

Video Premiere: Chris Robley, “Silently”

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0 Premiering the lyric video for “Veterans Day”

  • July 11, 2016
  • Chris Robley
  • · Blog · Movies and Music · News

Wicked kind words about my song “Veterans Day” from Nooga.com, the website premiering the lyric video for the tune:

There’s something mercurial and surprising about the graceful ebb and flow that washes over you as the song progresses. It’s alternately comforting and riveting. He manages to instill a sense of momentum and weight to these experiences without sacrificing the ebullient swagger that clings to this kind of inclusive pop music.

Listening to “Veterans Day,” it’s easy to forget just how hard it is to fashion this specific pop aesthetic without losing a sense of your identity. But Robley easily draws back the sentiment to showcase the heart and earnest soul of his work. The song’s complexity is subtle—it doesn’t call attention to itself but merely expresses an ocean of feeling with the simplest rhythmic passages. As the song fades away, you’re left with the feeling of having fully lived within another person’s life, even if only for a short while.

Check out the video above.

 

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