Please listen to my .
It is a cycle of songs devoted to transformation, and asks for a path to a new sort of kindness. This album is co-produced by rock icon Kip Winger and features guest performances by Ottmar Liebert, Moira Smiley, Jon Gagan, Jerry Weimer, Tawanda Suessbrich-Joaquim, Calvin Hazen, Char Rothschild, Dana Winograd, and Yuko Shimokawa.
“I feel the summons to music in the same part of my heart that feels the seasons; the long light, the deep-seated aloneness in our culture, and its longing for company. Call it quirky. Call it New Mexico. I’ll try to play something for both those lineages, and I’ll hope to heal myself and others along the way.”
Singing songs of his own making, and accompanying them with instruments such as the West African kora, guitar, drums, and percussion, Robby Rothschild draws from the dual wells of tradition and personal expression. Known for his work with his brother, Char, in the duo Round Mountain, as well as his recent international tours as percussionist for Kip Winger and Ottmar Liebert, Robby’s solo work represents a furthering of his search into musical wilderness, and a deepening of rawness and vulnerability such as true wilderness and a path of loss brings to all of us.
Music has called him in many directions, including to Mali, West Africa, whose music infused and possessed him, and to conservatory, where he achieved a master’s in composition. His pursuit of the sound emerging in his ears continues to guide him today.
Writings
Or/and
Is an inbreath the call or the answer? Am i touching strength or wonderment? Certainty or shades of complexity? I love what makes us swirl and conjoin, crema and foam, reassurance and challenge. I do my best to live in that midst with all those around me.
Of a sudden
And of a sudden I found my way down to the quiet water -- not broken or overcast, but sunny -- and found I had belonged there all along. Were there patches of uncertainty where a hard path veered and fell through the bramble? There were. Were there ropes for tired...
Ointment
My worry, my ointment… To encase a heart in it, as in trementina, must be soothing in its way. But let what is at the center come clear, not be suffocated, not rust through. Let something come into focus, even as so many pixels go dark, as so many echoes die...
Heartbreak in becoming
There will always be heartbreak in becoming, in not knowing what sort of summer lies before you, what life, what sort of sorrow you will affix to others as to stems of grass in the morning light. As we in desiring change are welded to ourselves more and more deeply,...
Invitation
Invitation to arrive here in this strange skin: Be instantly ready to throw off the caked-on layer that insists you know this all already. Quiet? And danger, in full evidence. Together. The stranger and less recognizable it all feels, the more within reach the...
At our backs
Oh sun, be at our backs now, make steam of our dread and our misgivings. Make agency of our sensitivity, strength of our diversity, light of our transformation, nourishment of our demise.