#sharecropper's son

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Robert Finley 🎶 Sharecropper's Son

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Robert Finley Interview: Ready for the Race

BY JORDAN MAINZER

At the risk of sounding cliché, it’s truly been a long, often hard road for blues and soul singer Robert Finley. On his new album Sharecropper’s Son (out tomorrow on Easy Eye Sound), he delves into his past. Ever since he hooked up with Dan Auerbach on 2017′s Goin Platinum!, Finley’s 60-year backstory has been more often chronicled in the mainstream, from being born and raised in Bernice, Louisiana and enlisting in the army as a teenager to suffering from a car accident, a divorce, and eventually ending his carpentry career after being deemed legally blind. And yes, he never gave up and eventually got lucky, being discovered busking by Music Maker Relief Foundation, touring, releasing an album, and eventually establishing a long-term collaborative relationship with Auerbach. Yet, until now, Finley hasn’t written about his early childhood, being raised along with his 7 siblings on a crop share in Louisiana.

Sharecropping refers to an agricultural legal arrangement where a landowner allows a tenant to use land in exchange for the share of the crops produced. It was a popular arrangement in the South from the Reconstruction to Jim Crow years following the abolishment of slavery; in reality, it was just another way for white Americans to maintain economic hegemony over Black Americans. “You get all the work, and the money never seems to come,” Finley told me over the phone in March from his home in Louisiana. “You always break even, and unless you own the farm, you really didn’t benefit. The checks from the cotton and from the corn didn’t come in your name.” In other words, Finley said, “Sharecroppers don’t get their share.”

Sharecropping was backbreaking, “out in the hot red sun,” Finley sings on the album’s title track, “where the work is never done,” Auerbach’s blistering guitar and keyboards shimmering like rays from the sun. That said, Finley never realized how rough things truly were. “We were poor and didn’t know it,” he told me, citing the fact that because they were never hungry, he actually thought they were rich. “We had cows. We had chickens. We had hogs. We had fresh milk...It was like we were really living it up!” he said. Moreover, since many of their neighbors didn’t have direct access to fresh food, Finley’s father would share their bounty, from meat to vegetables. And, as the youngest son, he spent a lot of time helping his mom in the kitchen, citing that experience as partially inspiring his love of cooking to this day.

With Sharecropper’s Son, Finley is not trying to provide a list of lamentations. “It’s not a pity party,” he said. Even more than not going hungry, Finley cites his father’s optimism and generosity as formative. “My dad, in his religious beliefs, always hoped for better things and a brighter tomorrow...at the end of the day, after picking the cotton, or pulling the corn, we had plenty to give away. I don’t know if my dad sold some of it, but I think he did way more giving than selling.” Eventually, his father “wised up” and gave up sharecropping, and to this day, Finley’s brothers and sisters, despite only his oldest and youngest sister graduating from school, live comfortably. Notably, Finley also holds where he grew up near and dear to his heart. On “Country Child”, he juxtaposes harsh memories of cotton fields with yearning for the more comforting aspects of the South, especially country girls who “give you a country smile.” He mentioned me that the sparse population of rural Louisiana meant that he had to cross rivers just to see his neighbors, but also that folks in a many mile radius knew each other well, to the point that “you could get a couple boards and put them in front of your house, and someone would ask you what you’re doing with them.”

Above it all, Finley learned from both his father’s mindset and his own ability to overcome. “That’s why I tell my story / So you could start dreaming too,” he sings on “My Story”, while the hand percussion-laden “Starting To See” details the symbolic perspective on life he gained after losing his sight. And the album ends with spiritual gospel waltz “All My Hope”. Even better, Finley offers himself up for his listeners, on tracks like “I Can Feel Your Pain”, a church organ hymn where he empathizes with folks suffering from everything from COVID-19 to police brutality. It’s why he stays positive and keeps on keeping on. As someone who walked again after an accident despite the odds and who was “discovered’ so late in life, he doesn’t let practicality tamper his ambitions. “Like a horse in the stall,” he said, “I’m ready for the race.”

Below, read my conversation with Finely, edited for length and clarity.

Since I Left You: What made you want to sing more autobiographically this time around?

Robert Finley: I guess it was a chance to express myself and talk about these true stories. It’s not a made-up fantasy. It’s real life. It’s a chance to tell what life was like being a sharecropper. I was talking to all my siblings--4 brothers and 3 sisters, so there were 8 of us. My youngest sister doesn’t remember that much about it, but I’m the second youngest, so I wanted to get it out while all of us siblings would be able to form their opinion on it.

SILY: Would you say that the pandemic and the reckoning around the Black Lives Matter movement and subsequent increased awareness among White Americans gives these songs extra resonance?

RF: Yeah, I feel like it really opened the world’s eyes to what’s really going on. A lot of times, things happen we just don’t want to talk about, but that don’t stop ‘em from happening. In this case, it was a blessing to be writing about the right thing at the right time. 

Even me and Dan Auerbach meeting, that was heaven intervention, too. What do a 30-something year old man and a 67-year old man have in common that can reach the people? It would have to be the music. Music is not a racial thing. Music, to us, is what comes from the heart and goes to the heart. If you need a blood donor or kidney donor, you’re not gonna ask what color the person was or what race the person was who’s giving the blood and giving the kidney. The whole purpose is for you to get the kidney and stay alive. Music is pretty much the same thing. Even if people can’t speak the language, they can feel the vibes of the music. There’s always somebody that can translate what the artist is really saying, but if the music is right, and the message in the music is right, it really doesn’t matter what color the person is or where they come from. It’s all about what comes from the heart and goes to the heart. 

That’s where my songwriting comes in. To be able to reach out and touch people, because you want to give people something they can feel, that they can relate to. Not just a cool beat, not just a pretty voice, or whatever. The song needs to have a message that people can relate to. [And] as far as whether it’s soul, blues, country-western, jazz--if you’re looking for rock and roll, you can find it on the album, if you’re looking for soul, if you’re looking for country and western. It’s got a little of everything. That was the goal, and hopefully it’s being accomplished.

SILY: It seems like everybody who works with Dan has a musical connection and shared love of the same thing, even if not a widely known song or album. Do you feel that connection?

RF: Yeah. You gotta have something positive going even for Dan to reach out to you. Dan is looking for originality. People who want to stand out, not someone who’s trying to fit in. He looks for raw talent and gives them [opportunity] to express themselves. He’s open-minded and open to suggestions. He wants to know Robert Finely and produce Robert Finely and not to make me into something I’m not. 

SILY: On “Country Child”, you talk about driving by a cotton field as an older man and still feeling your back hurting. But on the same song, you talk about preferring a country girl to raise a country child. Was it important for you to talk about that complex relationship with where you came from?

RF: Yeah. Don’t get me wrong--I don’t have a thing against city ladies--nobody in the city smiles because it makes them look tough and look hard. In the country, they wave at everybody whether they know ‘em or not. It doesn’t matter because everybody’s just saying hi! In the city, people live across the hall or across the street and don’t know their neighbors. It’s a whole different lifestyle. They don’t let their guard down. I was trying to keep it as real as possible.

The country girls, they just wave and smile, and if you say something they don’t agree with, they move on. But they’ll talk for a while, and they give you the benefit of the doubt.

Sometimes, if you’re too friendly, you can become a victim. If you go in the city smiling at everybody, they automatically know you’re not from the city. It’s not what they do. Unless you’re properly introduced, the person across the hall won’t talk to you or know you. It’s all about the approach. But I have learned that a smile is universal. It doesn’t matter what country you’re in. If you smile, people will smile back. If you’re open-minded and open-hearted, there’s always somebody. People will be glad to see somebody who looks at them and smiles. It breaks barriers and opens doors, even for people trying to look hard and tough.

SILY: On a couple songs on here, you improvised the lyrics, calling it “speaking from the heart.” Do you find that the way to go when the subject matter of the song is more difficult to talk about?

RF: Yeah, I mean if you stay real with everybody, it’s not a problem. You’ve gotta be open-minded and open-hearted. Put yourself in anybody’s situation. If you do that, you can see it from their point of view. With all the stuff that’s negative in the world today, it’s good to be positive every chance you get. It needs to be something people can relate to in the real world, or that people can say, “I’ve been through that or I’ve done that.” It’s not something that’s been made up like a fairytale. It has to have meaning where people can say, “Yep, I remember those days.” 

I have 7 siblings. They all have to tell the story from their point of view. I try to leave the door open [in case] they want to tell what they remember, because they might remember something I don’t or had to experience something I didn’t. So when I was writing [the title track], I talked to them about it. In reality, I wanted it to be a true song that dealt with real life. Not made up. It needed to be something real they could identify with and their friends identify with where people could say, “I remember those days.” I also definitely didn’t want to make it seem harder than it already was. I only went back to the cotton field and put on the overalls for the video because nobody was wearing shiny shoes in the cotton field. They might have had a pair they put on on the weekend, but they definitely didn’t wear them in the field. The video could have been done anywhere, but to keep it real, I thought we needed to take it back to the country.

SILY: What did it mean for you to play with so many of the same session players as on Goin’ Platinum?

RF: It was like a family reunion. We toured together in the East Coast and West Coast. It was really an honor because everybody knew everybody. Everybody was excited to get back together because of the success of the first album. We built more or less what you could call a family relationship. Everybody knows everybody, and getting back in the studio, we got straight to work, what everybody came for. I don’t know how much time Dan spent with the musicians before I got there. When I got there, it was to lay the vocals down.

What I really noticed is that all the musicians played what they feel. They listened to the groove. And all the local musicians were in a 50-mile radius of each other. I could have them all together within a couple hours.

I was probably the youngest person in the band, besides Dan--I’m almost twice his age. When you’re with the band, it breaks out the best in you. Learning from their experience, everything they’ve done and who they’ve done it with, it makes you feel privileged to be in the company of them. They’re not on big ego trips and nobody has a big agenda. I’m easy. I don’t put no pressure on nobody--I just want the best out of everybody.

I love working with the Easy Eye Sound label because to me, I walk in, meet and greet, we break bread together, and we go to work. The work is hard, but I don’t know if you’d even call it work.

SILY: What’s the story behind the album art?

RF: The label mostly [does it] and asks me for approval. There’s not much I’d object to anyway. It’s a picture of me. I seldom walk outside even to go to the mailbox without my hat on. That’s one of my trademarks. I always wear hats or caps. I love the artwork. To be honest, I haven’t met the individual that did the artwork on it, but it very much had my approval when I saw it. Meeting everybody, sometimes it’s way down the line where I can actually meet them face to face.

[mxdwn]

Album Review: Robert Finley - Sharecropper's Son

https://music.mxdwn.com/2021/08/10/reviews/album-review-robert-finley-sharecroppers-son/

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Robert Finley

Sharecropper’s Son (2021) … undreamed-of heights …

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