“Put me last on the bill,” Robert Finley says, “because the
party’s going to go as high as it’s going to go when I’m playing.” From someone
else’s mouth that might be braggadocio, but when Finley says it, he’s just
telling the truth. Onstage, he’s infectious. It’s the whole package—his sound,
his songs, his energy, his look. Hailing from Louisiana, he mixes a
Memphis-to-Texas electric southern grit with Nashville-clever songs. He’s
gangly and graceful with an indomitable smile that radiates beneath his black
ridge-top hat. “I don’t believe in doing a lot of holding back,” Finley says,
“I’m going to give you everything I’ve got.”
Finley came up singing gospel, the only kind of music his
parents would allow. His palette expanded quickly, however, through hanging out
with older guys and trying to meet the demands of impressing the opposite sex.
At 11, he took some money his father had given him to buy shoes and bought a
guitar instead. With his friends, he starting making stuff up—rhymes and
melodies, “whatever it took to keep the girls around,” he says. Words have
always come easily to him. “Once I get the music, the lyrics just come
natural,” Finley explains. “All you’ve got to do is look around. Just about
anything you’d want to write about, somebody’s going through it. It’s hard to
miss. Every day is a song, really.”
As a performer, Finley cut his teeth in the Army. He joined
at 17 and was stationed in Germany working on helicopters. He got a secondary
MOS (Military Occupational Specialty) as an entertainer and started leading his
own band. They had a big repertoire, but specialized in soul and R&B—songs
by Joe Simon, Tyrone Davis, Isaac Hayes, Marvin Gaye. Both the US servicemen
and the European crowds loved it. During these years, Finley honed the art of
capturing and keeping an audience, “making the magic happen.”
Back in Bernice, Louisiana, Finley found that leading a
band—without the strictures of the military keeping everybody on time and in
place—was thankless and unsustainable. So he sharpened his solo act and played
out whenever he could. He also began working as a carpenter, a profession he
maintained for decades. Now legally blind, Finley can no longer build houses.
He can still tear them down though, so Music Maker is working with Finley to
keep the gigs coming and help connect him to new audiences. In 2016, he made a
splash playing with the Music Maker Revue at the prestigious Globalfest in New York City, gaining
critical praise from NPR and The New York Times.
“Here I am at my age, just now fulfilling my childhood
dream,” Finley says with his warm and ever-present smile. “It’s like the song
says, ‘Age Don’t Mean a Thing.’ See, you’ve got to hold to your dream; don’t ever
let somebody tell you what you can’t do.” When he was younger, Finley would
play 6 or 7 hours straight (10 hours straight, once) if the people wanted it.
Still today, he brings a workingman’s ethic to performance; he plays hard and
respects his audience. “Without the fans,” he says, “You’re nothing really. It
doesn’t matter how good you are; you’ve got to be able to convince the people
that you’re worth their investment.” Most nights, Finley will have you
convinced before the end of the first song.
