A Unique Talent: Robinella at European Street

Robinella presented a smiling, quirky Southern belle countenance on stage at European Street. She talked to her audience and told us road stories as she performed her original repertoire of songs. I was struck by her “aw-shucks” persona, which greatly enhanced her artistic on-stage magnetism. The audience loved her. Frankly, I was instantly smitten by her songs, which were sung with a distinctly high soprano voice and a unique timbre that came off like sipping a mint julep on a summer afternoon–all sweetness with a kick.
Her solo act is somewhere between introspective romanticism and drudging cynicism. Her songs speak of love gone bad, superficial women, love gone good, and other personal subjects of her life as a singer/songwriter and artist. She even makes her own T-shirts. She purchased the screen printing equipment so that she could feature her own artwork on her shirts. Robinella is special – a diamond in the rough among so many poseurs and imitators.
Halfway through her set, Robinella launched one of her endearing road stories, the gist of which involved her ill-fated trip to New York City hauling a trailer. One of the trailer’s wheels went flying off and she had to do emergency repairs on the road. When she got to NYC, she parked her rig on the street and went out with friends, when she came back her guitars had been stolen out of her SUV. Just prior to that, her husband called and said the divorce was final. All this in one day was worth a story. So she bought another Gibson acoustic guitar but, her now ex-husband had always changed her strings, and she confessed that after playing professionally for more than ten years, she had never changed a string. That night at the European Street, she broke a string and had to change it for the first time.
As a songwriter, Robinella composes intricate and catchy songs like ‘Break It Down Baby’–a tasty little ditty with lyrics that say “break it down baby, you can show me the way.” Robinella sings it with seductive vocal improvisations. ‘Down the Mountain’ comes off with a jazzy rhythm and speaks of life’s ups and downs. “I started down the mountain several years ago… seems I could move faster falling down life’s path alone.... I was searching for some answers…”
Robinella vocally improvises to her clever chordal rhythms. It hovers on the fringe of jazz, but hangs in the folk-mode by a thread. Of course, this makes her music difficult to categorize, but more importantly, it makes it vital and creative– a stand-out in the legions of others out there. Robinella, like Kate Bush, lets her music take her in whatever direction she needs to go to express emotional honesty, and thus, it’s uncompromising and not written in any particular genre. This sets her apart –framing her in an unlimited creative interval–from zero to infinity.
Robinella’s albums contain a variety of instrumentation floating in and out of the music, including mandolin, fiddle, and even a pedal steel. Unlike her solo performance at European Street, which was much more intimate. Her folksy stories are so heartfelt and “golly-gee-whiz,” she had the audience in her palm. Men and women fell in love with her as she spun her poetry set to music and told her tales of a woman out on the big cruel super-slab to oblivion.
‘Oh So Sexy’ takes off with a funky rhythm about a lonely woman at the bar. A lively electric fiddle comes in to enhance Robinella’s spin on the bar pick up. “I believe the smoke is a screen that keeps us apart...Oh so sexy....Look for the ones that catch my attention.” It’s a song to which all people can relate. We’ve all been there at one time or another–men and women.
“I fall in love as much as I can...love is here and then it’s gone,” Robinella sings cynically, disbelieving that, for her, love can last as she travels from one town to the next. She laid her soul bare and opened up her heart to her audience leaving a permanent impression of admiration for her musical art. And that is her greatest gift.