![]() And I thought I should tell it, because a lot of people don’t know anything about that kind of life, especially young people-they’ve probably never thought a thing about it.”Īs the tunesmith remembers it, he was out in the fields with his folks before he could walk. “There’s no fairy tales in there-it’s my true history. “And it’s all true, and that’s the interesting thing about it,” he explains of Sharecropper’s Son. “And I think we had four days to do the recording for that comic book, but we did it in three or four hours, so it was like, ‘Damn! This was meant to happen!’ So we just started working together, and I came back home and wrote the album Goin’ Platinum, and then I wrote the one we’re promoting now.” He felt compelled to finally relate his surreal life story in song, since so many new fans had asked about it when he met them on two Platinum tours up and down the East and West Coasts. “Dan had written about four songs that he wanted me to do the vocals on for that comic book,” says Finley. But if they’ve got the goods-like Finley-the team can knock out an Easy Eye album in an efficient week. Naturally, he kept the partnership going by producing his protege’s autobiographical new Sharecropper’s Son, too, and tapping into his roots in soul (“Country Boy’’), roadhouse blues (“Country Child,” “Souled Out on You”), chapel-hushed Gospel (“All My Hope”), and even a CCR-ish chooglin’ oomph on “Make Me Feel Alright.” Finley happens to write most of his material, which dovetails nicely with Auerbach’s laissez-faire, Chips-Moman-inspired studio approach-he’s carefully assembled a crack team of Nashville session vets, such as keyboardist Bobby Wood, drummer Gene Chrisman and guitarist Billy Sanford, and if the singer doesn’t have the songs, he’ll co-write with them until they do. It’s why Auerbach brought Finley into the Easy Eye fold with the Louisiana native’s Goin’ Platinum, an old-school R&B record that he helmed in 2017. ![]() So when he dubs his 67-year-old signing Robert Finley “the greatest living soul singer,” he’s not whistling “Dixie”-it’s a fair and carefully studied assessment, and praise that’s not given lightly. With every move he makes, the benevolent auteur is celebrating not only the traditional music he grew up loving, but also its infinite future possibilities. As soon as the duo went on a recent hiatus, he reinvested his earnings in his own label and Nashville recording studio-both dubbed Easy Eye-and put his retro-keen ears to work inking and producing promising acts both old and young, like a Roy Orbison-evocative Dee White, the soulful British diva Yola, and Shannon Shaw from Shannon & The Clams, whom he repositioned as a ’60s-stylish country thrush. There are few modern artists who have followed the karmic pay-it-forward rule better than Black Keys frontman Dan Auerbach.
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