In his 4th studio album in seven years, Finley isn’t slowing down. His latest could be his greatest.
Slow, heavy winds rustle the cypress trees rising from deep, murky waters. There’s a warm, dampy stillness. Even the air waits to be nudged along. Sunlight flitters through the trees, alligators hide beneath the surface of the muddy water, and expectations are subverted with the bubbling, bursting energy in the depths of the swamps and rivers in Louisiana.
Age Don’t Mean a Thing for the swaggering baritone Robert Finley, in his fourth studio album Black Bayou. Combining a gravelly gravitas with an unyielding ebullience, Black Bayou mixes rage with contemplation, sorrow with zestful vitality. The album is deliberately rough around the edges, flooded with fervor and throbbing funk grooves, quiveringly intense guitar solos, and a rugged, humid vocal texture that Louisiana’s Black Bayou shares.
Acclaimed producer Dan Auerbach, guitarist and vocalist for the Grammy-winning Black Keys, continued his multi-album collaboration with Finley for this album. First introduced to each other after Finley’s debut, Auerbach’s label has released all of his albums following. Finley toured across the country to sold-out rooms as part of Auerbach’s Easy Eye Sound Revue and it’s easy to see why.
The former military helicopter technician turned carpenter turned musician turns 70 this year but sings with a hypnotic fervor that’s gonna get me out of bed in the morning. With a story that’s just as charming as he is, Finley is a case-study in defiance. He’s not new to music, purchasing his first guitar for $19.95 instead of shoes at age 11. After his dad died in a car-crash at 17, he joined the military and was stationed abroad. In a twist that feels like folklore, he received a secondary MOS (Military Occupational Specialty) and became the director of his own band and toured across Europe. After he was discharged, he played in prisons and in churches, in bars or wherever else he could in his hometown of Bernice, Louisiana.
“Been around the world, and I seen some of everything,” Finley raspily croons on “Livin’ Out a Suitcase” over a grungy strutting bassline, the bluesy harmonica intertwining with hypnotic utterings by a weeping guitar. Finley’s power is unadulterated, guttural and unabashedly honest. He rumbles softly, “My best years are behind me / Because of my age / But I won’t quit living ’til I’m dead in my grave”, ending the line with searing falsetto harmonies, a lifetime of wisdom and experience encapsulated in every line, within each breath that ends each triumphant vibrato.
He lost his wife and home at 60, yet here he sings at 70, basking and sometimes busking in the warm glory of a strong Louisiana summer day. His music is a celebration, each song wringing life out of each second, dropping it straight to the soul, making its way out in golden whisky tones. His lyrics mirror his spontaneity; both messily improvised and profusely profound.
“Alligator Bait,”about Finley’s grandfather taking him hunting in swampy waters, using boy Finley as (you guessed it) alligator bait is more story, less song. A single guitar strums quietly, the drums and bass work together to create a propulsive groove, Finley narrates this in an earthy voice as deep as the river. The first line is all you need to hear to be utterly convinced that this is going to be a good one. “I stepped on a log and the log moved // And I didn’t know what to do, so my Grandpa said // Boy, you stepped on an Alligator back//Lotta kids got ate like that.” You haven’t heard of anything like this before, yet it’s no surprise.
His last album, Sharecropper’s Son, released in 2021, was an autobiographical, balladic work. “Souled Out On You” has Finley belting “After all we’ve been through/ I’m just souled out on you” with the horns, falsetto heartbreak accompanying a tragic minor piano accompaniment. Saxophone lines interject politely, the guitar riffs add a touch of the blues, but Finley’s rawness is the center of attention. Title track “Sharecropper’s Son” first hints at the style which we find rampant in Black Bayou. That is, a look inward to find the fire still burns fiercely, that 70 long years have yet to tamper the flame. An energetic spring away from the introspective, soulful ballads like “All My Hope” whose chorus proclaims “All my hope is in Jesus / Thank god my yesterday’s are gone” in sweet and slow enveloping tones becomes the trembling “Gospel Blues” in the latest, where he exclaims frantically “But in order to get to Heaven/You got to go through hell every now and then”. The remorse and fear transformed to a welcome embrace of life (and god’s) ways.
Finley’s energy is unfiltered and unmistakable, harshly tugging at heartstrings, deftly defying misfortune, age and expectations. Black Bayou delivers jagged melodies, creating deep bogs of the Blues, dark swamps of Soul and fens of Funk with a little bit of humor and a whole lot of swagger.