A Parcel of Rogue(s)

The statute of limitations is well up on good actor/bad album jokes. Besides, Tim Robbins, who has just released his debut album Tim Robbins and the Rogues Gallery Band, has plenty of pedigree. His mother was a choral singer, his father a stalwart of the Greenwich Village '60s folk boom. Plus, in 1992, Tim and his brother David composed the songs for Robbins's directorial debut Bob Roberts, which recast protest folk as right-wing dogma.

“It was fun, because me and Dave were taking songs that we knew from growing up and we were like, 'Let's do our version of that one,” Robbins says. “'What Did The Teacher Tell You In School Today' is based on an old Tom Paxton song. He used to have an act with my dad and they're still friends and I ran into Tom many years later and he said, 'When I first heard that it kind of shocked me... And then I was kind of honoured!'”
Robbins was also responsible for assembling the stellar cast (Steve Earle, Patti Smith, Tom Waits, Bruce Springsteen, Johnny Cash, Eddie Vedder and Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan) that provided the songs for the 1995 Dead Man Walking soundtrack.
“All the people you mentioned have profoundly moved me with their music and their words, and also with the way they lived their lives, the choices they make and the stories they tell and the conviction they bring to the world around them,” Robbins testifies. “Getting to know them was a great honour. When I did the Dead Man Walking album, Patti and Steve hadn't done anything for quite a while. Steve had been in prison and Patti had been raising her family in Michigan, and I felt like that film was kind of a great filmmaking experience, but just as importantly for me it was a touchstone for what I wanted to do with music.
“My brother created such a brilliant score for that album, and the – for want of a better word – audacity it took for me to contact my songwriting heroes and ask them to write songs based on this film that I made... I don't know where I got the balls to do that, but it wound up in a lot of great friendships for me, people that I've remained close to. I was blessed to know Johnny Cash before he passed and got to be his friend."
Robbins's own album, produced by Hal Willner, pitches dark and tender songs against an improvisatory seafaring gypsy vibe. Robbins is a fan of big, unruly bands, not least among them The Pogues, Arcade Fire and the Seeger Sessions.
"That Seeger Sessions band is really great. And the Pogues I will always love, one of my favourite bands. I saw them a couple of years ago on St Patrick's Day in New York at Roseland, and I got the chance to play with Shane in Dublin when we did the Rogues Gallery concert.”
That solo album, however, had been in the works for a while before Robbins joined the Sea Chanteys troupe.
“It kind of started after one of the memorial services for Robert Altman, who was a huge influence on me and a great friend and mentor,” he recalls. “I was out in Los Angeles after the memorial at his widow Katherine's house and I ran into Hal, who I hadn't seen for a while. He'd worked on Short Cuts, and I met him before when I had hosted Saturday Night Live, and we caught up and talked about music and I told him about some of my songs.
“I didn't think much of it until about a year later. I was in a period where a film wasn't coming together, and I have this voice that says if things go wrong you can't sulk, so the first thing I did after the film fell apart was I went and did fifteen songs by myself in the studio. Then I ran into Hal a couple of months later and played them for him, and it was his excitement and his energy that made the album happen. He was sure there was an album in there. And he also said, 'I have the band for you.' He's a genius. He's a great guy too. For me he's an angel, one of those people who came along and helped me through a difficult time.”
Did he feel the need to take command of the sessions and lead the musicians as he would with a company of actors?
“I think it's a different thing. The musicians I've met and worked with have been super-generous and open. The thing that separates good musicians from bad I believe is the ability to listen, so those that listen tend to be a more generous kind of people. I know what you're talking about though, that feeling of walking on a set and having to impress a bunch of actors. I only had that fear one time when I did my first film Bob Roberts, and I got over that pretty quickly. One of the things I learned from Robert Altman was it's okay to say, 'I don't know'. You're looking at your hero and he's considered a genius and an auteur and you ask him a question and he goes, 'I don't know – what do you think?' And it immediately makes it a safe environment to be creative in. You don't have to worry about the genius in the room.”
Robbins was raised Catholic in a bohemian background. Ideal subject matter for a songwriter, one presumes.
“Yeah,” he laughs. “Do I have to thank the Catholic Church?!!"
Well, for many of us brought up in the faith, it's our first experience of theatre.
“It was mine. Were you an altar boy? I'm not making any accusations, but I had a priest who took all the altar boys to a film one time in Times Square, and he chose to take us to see Deliverance. Now one could make the supposition that based on the title of the film, the priest thought it had something to do with religion (laughs), but it was a little creepy.
“But at the same time growing up there was that young nun who was turned on by the world around her in Greenwich Village, there were a few of them at the school I was at, the post-Vatican II nun who was interesting and nurturing and socially involved. There were some good people. Sister Helen Prejean for example.
“But some of the greatest music comes out of gospel. I think it's all connected. I think a good song speaks to your heart and even deeper, call it what you will, the spirit or the soul. It has something to do with more than just romantic or carnal love. There can be great songs about that, but the ones that get deep for me are the ones about soul love, something that's about the spirit, or a human connection that is mind-boggling and deep and profound and confusing, and that ultimately leads to poetry. Those of us who are lucky enough find the Leonard Cohens of the world; they can lead us to grace in the same way that our faith is supposed to.”

Tim Robbins & The Rogues Gallery Band is out now on [PIAS] Recordings. They play The Academy on September 23 for Arthur's Day and Whelan's, Dublin on September 26.