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[SPEAKER_01]: Today's episode with Robert Finley was originally aired on March 5th 2021.
[SPEAKER_01]: I hope that you enjoy the show.
[SPEAKER_01]: Our guest this week, Kales from Louisiana, and spent a lifetime playing music, only to find commercial success in his golden years.
[SPEAKER_01]: Robert Finley was born in 1954, one of eight children.
[SPEAKER_01]: Finley helped his family who were a sharecroppers, picked cotton throughout his childhood during the Jim Crow era south.
[SPEAKER_01]: His father was a deeply religious man, and banned playing any blues music in their household.
[SPEAKER_01]: Philly's early musical career was mainly singing gospel music in church and in a family gospel quartet.
[SPEAKER_01]: Later he discovered popular music and became a fan of Elvis Presley, Jimmy Hendrix, Chuck Berry, Ray Charles, James Brown, and Bobby Womack.
[SPEAKER_01]: After a stint in the military, he returned to civilian life and worked as a carpenter for many years.
[SPEAKER_01]: When his eyesight began to fail him, the power of prayer led him to a career in music that began at a point in life when many professional musicians are considering retirement.
[SPEAKER_01]: He caught his break when he was discovered busking in Helena, Arkansas, and given a shot on the hit TV show, America's got talent where he reached the semi-finals.
[SPEAKER_01]: The black keys front man, Dan Hourback, became a fan around that time, and not only produced a pair of albums for
[SPEAKER_01]: since then Robert Finley has toured in 10 countries and appeared on PBS's newsout.
[SPEAKER_01]: The New York Times says that he is playing retro soul and blues that sounds fresh, thanks to the only thing truly old fashioned about Mr. Finley, his commitment to putting on a great show.
[SPEAKER_01]: NPR's World Café says that Finley's story is a quintessential American one of perseverance.
[SPEAKER_01]: And Rolling Stone, poignantly noted, of his star-crossed path.
[SPEAKER_01]: He lost his wife, his house, and his vision before becoming an undisputed star.
[SPEAKER_01]: Mr. Finley and I caught up on the phone earlier this week, and I was able to hear about his journey so far.
[SPEAKER_01]: Mr. Robert Finley, thanks so much for being on the working songwriter podcast.
[SPEAKER_01]: From what I've read, your childhood looked a bit different than the childhoods of many kids born now in the 21st century and in 2021, it seems like your childhood had a bit more work than it did play.
[SPEAKER_01]: Can you kind of describe to our listeners how you grew up?
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, um,
[SPEAKER_02]: I grew up, as they ever said, you know, the sharecroppers son, I had seven siblings, four board, three girls, which I'm the youngest of the son, and one daughter, the youngest, I mean one sister that's younger than me.
[SPEAKER_02]: So, I kind of got the last thing, you know, it's
[SPEAKER_02]: but it was a whole lot hard on them done it was on maybe a hundred and simply because I just went old enough to really to pull my weight in the field.
[SPEAKER_02]: But just being water boil or making sure everybody had lunch on time those were things that that you would if you could walk you wouldn't do how they do you know.
[SPEAKER_02]: At least, you know, my poor was basically pumping water and making sure that the horses and cows had water and the news when they came in from the field.
[SPEAKER_02]: And, you know, we did things like having mom with children, we had the over-ing tight wash and then, actually, we thought we were playing and we realized that it was actually
[SPEAKER_02]: but to be able to put the clothes through the ringer and I, you know, have my share of the real board and it was, I, I, that the song, say was hard, but it was fair, I guess.
[SPEAKER_02]: Everybody, whatever you was big enough to do, that's what you did, but school was not an option we didn't have time for that.
[SPEAKER_02]: We got to go to school, maybe three months out of a year.
[SPEAKER_02]: And that was the only time that there wasn't anything going on in the field.
[SPEAKER_02]: It was really a, you know, you pick it.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, you're planting.
[SPEAKER_02]: If you're not planting it, you're called a vaginal, you're honing.
[SPEAKER_02]: You're not honing at your heart with some of it.
[SPEAKER_02]: And even stuff that we,
[SPEAKER_02]: They've dried out in the field, you know, that was a job too to sit around and share the peas and that was so that you'd have some a plant for next year.
[SPEAKER_02]: So we raised our own food and I say, I still think we, this year, probably the middle got our share of cooks, everything was pretty much hammered down.
[SPEAKER_02]: But you know, you
[SPEAKER_02]: Every year it's going to be better next year, but they never got any better, too.
[SPEAKER_02]: Fine.
[SPEAKER_02]: My brothers got old enough and wise enough, just decided they didn't want to be farmers.
[SPEAKER_02]: And once the old brothers, you know, we did make an agreement with a mom and dad that they would have them gathered across their dead planet, but they don't count on the training
[SPEAKER_02]: A.O.
[SPEAKER_02]: left home at her age.
[SPEAKER_01]: Was your dad, were your parents upset that they didn't continue on in that line of work or were they glad that they were moving on to other types of work that might have been easier?
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, my brothers, uh, sitting out and talking to my mom and just told her that that's not what they wanted to be.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so, um,
[SPEAKER_02]: She'd see that and talked to my dad about it.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so they, once they agreed to it, that they wasn't going to do it anymore, my dad was also a carpenter by trade.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so he built a house.
[SPEAKER_02]: It wasn't.
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, they're walking distance from a couple miles from where we were born, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, I was raised at, you know.
[SPEAKER_02]: But it was in the community, you know, the first time that I never had neighbors across the street, a mixed door.
[SPEAKER_02]: So, you know, that was all getting used to, because normally when we walking the yard, it wasn't anything there, but us, and then I out, I was in the, you know, and I'll get out chicken to it.
[SPEAKER_02]: But it was a whole different lifestyle.
[SPEAKER_02]: It was like almost like moving from the,
[SPEAKER_02]: country to the city to actually move in a community where there was other kids you know, and actually have played time.
[SPEAKER_01]: Right.
[SPEAKER_02]: Um, but uh, it and like I said, uh, I was probably the only one that wanted to go back because I didn't know
[SPEAKER_02]: I missed it all the things that we used to play on, and I knew all the trails and stuff through the woods, so I was kind of, I had to get used to being around people trying to truth you know.
[SPEAKER_02]: Other than, you know, at school, but to be able to actually get up and walk across the street and talk to a neighbor, something that was all needed me.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so it was an actual big step up from the line that I grew up in.
[SPEAKER_02]: I started school at age of seven because my birthday was like February 13 and you had a certain deadline so I couldn't start a school at six so I started at age of seven.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm still got to go very little, you know.
[SPEAKER_02]: But like I said, those three months would be the time of the way you should get on the rocks.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then we'd be like absent unless the year into a month.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so there was no way you could keep up with the class.
[SPEAKER_02]: And there was no way, you know, nobody that could
[SPEAKER_02]: on a lot of what he called Edge.
[SPEAKER_02]: I missed that on the education as for the books.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: But I got a lot of stuff that the people that was going to school did get.
[SPEAKER_02]: And that was like mother with and survival.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I learned how to live off the land.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like a living condition, it's the world, every city kid would gave up, but to us, it was there, you know, my dad hunted at night, work on day, hunt on night, but, you know, he come home with whatever he brought home, that's what we ate, so, you know, it's like,
[SPEAKER_02]: The raccoon would like go on my steak, you know.
[SPEAKER_02]: And the possum tastes pretty good.
[SPEAKER_02]: I think about the belly hill building sometime I look at, you know, some of the recipes that are granted would cook up, but my mom could take a fish here and make a fish here,
[SPEAKER_02]: I wish I had saved the recipe, you know, because it, it, it, it, it, it, uh, it was just, it was just that good, you know, uh, uh, shit, you know, being small, you know, I, you, we rotate it, or what part of a trick and you would get, you know, but, uh, I would satisfy with the neck and the feet, and I didn't know no better.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, yeah, so I'm making feet and I got a little bit of a complaint there.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, before you know what I had, I was on the list to get away.
[SPEAKER_02]: But it's still rotated, it wasn't, you know, we were, we had tiny chickens, we had hogs, we had cows, but we didn't do a lot of cow killing, you know, most of the cows were milked.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then when they were too old, the milk, they were ready for slaughter to sell bonds so that, you know, that, so it'd be some cash coming in to play beat up.
[SPEAKER_02]: So, it ain't like we had a y'all full of cows that were eating steaks, you know, it wasn't like that.
[SPEAKER_02]: That was a teeth that they used to make off the cow feet.
[SPEAKER_02]: And it was good for fever and all this kind of stuff.
[SPEAKER_02]: All the old remedies.
[SPEAKER_02]: I, you know, sometimes to sit down, I just think about boom.
[SPEAKER_02]: But you know, I'm not a complaining guy.
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't want to pay the party.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm just grateful because I came from deep in the little
[SPEAKER_02]: And all the way into Hollywood, you know, and I always say, I made it from the cotton career to be able to hear it.
[SPEAKER_01]: So, so what did the music become a part of your life?
[SPEAKER_02]: All my dad and mom sung in a quiet pit.
[SPEAKER_02]: And as far as I can remember back, I always would be sitting on the front row.
[SPEAKER_02]: watching, you know, the, I love the piano player.
[SPEAKER_02]: As soon as I got in the choir, I got in the choir day to, I want to say a day to seven, a day and I, and I see it as close as I could to the piano player and watch
[SPEAKER_02]: Don't rehearse yourself.
[SPEAKER_02]: She would let me hit a, you know, let me bang on the piano for a second or two.
[SPEAKER_02]: I just want to hit one key, make one two sound because the same piano failure that we had at the church was also the music teacher at school.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so by her letting me.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I bought my first guitar at the age of 10 and actually I was supposed to be buying a price shoes and I had actually worked for the money and it was going to be my first time to pick out my own shoes without that actually going to pick them out for me.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so I had a $20 bill, and I went, maybe my friends walked to the store, which was about five or six miles a week.
[SPEAKER_02]: But that was none for kids playing, you know, walking and talking.
[SPEAKER_02]: But when we got there, just before we got to the shoe store, that was a store with a guitar in the women.
[SPEAKER_02]: called White Autos, but it was, you know, a auto door, and that was this beautiful guitar and the one that had a price on it for nineteen nine o'clock, and I had a twenty-dollar bill, so I talked to my friends and they said, man, if you buy a guitar, we will help you
[SPEAKER_02]: most of y'all still get to shoes.
[SPEAKER_02]: So my dad came home and worked at Eden, he wanted to see the shoes I bought and I had to get to her.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I never ever get to steak and he made you and spent all that money on his guitar and came play mama's baby.
[SPEAKER_02]: But I was determined to play mama's baby.
[SPEAKER_02]: But actually, the only way back
[SPEAKER_02]: week we saw all the way back from town that whole five miles I never could pick in it and I had this is on my fingers, you know, good shot business and for some reason I'd I'd bust them and start over again I just couldn't leave it alone.
[SPEAKER_02]: So we would be crawfishing.
[SPEAKER_02]: all the guys would go crawfish and you know on the ditch they ran behind I have and just a look at that bitch but we'd always be crawfish and there and I'd take my guitar out there and I'd play and I'd play and the guys were with her crawfish we'd call we you know we'd cook them and and
[SPEAKER_02]: when we cooked them, I got it, you know, I didn't have the crawfish because long as I was training the music, they gave me the crawfish.
[SPEAKER_02]: So it was kind of like, I was a celebrity on the crawfish whole day, 18.
[SPEAKER_01]: Never gets bullied.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I was like, man, I was like,
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, and that was a song out why you're treatment so bad, and I don't even know who wrote the song, why you're treatment so bad, but that was one of the first songs that I learned to actually play as a cover role, you know, as a cover song.
[SPEAKER_02]: But I guess I wrote my first song when we were playing, here's the deal, I wasn't used
[SPEAKER_02]: I wasn't used to go on the school, but a few months and I always had a big brother, a big sister on campus, but somebody looked out for me, but once they got out of the school, they just, you know, when they come up with fun, they just, they just went on the work, different fields.
[SPEAKER_02]: I had nobody really,
[SPEAKER_02]: got into the promo, all of them are baby sister and my only sister.
[SPEAKER_02]: Um, they were, they educated too.
[SPEAKER_02]: Everyone, my, maybe sister she, I think she'd quit in the 11 grade, everybody was quitting in the 11, 12 grade.
[SPEAKER_02]: If I remember my dad, I had did a, I had learned how to be a
[SPEAKER_02]: So one day, I was trying to hook you from school and the principal, somebody had broken his house and stole the money from the can of machines and the venom of machines.
[SPEAKER_02]: And he said to, everybody knew I knew how to do called the door.
[SPEAKER_02]: So he sent to the school and I don't think I
[SPEAKER_02]: I was in the fourth grade then, but he said for me to come and change the lock on the door.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I was wondering, what does don't count, was that's when they found out that I was
[SPEAKER_02]: But it was so much going on.
[SPEAKER_02]: I wasn't on one plan.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's so bad friends.
[SPEAKER_02]: We just walk across the campus and do the trail and meet in the woods and we shoot my woods.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, take cards all day for a nickel.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, back then, you're on the garden.
[SPEAKER_02]: I remember when lunch calls a nickel a day,
[SPEAKER_02]: then it finally went up to seven cent and then a dime.
[SPEAKER_02]: It got to 15 cents.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's just too much, folks.
[SPEAKER_02]: My dad, too many of us are sending a school.
[SPEAKER_02]: And, you know, a 15 cent a day, right, when that was up, you know.
[SPEAKER_02]: So, we started taking our lunch, the school, because I mean, back then,
[SPEAKER_02]: But I won't say I don't do that.
[SPEAKER_02]: I was old enough to go to work.
[SPEAKER_02]: My first job, I was that I made 25 out of the week.
[SPEAKER_02]: Man, it was, you know, you can tell me nothing.
[SPEAKER_02]: And 25 out of the week on Friday, I didn't even go home.
[SPEAKER_02]: I was great from on the field or to the club.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, it was a night club.
[SPEAKER_02]: If you hadn't said goodbye, I said you'd get a bottle of ripples.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, I remember one ripple was a quarter.
[SPEAKER_02]: Uh, and you'd get a call, a beautiful wine for a quarter.
[SPEAKER_02]: I also remember when, uh, friends I have with tobacco, my dad's told me how to roll, I used to roll his cigarettes.
[SPEAKER_02]: Uh, he was just having a can to have in a rolling with cigarettes.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I learned how to do that, just watching you.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so we were trying to entertain him and his friends were sitting around, he called me in the role of a singer and everybody thought that was fantastic.
[SPEAKER_02]: That, you know, sent me your kid to role of a singer in so fast.
[SPEAKER_01]: Were you talking music in those clubs too, Mr.
[SPEAKER_01]: Fiddler?
[SPEAKER_02]: That was this planned joke box.
[SPEAKER_02]: I was the first one to get to her in there.
[SPEAKER_02]: and they all know the club on top of the jukebox.
[SPEAKER_01]: All right.
[SPEAKER_02]: And it has me standing front of the jukebox and sitting putting the money in the jukebox.
[SPEAKER_02]: They put it in my hat.
[SPEAKER_01]: Right.
[SPEAKER_02]: And like, but you know, my dad and record was being caused but admitted to get my records.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know,
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I think he would get sent for court or something to put a whole court in that book.
[SPEAKER_02]: Just the idea, you know, that was showbiz.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I was playing in my dad's yard.
[SPEAKER_02]: And he told me, you know, I don't see that beans in my yard.
[SPEAKER_02]: He was working on a house and I could do and heard her go over there.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I was going to head a guitar, the drummer would be known to, you know, be the bottom out of the foot tub and, you know, whatever they could plan to make know it.
[SPEAKER_02]: Sometimes they would grab their mama, dad, part of a band, or some of them, try to kitchen and we'd all meet up from just play, but this day we'd try to play and, you know, but I didn't know my dad were that close at home and he was putting the top on
[SPEAKER_02]: He got down off the house and come over and run outside his yard and say, if y'all want to play that dead with music, go to the club, he just said it like that.
[SPEAKER_02]: Not thinking that we would go because I'd never been in the club, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: But we walked to the club and showed up to man, let us see anyway.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, he wouldn't know about it at all, he would.
[SPEAKER_02]: He had us in and he said, he first saying, he told me,
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, you know, your dad don't want you up here, and I see he didn't want to tell me to come up here.
[SPEAKER_02]: Because my dad used to go and actually, you know, literally, with my brother, then I have to club, just going there and making him come out, because he didn't believe in the videos, you know.
[SPEAKER_02]: So he would actually go in there and make him get out of the club,
[SPEAKER_02]: but they went right back so finally he just gave up and just and so on and at my time he told me he says I've been wearing myself out, whooping to all these boys trying to make them be something they but I'm not gonna hear it.
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't whoop through all these and they didn't want to do so I ain't always waged you don't want to be none don't be
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, so I was like, I'm pretty, but I know my dad loved this all because, you know, he went beyond and above to provide.
[SPEAKER_02]: He was a hell of a provider.
[SPEAKER_02]: He could take nothing and just, you know, make it, make the best out of it.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's what he was known for just singing and praying.
[SPEAKER_02]: He didn't play in an instrument, but he didn't need an instrument.
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, when he sung, they had an old footstone that you could hear it for miles so you could get to the church, you know, you could hear that.
[SPEAKER_02]: And people stumbling on that old wooden floor.
[SPEAKER_02]: So he didn't need, and I remember being just a little lad sitting on his knee.
[SPEAKER_02]: And once he starts singing, somebody would always come and get me off his knee.
[SPEAKER_02]: And he'd get up and he'd walk out of the church and, I don't know, he just, he's hopeful.
[SPEAKER_02]: He'd tear the church up every time and all the preachers would love for him to be in the congregation because they knew he couldn't sit there too long without he go into his
[SPEAKER_02]: worship the way.
[SPEAKER_01]: So that must be where you get some of your showmanship from then.
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, I guess so from sitting on his knee and walking on the attention that he would get now, I would say, yeah, my mom was kind of quiet, but she had a hell of a voice.
[SPEAKER_02]: And when she did cry, you know, uh, I, you say, like he
[SPEAKER_02]: but she didn't she didn't get the enjoyment out of that my dad did.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, my mom she was always quiet and real, strict on, really, as you but she was being the rules a little bit.
[SPEAKER_02]: Um, you know, and then sooner or later, I didn't know no better.
[SPEAKER_02]: I tell it, you know.
[SPEAKER_02]: And she used to let us listen to a little bit of stuff on the radio other than gospel.
[SPEAKER_02]: But I remember sitting in my dad as a loud while he was driving and that was posted on the air.
[SPEAKER_02]: We were going out of highway and it was posted on the air
[SPEAKER_02]: you know coming somewhere and there was one fall from we were and then Mississippi but you know that just across the line of the land and I always said I wanted to do you know I wanted posters of me I wanted all this stuff and I wanted that attention but I never would have
[SPEAKER_02]: I just turned six to seven and then I'm on no-one out of pretty much all over the world just about social media.
[SPEAKER_01]: This week's episode is brought to you by nation of heat records and my new album, The Diving Sun, to be released on March 19, 2021.
[SPEAKER_01]: Let's take a listen to the first single, Crescent Bridge.
[SPEAKER_01]: What began as a search for songs for a B-side album morphed into an obsessive remix and morphed again into a proper album process.
[SPEAKER_01]: This new album features songs from sessions from my album Windfall and from the flooding color, and also a handful of songs written and recorded during the COVID quarantine.
[SPEAKER_01]: The result is an album that's unlike any other I've ever produced, but which also stands
[SPEAKER_00]: It drives a dark, calm, low, hot, ribble with a gold car.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm here waiting on the dressing bridge.
[SPEAKER_00]: She's a true red red sad parlance, brown eyes.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm here waiting on the dressing bridge.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's entitled, Crescent Ridge from the forthcoming album, The Diving Sun.
[SPEAKER_01]: Go to jopugmusic.com to hear it in its entirety.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's common to hear about artists who are savants, who were discovered before most people finish college, who became a household name before most people own a home.
[SPEAKER_01]: But some of the most iconic artists don't find their voice and their path until much later in life.
[SPEAKER_01]: It seems like that's the case with Robert Finley.
[SPEAKER_01]: And there's a wonderful profile of another late blooming artist by Alex Haberstatt in the New York Times that I would love to quote in part here.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's regarding of all people Rodney Dangerfield.
[SPEAKER_01]: Imagine having no talent.
[SPEAKER_01]: Imagine being no good at all at something and doing it anyway.
[SPEAKER_01]: Then, after nine years failing at it and giving up in disgust and moving to Englewood, New Jersey and selling aluminum sighting.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then years later, trying to think again, though it wrecks your marriage and failing again.
[SPEAKER_01]: And eventually making a meticulous study of the thing and finding out that by eliminating every extraneous element, you could isolate what makes it work and just do that.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then, after becoming better at it than anyone who had ever done it, realizing that maybe you didn't need the talent that maybe its absence was a gift.
[SPEAKER_01]: These were the stations of the Via Dolorosa of Jacob Cohen, aka Rodney Dangerfield.
[SPEAKER_01]: At his peak, he was the funniest entertainer ever.
[SPEAKER_01]: That peak was long and coming, by the time he perfected his act, he was nearly 60.
[SPEAKER_01]: The one liners were impeccable, unimprovable.
[SPEAKER_01]: Dangerfield spent years on them.
[SPEAKER_01]: He once told an interviewer that it took him three months to work up six minutes of material for a talk show appearance.
[SPEAKER_01]: Lacking in-born ability, he studied the moving parts of a joke with an engineer's rigor.
[SPEAKER_01]: With some of his jokes, the angle between setup and punchline was so acute that it momentarily stunned the audience, requiring an extra beat to sink in in creating opportunities of timing.
[SPEAKER_01]: You can watch one that the clothes of a danger field set on the tonight show.
[SPEAKER_01]: The stand-up portion kills, but everyone knows the better part will happen at the host's desk, where Johnny Carson will gainly set him up.
[SPEAKER_01]: In the chair, danger field continues performing.
[SPEAKER_01]: The laughter is strangled then builds.
[SPEAKER_01]: As the tendrils of comprehension are still making their way through the audience, danger field turns to the guest next to him and says, what's new with you?
[SPEAKER_01]: Pandemonium erupts.
[SPEAKER_01]: Carson staggers out of his chair and laughs that hyena laugh that told you he was really laughing.
[SPEAKER_01]: Then looks at danger field and gasping for breath asks, I assume you're through.
[SPEAKER_01]: Danger field flashes a rare look of satisfaction.
[SPEAKER_01]: Can there be any sweeter revenge for all those years of getting no respect than achieving quantifiable perfection?
[SPEAKER_01]: Very famously, you kind of got your break onto the national stage later in life.
[SPEAKER_01]: Can you kind of describe to our listeners how that happened and how you came into the national consciousness in that way and what that was like for you?
[SPEAKER_02]: To be honest, I, what during my college of work come till, well, I got out of the military and well, actually, I was, I was doing music in the military.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I was done music before I went in the military.
[SPEAKER_02]: I played for the first group that I played for with the gospel bells.
[SPEAKER_02]: Then I started playing after I went in the service and come back.
[SPEAKER_02]: I started playing for the home and the fire, because that was a group that my mom saw him with.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I played for the home and the fire.
[SPEAKER_02]: And they, they are children.
[SPEAKER_02]: were, you know, they had a large family kids.
[SPEAKER_02]: And it was hard for the outdoors to rehearse, without the kids coming in and wanting to take part.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I wind up starting the group with the kids.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I call them brother Finland, the gospel sisters.
[SPEAKER_02]: And we're trying to freeze sponsors.
[SPEAKER_02]: for Sunday morning with brother Finley and the gospel sisters.
[SPEAKER_02]: So we actually would go down to the radio station and sing live every Sunday morning.
[SPEAKER_02]: And all I had to do was talk about the sponsors that was sponsored of to tell them who we were sponsored by, which with all local stores, grocery stores, laundry mat, service stations, you know,
[SPEAKER_02]: As I remember, it was a store called Gravity that had a laundry mat, and it was, you know, it was like the store and groceries to all combine, that was a store called C.A.
[SPEAKER_02]: Arena, which was basically the same.
[SPEAKER_02]: they are so Western gear along with their stuff, service station, and that was a cleanest that was on the corner.
[SPEAKER_02]: I think with the Griffin cleaners that, you know, it wasn't one cleaner in town, so everybody cleaned their clothes there, and I did a much for that.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then that was
[SPEAKER_02]: or did the genre, what's the major growth you're still?
[SPEAKER_02]: So between all of those schools, they were paying the little credit for the little radio spot.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so we did brother Finn and the guy officers.
[SPEAKER_02]: And it went on for quite a while until the kids still are getting grown.
[SPEAKER_02]: And they don't start moving about moving out, you know, leaving the state.
[SPEAKER_02]: So then the young boys, I called them the gospel brothers and we got them some radio play and stuff.
[SPEAKER_02]: But we stayed busy every Sunday night somewhere we would perform.
[SPEAKER_02]: So it was great, you know, for the kids, got them exposed to a lot of, you know, things
[SPEAKER_02]: But there were, you know, their parents did not want them singing the booze, you know, and so I had to stay with the gospel of wellness.
[SPEAKER_02]: I was, you know, managing that group.
[SPEAKER_02]: But life will give you the booze.
[SPEAKER_02]: So, you know, when Bill goes to coming in your name,
[SPEAKER_02]: And, you know, more bills coming in than income that originates to the booth, if you're ever going to have it, you'll get it from bills and problems.
[SPEAKER_02]: So, I went up marrying at that time one of the girls that were
[SPEAKER_02]: one of the daughters of, you know, one of the, of the group.
[SPEAKER_02]: Um, you're home in the fire.
[SPEAKER_02]: I, her mom and dad sung in the group.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so, I get being a run.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's all that they excuse to be around a lot.
[SPEAKER_02]: And we ain't hugged on tight.
[SPEAKER_02]: And, um, matter of fact, she got pregnant with, uh,
[SPEAKER_02]: My oldest daughter, the one that follows me around now, that takes my places and stuff, you know, the one of Christy.
[SPEAKER_02]: She's actually singing background on my next album.
[SPEAKER_02]: But she started singing when she was two years old.
[SPEAKER_02]: And she was singing on radio, okay, I may all year, it's Sunday morning.
[SPEAKER_02]: And everywhere we went, people wanted to see
[SPEAKER_02]: So it's only natural that she can't really help but do what she do because she's always done it.
[SPEAKER_02]: Then when she's all the love she's been the choir and the choir to quiet that soon.
[SPEAKER_02]: So she has a set of twin boards that's 16 and I actually bought them that first set of
[SPEAKER_02]: when they were four years old and she was like, dad, I work, I come in, I got to hear all this noise on my baby, just put him a little photo from the house, put him on the garage, but don't take this instrument.
[SPEAKER_02]: And now, she was so glad that I actually bought him the drums
[SPEAKER_02]: I bought him the guitars, and I gave him all guitars, and I gave him pianos, and I just just wanted to keep the tradition alive, and now I think my grandson may have been 12 years old, 13, when he became, actually became a minister of music at that church, and he's still the minister of music, he's auditioned.
[SPEAKER_02]: for dealing with world and walled issue in all kinds of stuff.
[SPEAKER_02]: And they tell me he passed the edition, but he was trying as an actor.
[SPEAKER_02]: But they know about his musical trade, but he's the kid can play any instrument that you put in front of everybody, you know, it just come natural for him.
[SPEAKER_00]: I gave him a guitar and
[SPEAKER_00]: And I went on a road when I came back.
[SPEAKER_02]: He was training.
[SPEAKER_02]: I gave him a load of songs and then did get a chance to arrange it.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I gave it to him and he did it in his own way.
[SPEAKER_02]: And since then, he's been writing and producing his own stuff and I'm like,
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm just, you know, I tell them all the time that I don't want them to have to go through what I had to go through to get a chance to just play one challenge.
[SPEAKER_02]: But it's all about being in the right place at the right time.
[SPEAKER_02]: It doesn't matter how good you are.
[SPEAKER_02]: If you don't display your challenge, nobody knows what you can do.
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, nobody knows you can cook a apple pie until you cook one and let somebody taste it, you know.
[SPEAKER_02]: Just sitting there saying, hey, I'm a great cook and you don't cook.
[SPEAKER_02]: And nobody tastes it.
[SPEAKER_02]: It doesn't mean anything.
[SPEAKER_02]: But if you decide that something you want to do, you can, and you believe you can do it.
[SPEAKER_02]: No matter how much you believe you can do it, it's not going to work until somebody else.
[SPEAKER_02]: Here you do it, I'll see you do it.
[SPEAKER_02]: Because, friends, it's what makes y'all.
[SPEAKER_02]: You can be born a star and then never be recognized.
[SPEAKER_02]: You can be born with all kinds of gifts and never be recognized well.
[SPEAKER_01]: So, what do you feel like for you to finally be recognized for what you're so talented at?
[SPEAKER_02]: To be honest, I'm so grateful,
[SPEAKER_02]: The main test is to stay humble.
[SPEAKER_02]: Um, really not say that.
[SPEAKER_02]: I always tell my grandkids and kids if I can get up in the morning.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I can put the same hat on my head that I will yesterday.
[SPEAKER_02]: Then my head didn't swell overnight.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, so you gotta be cautious of how you conduct yourself.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I mean, I've seen people that are great talent, but messed up attitudes and self-centered.
[SPEAKER_02]: And they're arrogant and all of a sudden, they're better than everybody else than more than everybody else.
[SPEAKER_02]: So after why nobody else wants to deal with.
[SPEAKER_02]: I know guys that are really great musicians,
[SPEAKER_02]: the ungrateful, they become the least better thing, tick them all, they talk to everybody, like they're on the dog or like they got a tail on themselves.
[SPEAKER_02]: And that would destroy you.
[SPEAKER_02]: Just as fast as it will get you discovered.
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, you can get out there and you can do your best and people love you.
[SPEAKER_02]: mistreat those mistreating people and looking down on people.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm too good and I got time for you don't bother me and that is that is self-destructive.
[SPEAKER_02]: So it doesn't matter me.
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean I realize now I need to be careful and prayed up and prayed up dealing with the public.
[SPEAKER_02]: But
[SPEAKER_02]: appreciate you.
[SPEAKER_02]: People don't have to buy your music.
[SPEAKER_02]: There's no law of saying they got to buy your music.
[SPEAKER_02]: You got to have a driver license to drive, but you don't have to buy the music today and so people don't have to love you.
[SPEAKER_02]: So it was a great feeling to be
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, if I go by a friend's house and they kill in the hog, I'll jump in the hog being a little mute and because I don't ever want to get what I come from.
[SPEAKER_02]: I could have did my videos anywhere in the world, I did videos in Hollywood, I did videos in Los Angeles, I did videos overseas, in France and
[SPEAKER_02]: Spain and Italy, I got clips of all of it, but when they came to do this new album, to really grasp what was about, I decided to take it back to the country.
[SPEAKER_02]: And that's why I named the album Sheercropper Son, and that's why we went to beloved
[SPEAKER_02]: to video it.
[SPEAKER_02]: I went back in the cotton field and people who was like even even even my producers were like man.
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't know how even after black man to go back in the cotton field doing the day and time.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm like I really wouldn't have had it no other way.
[SPEAKER_02]: Because anything else would have been alive or make believe.
[SPEAKER_02]: And if you if you if you
[SPEAKER_02]: It's a little later, the truth's going to come up.
[SPEAKER_02]: So if you start off telling the truth, then you don't have no reason to lie.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I mean, you know, and I got to tell people all the time, I'm not a politician.
[SPEAKER_02]: So there's no excuse for me lying to the public.
[SPEAKER_02]: Just keep it real.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's where I come from.
[SPEAKER_02]: That you know what I'm saying?
[SPEAKER_02]: I thank God, I don't have to go back.
[SPEAKER_02]: you know, I went back to display the roots from which I come from.
[SPEAKER_02]: I didn't go back because times was hard and I just had to pick some more cut.
[SPEAKER_02]: I stood in the middle of cutting for you and I danced and I didn't pick now one bowl, you know, because I didn't have to.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm here this time because I want to be not because I have to be.
[SPEAKER_02]: And the song, this album,
[SPEAKER_02]: was more or less Senate, not about I can see, not about I can dance, not about I could write, but it was the tear of my story, and you know, to be able, for a one time, nobody wanted to hear nothing I had to say, you know what I'm saying?
[SPEAKER_02]: And I almost became a minister because that was the only place that you could talk to a whole lot of people and not be interrupted, you know, when the preacher's doing the sermon, they might not like it, but they're not going to get up and say, hold up, raise, wait a minute, you know, raise yourself, then happen.
[SPEAKER_02]: So, because his more people want to hear the truth, don't it is one of the nodded truth.
[SPEAKER_02]: So, I'm like, okay, and at one time I did,
[SPEAKER_02]: I thought I was called the preacher, but I realized that it wasn't God that called me in a preach.
[SPEAKER_02]: It was the people because I could sing and I could play to get to her and I knew I raised up on the Bible.
[SPEAKER_02]: Somebody said, you ought to be a preacher and I said, okay.
[SPEAKER_02]: And, uh,
[SPEAKER_02]: So that's one of those things where that was not my calling.
[SPEAKER_02]: If it is, it's more more, I would say a teacher during the preacher.
[SPEAKER_02]: Now if I had the preacher sermon, I mean, I, I could because I, I've done that before, but I, I'm like, why am I sitting in the
[SPEAKER_02]: like I got all the answers when I'm the probably the most confused person in the church.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I stepped down from it.
[SPEAKER_02]: I didn't lose my faith, but then lose my beliefs, but I knew that I wouldn't live in the life I was talking about.
[SPEAKER_01]: What role does your faith play in your creative process and what role does your faith play in your life as an artist?
[SPEAKER_02]: I think, with that the faith, you know, because you've got to believe in something.
[SPEAKER_02]: You've got to believe in something or somebody.
[SPEAKER_02]: And with my childhood upbringing,
[SPEAKER_02]: and then with the expenses I've had.
[SPEAKER_02]: See, I, in 1976, I was in an automobile accident, me and my brother.
[SPEAKER_02]: I broke seven bones, you know, plunged my lawn.
[SPEAKER_02]: So, I would never
[SPEAKER_02]: so much of stuff that they said I wouldn't recover from.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I was discharged from the Herman Hospital, there in Houston, in the winter, and until I had two real kids, I had one for every day, and one for the weekend, if I
[SPEAKER_02]: But they didn't have the leaky wheelchair, the scooters and stuff like that.
[SPEAKER_02]: But my own sister walked in the room and looked at me and chucked around ran out because she didn't recognize me.
[SPEAKER_02]: Uh, where he's flipping pumping out, I don't my lawns, they, you see the buckles, and then was pumping out in, and I remember my mom on that never, and we had never really been out of lose that.
[SPEAKER_02]: But my brother brought her to see me because the doctor said, I had seven to eight hours
[SPEAKER_02]: you know, to live because of my condition and my mind went back to childhood in my upbringing and then I started, I started to pray and everything started to turn around and so it makes
[SPEAKER_02]: I was moving around in the hospital so much every time they came to my bed.
[SPEAKER_02]: I was never there.
[SPEAKER_02]: I remember getting on the table that the feed you on, I would get on it for a little lot of the bed and get on it and I had one good leg and I ride it and drag the other one and it was constantly having to find me and putting it back in the bed and to find
[SPEAKER_02]: But Dr. said that I was an inspiration to him and all the other patients.
[SPEAKER_02]: Because I just thought, I was in the phone and who held the phone was for.
[SPEAKER_02]: I would take it to the bedside, you know, we had what you could plug the phone in beside anybody's there.
[SPEAKER_02]: But as soon as they on the hook me from that slang
[SPEAKER_02]: I started getting up when I found out I could actually sit up on the side of the bed.
[SPEAKER_02]: Then I leaned on my table and I just was scooped and rolled around where I could go.
[SPEAKER_02]: And finally, the doctor just told me, he might as well sit in the home, because we can't keep it with him.
[SPEAKER_02]: Anyway, so when my brother come and got me, he took those two little tears and I stayed
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, we were all young then.
[SPEAKER_02]: Six.
[SPEAKER_02]: Twenty seven.
[SPEAKER_02]: So he was feeling, you know, in this young prime too.
[SPEAKER_02]: So he would be going all the time.
[SPEAKER_02]: And what I would do, I would scoop down the stairs.
[SPEAKER_02]: We lived there.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, and the long staircase.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I could sit down and scoop down the stairs.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I get in my wheelchair.
[SPEAKER_02]: And the kids in the neighborhood.
[SPEAKER_02]: would push me around, they pushed me to the store.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I just bound all the pop-ups and chips as a ice cream and they just pushed.
[SPEAKER_02]: So every morning, that was of soccer kids in front of the store.
[SPEAKER_02]: In front of the door, they don't wait no minute.
[SPEAKER_02]: Scoot down, stand so they could push me to the store because that was, you know, they was going to get they can then ice cream.
[SPEAKER_02]: I got to say, Craig, probably do a lot of things.
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, just believing, I never, not believe.
[SPEAKER_02]: I've always played for churches to play gospel, but I've been only warning my family that ever would probably be saying the blue.
[SPEAKER_02]: I had a couple of times my brothers would sit in with me and something I was going to look as hell, but for them saying the blue,
[SPEAKER_02]: I'll all up bring it.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I guess I would be black sheep or the family.
[SPEAKER_01]: Did your father ever reconcile with that fact that you went on to sing when he was literally calling the Devil's music was he able to reconcile with you on that and that choice that you made?
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, not really because he passed and it ought to be back to that when I had just 2017.
[SPEAKER_02]: accepted it to the fact, you know, to where he was sponsored or supported, you know, he just, he felt, I left home when I was 15, uh, friend of mine's came home that I grew up with, and he, and uh, he came to pick up his brother to take him to New Orleans.
[SPEAKER_02]: And out of the blue, I just asked him could I go to, and
[SPEAKER_02]: So he said, yeah, he didn't care of that.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I got actually got in the car with about it.
[SPEAKER_02]: I didn't take hardly no clothes.
[SPEAKER_02]: I just couldn't change the clothes.
[SPEAKER_02]: And just so have when they came to pick me up, my dad drove up.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I told him I was trying to go to New Orleans.
[SPEAKER_02]: And he was like, you know, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no
[SPEAKER_02]: We need to mark the preacher, mom, whatever, you know, and I could change my voice.
[SPEAKER_02]: Um, and I guess that's one of the gifts that I use now in my music, it's the one from called Santa to anything between, called Santa and bass, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: Uh, but uh, I put a hat on, I was like, say I'm six feet tall, six feet full.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I put me on head on it's shape, so the pipe in the mouth and when the pipe was dropped, and I got a job working at a steel company.
[SPEAKER_02]: And wasn't long after being there.
[SPEAKER_02]: I was pretty much doing what I wanted to do, because I had learned everybody's job.
[SPEAKER_02]: I was just, well, somebody else was doing, I watched them.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I could do whatever they were doing.
[SPEAKER_02]: So the God just, while in the form of wherever they were just short as you had in the behind it, they just put me there.
[SPEAKER_02]: And God's working, I stepped on the nail.
[SPEAKER_02]: And it's weird.
[SPEAKER_02]: They showed me a building in the God's superintendent showed me a building of skyscrapers
[SPEAKER_02]: And they didn't take me to the dog.
[SPEAKER_02]: He told me to go there.
[SPEAKER_02]: And my mom and dad had always told me don't lie to the doctors.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I lied by my age, up until I got to the doctor, the doctor asked me how old I was.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I told him I was 15.
[SPEAKER_02]: And that's when I got my pink slip.
[SPEAKER_02]: But my mom, she could have sued the company
[SPEAKER_02]: If they were nice enough to give you a job, I'm not going to, you know, see them believe we have believed in soon and we didn't believe in welfare.
[SPEAKER_02]: My dad would not, he had too much pride to stand in the line and get to a commodity and they would call it an end, pretty much the same thing, but he had too much pride to
[SPEAKER_02]: So I see this like what a little bit they give it.
[SPEAKER_02]: We can be on harvest that out the field.
[SPEAKER_02]: Cause we had, you know, we, like I said, we had food.
[SPEAKER_02]: We drank our own corn, we drank our own peas.
[SPEAKER_02]: Matter of fact, we drank peas and corn on the same row and so the peas could run up the corn, start with, wouldn't have to bet over the picked up peas, you know, so it was, he had his own way of creating.
[SPEAKER_02]: We grow tomatoes, we grow the whole green, we grow the hair at the family.
[SPEAKER_02]: Then my dad, they would kill the hog.
[SPEAKER_02]: So we'd have, you know, pork chops in the hog.
[SPEAKER_02]: And they do the fat meat, told him, they cure it.
[SPEAKER_02]: They don't eat, you know, it's time you got home at mom and cook.
[SPEAKER_02]: You just take a knife and walk out in the smoke house.
[SPEAKER_02]: And cut your piece of meat, you know, uh, and uh, you know, dad would eat, eat, eat, come playing a bite, but he never, that was one of the things we could do and not get this at all, you know, we, we get stole about going out there, eating up a whole hand or something.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, we go out there to get some of the guns, but other than that, I think I had a poor childhood, but it was a good one.
[SPEAKER_02]: And it was safe.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like nowadays, you know, I remember when we had
[SPEAKER_02]: And then one day somebody helped my dad, my dad helped somebody on the poverty working, and then in return, they had electricity brought to the house, because there weren't no light poles and nothing down there when we were.
[SPEAKER_02]: But I think the real reason we got electricity was because, uh,
[SPEAKER_02]: The guy had built a big nice ball and like two to head the pants by a house to get through the cowball.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I think that's probably the only reason why we won't have given it.
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't think they ran it down there just for us.
[SPEAKER_02]: But yeah, I mean, it was nice.
[SPEAKER_02]: When you don't know, you know,
[SPEAKER_02]: Because then the only way alive we knew it and you pick, you know, you pick it.
[SPEAKER_02]: I remember the first cut I picked, I put in a white soft.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I kept feeling that soccer with cut.
[SPEAKER_02]: Every time mom and dad come to come to the kids, our job was to play in the trail.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, like they come dump the cotton in the trail.
[SPEAKER_02]: We was allowed to play in the trail.
[SPEAKER_02]: But really we thought we just had the fun, but we were packing the cotton.
[SPEAKER_02]: So the bail would wait more, so they could get more cotton on the trail.
[SPEAKER_02]: So we were walking around in the train and having us a good time.
[SPEAKER_02]: But actually we were working too, because if that came back in the cotton, one pack, he had a problem with that.
[SPEAKER_02]: So, you know, you pack the can, you talk water out to the fields, so that everybody don't have to stop and come and get watered, and it will just, it's one of those things.
[SPEAKER_01]: Mr. Finley, you've got a story different than any songwriter we've ever had on this show before, and I think that's why you record sounds so different and so beautiful, and I want to thank you so much for being on the working songwriter podcast.
[SPEAKER_02]: I appreciate you, my man.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, thanks, Mr. Finn.
[SPEAKER_02]: Thank you, please.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, sir.
[SPEAKER_01]: Bye.