Album Notes

From: Berkshire Living Magazine

July 2007 Issue SCENEAROUND MAKING TRACKS RICK ROBBINS

The songs on Rick Robbins's aptly titled Time & Gravity sound like they've been around forever, but in fact this latest collection of Robbins's music - his third solo CD - features all original material. It's not surprising, however, that Robbins's music has the quality of great old American folk music; the long time Berkshirite, who now lives in western Massachusetts, has a deep and profound connection to folk tradition, going at least as far back as 1962, when he arrived at the Stockbridge School in Interlaken, Massachusetts, and was introduced to the music of Ramblin' Jack Elliott, Leadbelly, Sonny Terry, Brownie McGhee, Cisco Houston, and that of his new best friend's father, Woody Guthrie. Soon after, Robbins hit the road with Arlo Guthrie (before the two got arrested for littering on a fabled Thanksgiving, but that's a longer story for another time) before settling down to build houses in the 1970s. He picked up his guitar again a little over ten years ago when he began making his own recordings and touring with his childhood hero, Jack Elliott. You can hear all this gritty experience in Robbins's voice, between the grooves, and in the lyrics of the songs on Time & Gravity , recorded with an all-star cast of Berkshire talent, including multi-instrumentalists Rick Tiven and Steve Ide, guitarist David Grover, Keyboardist Rob Putnan, trumpeter Jeff Stevens, and vocalists Carol Ide and Kathy Jo Grover.