What has Tim Robbins got to do with child day care in Washington State you may be saying.
Nothing, directly that I know, however, I went to see his show Tuesday night at the small Alberta Rose Theatre in Portland, Oregon kicking off his tour with The Rogues Gallery Band.
I googled to see if the Oregonian or the Willamette Week covered this event and could find nothing. So I thought I'd scoop the Oregonian and the Willamette Week by writing about Tim Robbins and his Rogues Gallery Band. I have no music credentials other than having had a relationship with a rock n roll/country western/blues musician one time in my life and his band practiced in my basement.
But I know a major life experience when I see and experience one. I like Tim very much as an actor. One of his latest films, The Lucky Ones, is about three soldiers returning from Iraq. Tim plays the older soldier, then a young girl (Rachael MacAdams) and a young man all with various physical injuries end up having to take a road trip together. It is so non-political, telling an unflinching story of three lives in these United States of America in this time in our history.
This man is definitely enjoying his mid-life crisis. I only went to see him because of Tim the actor and wasn't expecting much via the music.
The first cords, his vocals and his arrangement of the Beatles Here Come the Sun produced such a spontaneous out cry from the audience, in those first three seconds we knew we were going to the moon, the stars, the cosmos with this band. Whenever I hear that song, it takes me back to when my brother died in Vietnam.
The white middle class audience got so spontaneous and vocal I thought for a moment I was at the Apollo Theater in Harlem.
Tim's band is not a back up band, everyone of them just as smiley and present as Tim Robbins. OK, his brother Dave, not quite as smiley until some "David we love" outpourings from the audience produced a definite Robbins' smile. Dave played lead guitar. Tim and Dave's parents died in April, 12 days apart. On one side of the stage in a photo was their mom when she sang at Radio City Music Hall and the other side their dad who was one of the Highwaymen.
Michael Row the Boat Ashore by the Highwaymen was the first 45 rpm record I bought. I didn't know that was his dad!
And, oh my gosh, the harmony from these men. Their dad told them always get the audience to sing with you and they did. And man, we sounded great!
In my little opinion, Tim Robbins writes in the storytelling fashion and a bit of the vocal patterns of a Bob Dylan. He did a Johnny Cash song that went from country, morphed into the blues and ended with rock n roll. He did Christian, a song about Mary Magdalene, he did the Blues via a Billie Holliday song, he did a Pete Seegar song...all in his unique Tim Robbins style, powerhouse vocals and stage presence.
The band played the accordion, the picalo, keyboards, the saxophone, the clarinet, the mandolin, the harmonica, cello, lead and bass guitars...some other flutie type instrument, maybe of Celtic origin. A few of the songs were drowned out by the volume of the instruments so I missed the words to some of the songs.
Tim said, "thank you" to the audience and we chorused back, "Thank you!"
A 22 year old young man who had done three tours in Iraq approached Tim in Colorado. He had to tell, he had to tell someone, tell someone the burden he would live with forever, the rest of his life. He had killed children. Tim wrote Time to Kill. He was crying...we were crying...a roomful of humanity at what our young people see and do that takes their innocence forever.
In his first few weeks in Vietnam my brother wrote in 1969 of the first dead Vietnamese he saw, a dead 12 year old boy, he wrote that he'd all ready seen enough to last a lifetime. His lifetime would be short.
There are moments that are uplifting and sweet, so full of kindness, truth, compassion and humanity that you feel like you were given a spiritual gift. This night with Tim and his friends was such a gift.
After my brother's death in Vietnam I was on post at Ft. Shafter in Hawai'i walking through the tropical night air with the lamplight casting light and shadows on the foliage, a teenage girl tied up in grief, missing her brother, yet in the face of death exquisitely feeling life.
Then I heard,
"Little darling, it's been a long cold lonely winter
Little darling, it feels like years since it's been here
Here comes the sun, here comes the sun
and I say it's all right"
Who could improve on the Beatles arrangement? Tim Robbins and his friends did in Portland, Oregon on lovely summer night in a little theater on July 19th, 2011.
If Tim Robbins and the Rogues Gallery Band show up in your neck of the woods...go!
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