I had a great time playing at the Circleville Pumpkin Show this weekend. It had been quite a long time since I'd played a full solo performance like that, and I felt a little rusty, but it went well and was quite fun, none-the-less. It was raining very hard on Saturday morning and I was fearing I'd have to play in the rain, but it ended up growing sunny by the time I was setting up, and the evening was quite beautiful.

One of the best things about being on stage during an event like that is the opportunity for people-watching. 100s of people passed in front of that stage as I was up there playing and singing, most of them looking up at me making eye-contact, many of them stopping to watch for a while. I wonder if they knew they were performing for me, as well. So many different stories behind all those eyes. It's always amazing to me how many strangers there are in the world.

Here's this weeks mp3.

Click to listen: Makes Me Smile

Written by Robyn Leah Case
Produced and mixed by Nathan O. Milligan
Recorded by Timothy L. Kalt and Scott Fouts

Musicians:
Mark Wamsley – drums
Robyn – vocals, piano, guitar

Notes:
"Makes me Smile" is one of the few songs that was written specifically for inclusion on this album. Many of the other songs were written before I ever thought I'd make a CD. This was the song I had the clearest vision for how I wanted it to sound, and as I result, I did most of the instrumentation myself. The trouble was that, due to scheduling, we ended up having to record the piano before the drums. Big mistake people. The resulting tempo problems caused me to sit at the computer trying to edit the timing problems for hours and hours trying to get all the parts lined up. You can still hear a lot of problems, but it's a whole lot better than I would have been if not for all the editing. If I were going to do it again, I would want to record drums and piano at the same time, but it just wasn't possible at the time.

Regardless, this song has a special place in my heart, because it felt most like the kind of music I really wanted to make, and happily, it is one of the ones people most often pick as their favorite from "Feels Like I'm Dreaming".

I'm a little late, but here is the next mp3 of the week installment. For now I will leave up last week's song, so if you haven't gotten it yet, hurry up! It will be deleted soon to make room for more music.

Enjoy!


Click to listen: Hide Away

Written by Robyn Leah Case
Produced and mixed by Nathan O. Milligan
Recorded by Timothy L. Kalt and Scott Fouts

Musicians:
Nathan Milligan – lead, rhythm, and bass guiars
Mike Zarrilli – drums
Robyn – vocals, rhythm guitar

Notes:
Here's a change of pace. This little song is what made "Feels Like I'm Dreaming" the ambivalent album it was... do you want to listen to soft piano music? bluesy folk? techno-y pop? How 'bout just rock? Haha, you get it all. The album was my first truly blank canvas, a chance to play with all the colors I could mix together, and this song was my crazy, noisy Jackson Pollock painting. I decided it wasn't so much the style I wanted to stick with, but it was fun to try on.

And, anyway, isn't that the way all of us are from day to day, feeling up and happy one moment, mad and uncomfortable another, relaxed and content the next? Maybe Hide Away is the frustrated and ignored middle-child, screaming to be heard, but that's somewhere we all have to go sometimes.

Just wanted to announce that the show that was initially scheduled for Wednesday night, Oct. 5 has been rescheduled for:

October 27
7:30pm

The show will still take place at the same location, the Mean Bean Caffeine Lounge in Delaware, Ohio. But it has been postponded to later this month. Hope you can make it. Sorry for the late notice.

You noticed, too, huh? Summer came and went, and this darn website didn't get updated once. I'm still not really sure how it happened... or rather, didn't happen. But no more. I've missed talking to you too much. Life right now is too enriching to not be exploding with music.

I'm going to start out by posting, I hope weekly, but as often as possible, a download-able mp3 from “Feels Like I'm Dreaming,” my out of print and out of stock first CD, since a number of new people have shown an interest in the music since those songs became unavailable. The first song (posted below) will stay up until after my next upcoming show, which takes place here in Delaware, Ohio. This performance will actually be a release party for Ohio Wesleyan University's “The OWL,” a publication of literature and various forms of student works that the university puts together annually. My EP of “Six Songs” has been included in the publication (and the copies I sell at my shows were kindly sponsored by Ohio Wesleyan). On October 5, a release party will be held at the Mean Bean Caffeine Lounge near campus, and there will be poetry and prose readings, as well as me playing songs from the CD. Check the show schedule page for other shows coming up.

Until then, though, here's your first installation of music from the Archives.

Click to listen: Supposed to be

Lyrics by RLC, music by RLC and Nathan O. Milligan
Produced and mixed by Nathan O. Milligan
Recorded by Timothy L. Kalt and Scott Fouts

Musicians:

Nathan Milligan – guitars, tambourine, organ
Steve Swope – lead guitar
Timothy Kalt – bass guitar, maniacal laughter (can you hear it?)
Robyn – vocals, drum programming, shakers, keyboard

Notes:

This song was written in the midst of discouraging times, when I felt like life just wasn't going in the direction I wanted to. I haven't gone back and listened to these songs for a long time (believe it or not, I don't sit around all day listening to my own music) but listening to it just now, I am amusingly struck by the fact that now I am exactly where I wanted to be back then, when I was married and working full-time and feeling un-challenged. Now, I am in school, learning the things I longed to learn, enjoying the friends and the freedom I longed to have, etc. etc. Yet, the words still have meaning to me, just in different ways. I guess as humans, we're always trying to get someplace else, to grow into someone else. I feel like this song does a good job of dwelling in discontent just long enough to be sympathetic, and then gets happy and even feels energizing, as if to say to us “I may not be where I want, but I'm gonna have a good time, anyway.”

This was one of my first attempts at drum programming, and I used an incredibly user-friendly program called Fruity Loops. It was great fun.