On Thursday, October 19the at 7:30 PM Friction Farm with The Robert Bobby Duo will perform at the Ware Center located at 42 N Prince St in Lancaster. This concert is held in tribute to Robert Bobby, who is battling brain cancer.
Concert tickets are $20 General Admission, $21 for SFMS members and $5 for students ages 3-22. Advance tickets are available at http://www.artsmu.com, by calling 717-925-3729 or at the door.
Modern-folk duo Friction Farm is a husband-and-wife team of traveling troubadours. Aidan Quinn and Christine Stay combine storytelling, social commentary
and humor to create songs of everyday life, local heroes, and quirky observations. From ballads to anthems each song is filled with harmony and hope.
Making a special appearance for this concert is The Robert Bobby Duo, a perfect blend of folk, singer-songwriter, Americana and blues. Robert Bobby has been a staple of the Central Pennsylvania music scene since his days as lead singer for The S
peedboys, and has been favorably reviewed by music critics in Rolling Stone, The Village Voice, Sing Out! and numerous other publications. Mrs. Bobby, who learned to play bass because she figured “it was the best way to keep an eye on Mr. Bobby,” occasionally adds background vocals.
We had a chance to speak to The Bobbys about the concert and their friendship with Friction Farm.
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FOLKMAMA: The Robert Bobby Duo is certainly well known in this area, but I’m curious how you met Friction Farm–then thought about performing together as a “Duo of Duos.”
MRS BOBBY: We met Christine and Aidan through the Folk Alliance conferences. Mr. Bobby had gone up to the North East Folk Alliance conference a lot before I even started going. The first year that I went to the South East Folk Alliance conference Aidan came up to me in the lobby and gave me this big hug like I knew him. Mr. Bobby told me who he was and then I met Christine too. We just hit it off. How do you explain a friendship with people? We just kind of clicked. So next thing you know they are coming to hear us and we are going to hear them. We’re hanging out at dinner, and then we are meeting some of the other people that they know from that region.
Both Christine and Aiden come from the corporate world, but then they made the leap of faith about eight years ago to cut the cord and play music full time. A couple of years ago we started thinking of doing a show together and that’s why we approached Susquehanna Folk about this concert idea. We hoped at some time to get a small tour together with them.
We like how they tour. They do a lot of house concerts and stay with people, but they also have a camper and stop along the way and see things. They are just not like drive-drive-drive-drive-drive. They always like to strike a balance in their life which appeals to us in the friendship. They are community minded and socially minded– just really nice people.
FOLKMAMA: So what is your plan for the evening for this “Duo of Duos” concert?
MR. BOBBY: The plan is to split up the first set and have each group play for about 20 minutes. And then after the intermission we’ll plan to put all four of us on stage and we’ll do a song swap. We might even be able to put something together, we’ll see.
FOLKMAMA: How do the two duos go about song writing?
MRS. BOBBY: One of the fun ways we have written songs is through song prompts. At the conference that we go to in Texas they have this process there—when you come in to register there is a jar that has song prompts in it. So if you are a songwriter you can pick a prompt and over the course of the three or four days that you are at the conference you write an original song. And you are going to perform that song at the final event of the conference which is a brunch. There must be 35 or 40 people that do it and its amazing what people come up with!
FOLKMAMA: Can you tell me a little more about the music of the Robert Bobby Duo?
MRS. BOBBY: We’re thinking because this show is in Lancaster that there are a lot of people who will want to hear his old band stuff, the Speedboys, so we picked some of those songs. And we wanted to do “Fine as Wine” because you like that one and because it was on last year’s Susquehanna Folk sampler CD.
Now that Mr. Bobby is taking steroids, we thought it might be funny to do his song “Anna” which is a love song to anabolic steroids. He used to do it with the Speedboys and there is a part in there that people are likely to sing along to. Otherwise we tried to pick one song from our various CDs.
One of his newest songs was a song prompt song two years ago before he got sick. It’s called “The Movie of Your Life”. Joe can’t play it because it’s a finger picking song and Joe’s not really a finger style guitar player, but Aidan is going to do the guitar. We’re going to do that song the last one of our set.
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