With a new album, Ocean Cabaret now out, it felt like the perfect time to catch up with GALVEZTON, aka Robert Kuhn, to find out about his life, where the songs come from, and what might be in store for him next.
Hi Robert, great to talk to you. Can we start with a bit of background? How did you get started in music, and what does the path look like that has brought you to where you are today?
I got started in music through my parents at a very young age. My mom was a NY all-state bass player, and my grandfather was the leader of an early jazz band. She gave me a Marine Band harmonica in the key of C to play with like a toy. We always had a piano to make noise on, and by the time I was thirteen, she bought me a guitar and some lessons from an old lady down the street and across the railroad tracks. I always liked making that walk with a guitar along the tracks. It felt real and right.
I guess I’ve always carried that troubadour with me, because by the time I was eighteen, I left home and lived all over the world since then, writing songs and singing them with a guitar and harmonica. I bought a one-way ticket to Argentina when I was twenty-two and stayed gone for ten years with just a backpack and guitar. When I returned in 2010, I started this professional thing with calendars and bookings and websites and records and sales. Before that, it was mostly streets and parties and bars and campfires.
Who would you cite as influences on your music, both other bands and artists, and perhaps those outside the music world who inspire you?
The musical influences I got through my father, who was a lawyer and a writer. He had a big record and then tape collection that we’d drive around the country to visit his old friends. He was heavy on the songwriter things. Bags of Bob Dylan, The Band, and Bruce Springsteen. Early Jimmy Buffett and even some Bob Marley.
As I grew up a little, I started hearing the local lore of the music around me as a teenager in Houston, TX. There was the whole Texas country music thing happening with Townes Van Zandt and Guy Clark, Willie Nelson, Robert Earl Keen, Jack Ingram, and Todd Snider. The alternative country vein soon caught me up with Uncle Tupelo and Wilco, who passed through town and started opening me up to a whole world more.
Your artistic nom de plume, your current single, and your musical identity are all very closely linked. What does Galvezton mean to you?
GALVEZTON is kind of an imaginary local underground sub-community in my hometown. It’s an alternate Galveston made up of artists, musicians, poets, yogis, fishermen, surfers, and anyone riding this off the mainstream wave. It’s a vibe. It’s a collective of musicians around here that helps form our sound. It’s the global local frequency that is good to tune into. It’s an authenticity.
Just talking about your current single, “Roll To G-Town,” how would you describe it musically to those who haven’t yet heard it, and how representative of your overall sound is it?
It’s kind of a psychedelic, bluesy, hip-hop thing. The ancient and modern sound that, ever since the first time I played on stage at an Old Quarter open mic, people loved it. It feels familiar, like the song has already been here forever. I think half yes and half no is representative of my sound.
The song production uses the same tools and instruments that most of my music does, acoustic and guitars with the same pedals, analog synthesizers, drums, and bass… but to me, this song just hits a little differently than the rest of the tracks on this album. The rest of the songs are just a little sweeter or innocent. This one has a little different sense of humor, and a lot of people just connect with it.
Having traveled the world from New York to Australia to Costa Rica and beyond, how do you think the cultures and sounds and places and people you have encountered have shaped you and your music?
I’m a sponge. We all are, I think. We are products of the experience around us. Just being submerged in a culture gives us new languages, rhythms, melodies, origin stories, foods, thoughts…
You have an album out soon. What can we expect from Ocean Cabaret?
I hate to use the term “Easy Listening” because this is still a rock ‘ n ‘ roll album, but Ocean Cabaret is intended to be easy to listen to. It is soothing. It’s chill. It is powerful without being aggressive. I use binaural frequencies, healing tones, and sing a lot about love, family, death, birth, and home.
Can you tell us a little more about the album, who else is involved, what the recording process is like, and are there any messages being spread or dialogues started?
This is my first pretty much entirely self-produced record. It was mixed and mastered by James Hoover with Hoover Sound, but other than that, I wrote, engineered, recorded, and performed most every track on the record. I had some help from a few friends, like Krystal Hardwick and Sherita Perez, on background vocals on “G-town” and “Wicked Wind”. Claire Sieberman played the cello on “Origami,” and Raa’ Tansiel played the piano on “One Way Ticket” and “Origami.”
Finally, are there any plans to tour the album, and what do things look like for you beyond that?
I’ll be doing an Indian-summer tour through Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona with my family, but other than that, I’m staying put. I lead a community organizing non-profit called La Izquierda Surf and Music that hosts festivals and a summer concert series in Galveston this summer, and I must stay close to home this season…however, come Fall, I’m ready to get back out there, so if any of y’all readers have connections in the tour booking biz or wanna lineup a show, please communicate.
Thank you for letting us into your world, and best of luck with the new album and everything else you are doing.
Instagram
Facebook
Twitter
YouTube
