November, 2008
Robert Urban interview
By Sidney Beveridge, Columbia University
Hi Robert, I am working on the story for an assignment at graduate school, Any answers you could provide for the following questions would be much appreciated.
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Sidney Beveridge - How did you first meet Roger Kuhn? What were your impressions of him and his music?
Robert Urban - Sometime around 2003 or 2004, Roger introduced himself to me - I think via telephone. I don't recall how he had heard of me or my work. I recall he was enthusiastic about making music and recording his songs. Without ever meeting in person, we kept up a dialog via telephone and email for several months.
Eventually, Roger and I met in person. I think we shared the bill at a local live music event. We got to hear each other sing and play our songs. Sometimes we would join each other onstage in performance. I could tell that Roger possessed a strong, appealing singing voice; a vibrant, intuitive sense of performance; and a flair for penning decent pop tunes. Also - we both share a somewhat maverick, fiercely independent sense of ourselves within the larger NYC area music scene - so that shared trait probably contributed, in no small way, to our being able to successfully work together.
At some point he asked me to record , mix, produce and arrange his debut CD "Proof" here at Urban Productions.
The rest is history.
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S.B.- How did you come to put together the Two-Spirit Evening show?
R.U. - Thru my URBAN PRODUCTIONS, I have been producing/promoting/hosting live-in-concert events here in the NYC area for nearly 10 years now. These ongoing shows include my "Urban Productions Boldly Presents" and "Urban Productions Open-Wide Open-Mic" events. Many of these shows feature gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender talent and are geared for the LGBT music community.
At the time, I had also been creating shows for the annual New York Fresh Fruit Festival. In 2005 I produced & hosted for the FF Fest the highly successful "Transgender Rock" concert - a sold-out event at The Bowery Poetry Club that featured top transgender rock acts from all across the U.S. The show won three festival awards and helped promote transgender talent as one of the most important and under-appreciated up-and-coming social segments in the arts. The festival invited me to create more shows for them.
Although not of Native-American descent myself, my father, who was a naturalist, taught me from a very young age to appreciate and respect Native-American culture and traditions - especially many of the traditional Native-Americans ways of relating to the natural environment. I am always looking for interesting concepts in creating live music shows, and as a musician/producer I enjoy working with different cultural segments of society.
For the 2006 "Two-Spirit Evening" ("Two-Spirit" being a generalized Native-American term for LGBT sexual-orientations within Native-American society), I envisioned a show that would feature LGBT performance artists who are also of Native-American descent and who could present music/poetry/theater that related to their shared LGBT & Native-American identities. I sought out and brought in LGBT Native-American talent (including Roger Kuhn) from all over the U.S. for the show.
The show was an unprecedented, sold-out success - garnering several festival awards and a lot of positive media attention. You can see photos, reviews and the entire "Two Spirit Evening" cast list at:
http://roberturban.com/twospirit.html
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S.B. - As the producer of "Proof," what aspects of the album-making process did you work on? What other artists' albums have you produced?
R.U. - For Roger's "Proof" album, I had him come in to the studio and first lay down the "skeleton" acoustic guitar and vocal tracks to his songs. Then I gave all the songs varying production and musical arranging treatments - some stayed simple; some became heavy rock songs with full rock band; for some I created dense, symphonic orchestral arrangements; to some I added piano. One song was even finished as an a capella vocal piece.
In addition to being sound engineer, producer and arranger - I also functioned as a one-man, multi-instrumentalist session player for the album - playing, when need be - acoustic and electric guitars, bass, drums, percussion, keys, orchestral instruments, back-up vocals and all kinds of sound efx. In the rock video released for Proof's opening track, "What's Your Name?" (which one can see on YouTube) - that's me on electric guitar.
In the two Christmases that have passed since making the "Proof" cd, Roger has returned and I've produced three of his holiday songs as single releases.
A sampling of musical artists, film companies, and other organizations I have produced and/or recorded and/or composed music for can be found at: http://roberturban.com/discography.html
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S.B. - What projects are you working on currently?
I just finished scoring the music for a documentary film called "A True Lesson in Humanity". The documentary is about the artistry, perseverance, determination and true grit of a segment of our society - those with special needs - who are too often underestimated, misunderstood, and forgotten. The film follows The Special Needs Color Guard of America - the first special needs Color Guard Dance Program in the world. I am currently performing live for several of the film's screenings in the NYC area.
I am also currently producing & recording a double, 24 track cd for poet Renair Amin; adding music to many of her spoken word tracks.
Starting in January, 2009 I'll be doing some performances for the NYC-area "Guys with Guitars" series of live concerts.
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S.B. - By the way, I was interested to see that you played at the Jeff Buckley tribute (I've always really enjoyed his music).
Thank you. Yes, last year I was invited to perform at the French 10-year anniversary Jeff Buckley tribute - held at the Hard Rock Cafe in Paris, France. I performed Benjamin Britten's "Corpus Christi Carol" (which Buckley recorded for his "Grace" album. I also accompanied several other artists at the tribute show. Photos of me at the tribute show are in the "pics" section of my myspace page at: www.myspace.com/roberturban
Thank you.
Sincerely,
Sydney
