Robert Finley

I remember the first time my pawpaw took me down to the Black Bayou, Robert Finley recalls on Alligator Bait, a talking blues that closes out his visceral and vibrant new record. As the guitars pop and crackle around him, coalescing into a slow rhythmic crawl like an airboat along muddy waters, the 70-year-old Louisiana native casts back in his memory for this harrowing story. Dressed in swamp boots and waders, the kid stepped on a log and the log moved! His grandfather shot the gator that snapped at him, but the boy quickly realized that he was intended as bait. Theres some humor to the outrageous incident, but the song emphasizes the tragedy of it: how he was never able to forgive his grandfather for risking his young life, how the incident drove a wedge through several generations of Finleys. A song should tell a good story, says Robert Finley sixty years later. By the time you hear it beginning to end, it should be like reading a short story or a novel. It should be more than just a laugh. It should leave some kind of impression on whoevers listening to it. And it should stay as close to the truth as possible. Hes a masterful storyteller, and Alligator Bait, like the rest of Black Bayou, has the richness of detail, the depth of character, the tragedy of betrayal, the promise of forgivenessin short, the immense complexity of emotion and humanitythat defines great southern literature. Finley recorded that song and the rest of the album up at producer Dan Auerbachs Easy Eye Sound Studio in Nashville. Its the fourth time the duo have worked together, although for this record they did things a little differently. Rather than write songs beforehand, they devised everything in the studio, with Auerbach leading a band of some of the finest players around: drummers Patrick Carney and Jeffrey Clemens, bassist Eric Deaton, guitarist Kenny Brown, and vocalists Christy Johnson and LaQuindrelyn McMahonwho just happen to be Finleys daughter and granddaughter. They worked quickly, devising their parts spontaneously and usually getting everything in one take. I started singing, and they started playing, Finley explains. Thats how we made the album. It wasnt written out. Nobody used a pencil and paper. We just sang and played together in the studio. Together, they created a vivid collection of songs that depict life in North Louisiana, with Finley playing the role of charismatic and knowledgeable tour guide through these swamps and forests. He was born in Winnsboro, but has spent most of his life in Bernice, a small town of about 1,600 souls just thirty miles from the Arkansas border. For years he worked as a carpenter while playing blues in juke joints and singing gospel in churches around the region. Mixing in southern soul, heavy rock, swamp pop, jazz, folk, and anything else that crosses his mind, Finley developed and refined an exuberant and omnivorous playing style.