ROBB JOHNSON “Love songs as touching as the political material is sharp”

Date/Time Sun 10 Oct 2021 7:45 PM

Price Online - £10 + £1 fee; On The Door - £12

Website: http://www.robbjohnson.co.uk/


Our first post-lockdown concert evening!
Robb Johnson heralds our return to hosting concerts.

A local boy (born in Isleworth) done good, he has been called “one of the last genuinely political songwriters” He says he’s just a bloke with a guitar. He is. But he’s one who has chronicled our times: painting the less-than-sunny political landscape in the moonlight of the personal. Just like a folk singer should.

Robb’s songs feature in the repertoires of a wide variety of musicians, from Roy Bailey to  Barb Jungr. The US’s Dirty Linen called him “a modern-day Dostoyevsky”.  His CD Gentle Men was Mojo’s Folk Album of the Month and The Daily Telegraph’s Folk Album of 1998. “Winter Turns To Spring” was Tony Benn’s favourite song.

In 2016, PM Press in the US released A Reasonable History of Impossible Demands, a 5 CD career-retrospective. 2016 also saw the release of My Best Regards, an album of 13 new songs recorded with Jenny Carr (piano), John Forrester (bass) & Robb’s son Arvin on drums, & featuring collaborations with Brighton’s Hullabaloo Quire & Palestinian singer Reem Kelani. In 2017 Robb released Songs From the Last Seven Years, a collection of songs written in response to recent events from the election of the Condem government to the Grenfell Tower fire.

2018’s Ordinary Giants is a family saga in song, spanning the preceding 100 years. This was followed in 2020 by two albums – Eurotopia and Pandemic Songs. Through lockdown there have been weekly online events, but on the stage is where Robb Johnson belongs and we’re excited to have him back.

Here’s Robb singing “I am Not at War”: