Robert Starling

Jeanie and I went out on a date last night...

Okay, to start out, you'll need to bear with me a bit so I can get through the back story...

I first heard Robert Starling on the radio in the late seventies or early eighties and immediately liked his music.

You may have heard him too and not even know it...

His song "Welcome To The Island" was selected by CBS Sports as the theme for the Heritage Golf Classic at Hilton Head Island, South Carolina. His instrumental, "Windy Hill," was selected as the theme for the PBS series Almanac.

Jeanie also liked him, and when we were dating, we would go listen to him when he played at a local Raleigh restaurant called Mountain Jack's. We bought all three of his albums, and even bought a "Hopeful Romantic" T-Shirt. Even though I haven't listened to the LP's in many years, I still wear the T-Shirt around the house or to exercise.

A number of months ago, I heard about a new on-line music download site called e-Music. I thought they had an interesting concept - a reasonable monthly subscription fee for a fixed number of downloads, with the ability to buy additional blocks of songs also at reasonable prices. They have a pretty good web site with decent searches, and a good download manager. While they didn't have much of a catalog of current popular music, they had quite a selection of Indie and eclectic music. They had a good selection of classical, bluegrass, new age, and "world" music. They also have a pretty extensive catalog of Steeleye Span and Renaissance, if you're interested. They also had a free two week trial that came with a number of free downloads. They had enough "interesting" music to justify a few months of membership, but then I ran out of music I was interested in and cancelled.

A few weeks ago, I got an email from e-Music inviting me to give them another shot - for free for a month, including fifty more downloads. Cool, I thought, I'll give it another try.

Unfortunately, they didn't have a whole lot of new music that was of interest. I figured that they might have some stuff from some of my favorites from the past that I only had on vinyl, so I started searching artists - Dan Fogelberg: no, Mike Cross: no, Carly Simon (due to Little Black Book): no. I had gone upstairs to take a look at the albums I still have to see if there was anyone else I should search for. Hmm, Robert Starling? Not a chance, but, what the heck?

And there he was! Turns out that he had just put together a sort of "Greatest Hits" titled "Artifacts," and it was available for download.

Well, download I did and had a wonderful trip down memory lane listening to his songs. The album page on e-Music also had a link to his website StarlingSong. Why not take a look I thought.

Imagine my surprise when right there on the main page, he had an upcoming appearances section, and he was scheduled to be playing in Raleigh at Tavola Rossa!

So, yesterday, around 4:00 PM, I told Jeanie "I'm going to go out and run a few errands. Be dressed and ready to leave the house at 6:00 PM."

A little before six, I returned home. We got into the car and off we drove - Jeanie clueless to my plans. We drove to Crabtree Valley and then scooted behind it to go to Tavola Rossa. Neither of us had ever been to Tavola Rossa, although we had been to to physical building - back when it had been the Cactus Flower.

Robert was playing in the bar, and fortunately, there was a table near his spot in the corner. Jeanie (even though she didn't have any idea and hadn't seen him in nearly twenty years) recognized him immediately. Since the dining area was separate, and we had gone primarily to listen to Robert, we chose to eat in the bar.

Robert tends to play mostly covers in a bar situation, unless someone specifically asks him to play his own songs. Of course, we had gone to listen to him play his songs, so I stepped up and asked...

We ended up getting very lucky. Shortly after we arrived, the bar emptied out. It felt like Jeanie and I got our own private Robert Starling concert. Not only did Robert play a number of our old favorites, but he shared a number of new songs he has written that he is hoping to record sometime soon. I really hope he does record a new album - some of the new songs were really good. As if that wasn't enough excitement, Robert sat down to talk with us on two of his breaks. Talk about feeling special...

We ended up staying for a little over four hours, and had a wonderful time.

I guess sometimes, you can go back...

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Posted by David at February 13, 2005 07:37 PM