Robison started The Next Waltz in 2016 as a part record label and part management of artists but whole heartedly as a way to protect, capture and propel good old fashioned song writing.
Robison’s latest project sees him turning inward while singing the songs of others on his recent EP, In The Woods released late last year. Robison will take these new tunes on the road with his friends and Next Waltz collaborators, John Fullbright and Summer Dean with a stop in Houston on Saturday, April 20 at The Heights Theater.
“I’m really proud,” says Robison. “It’s almost like a mini festival that isn't too long and just goes by. You hear a bunch of great songs and it’s presented in a way that I think is really top quality.”
In The Woods and this Texas tour are a great opportunity for Robison to do something different as he plays new songs with some of his favorite musicians in some of his preferred venues. The EP is a short collection of beautiful songs ranging from slow and emotionally reflective tracks like “Never Say Never” to more upbeat jams like “Down On The E.”
“I do have so many damn sad songs,” says Robison of his past catalog. “I didn't feel like playing sad songs all the time.” As he planned his return to the studio and stages he consciously decided to turn the beat up not only for his fans, but for himself.
“If somebody is going to come out and spend 20 bucks to hang out with me, I have this feeling that I really want to play more songs that are a little bit more celebratory, even though I have historically not written those kinds of songs.”
In fact, Robison did not write the surprisingly chipper tracks on this album nor the ones that sound like they could have come straight from him like “It All Depends” written by Adam Wright and Lacy Green.
“I definitely wrote lots of sad country songs years ago and some of them really did well. They are songs about really heavy issues and even though in the last four years my life has gone through huge changes, up to this point I didn’t feel at all like sitting down and writing songs about those things,” says Robison about the heartbreaking loss of his brother Charlie Robison last year and his divorce from long time artistic partner and wife, Kelly Willis.
“They all have a story behind them as to whoever wrote them or how I found them or what the process was like when we were looking for the sound of them and that really too is The Next Waltz. Whenever we get together and what we are trying to do, it’s so imperfect of a process that you're just kind of searching for some kind of crazy alchemy that's really rare and the song is just one of the many ingredients.”
Known as a master songwriter whose songs have been given large audiences by artists like The Chicks covering his “Travelin’ Soldier” and Faith Hill and Tim McGraw doing “Angry All The Time,” Robison has experienced firsthand the benefits of taking a chance on someone else's songs.
“It’s always amazing to me if any of my songs ever are in someone's life that way because I know how that feels,” he says of his hits and how he feels when people approach him about how much his songs have meant to him.
"My heroes like Willie and Jerry Jeff and Emmy Lou, they were always doing other peoples songs and definitely thankfully people like George Strait or Frank Sinatra didn't feel like they they had to write all their own songs and so it was really never stuck in my head that people had to write all their own songs. It's a really fun thing to find those things."
"It was really never stuck in my head that people had to write all their own songs. It's a really fun thing to find those things."
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Finding great songs is a huge part of The Next Waltz who has produced songs and albums by Summer Dean, Tony Kamel and The Panhandlers as well as their own now four volumes of songs by a collection of great artists like Charley Crockett, Shinyribs, Wade Bowen and Jack Ingram.
“I know how that music touched me forever and how these songs do now still and so I'm just not precious about who writes them and I would like to think that that's because I have a lot of respect for the process of telling stories that way and I have a lot of respect for how rare and beautiful that is when somebody really is able to say something in a way that can connect with folks.”
Robison did contribute to the autobiographical Blaze Foley tune "Livin’ In The Woods In A Tree" where Foley sang about loving a kinky haired woman in the middle of woods, Robison takes over to add even more sweetness to the song.
This project is appropriately titled as The Next Waltz is sort of in the woods, physically located in Lockhart, Texas and using a completely analog system to record their songs out there contributing to the sweet, old-timey nature of their catalog and using an approach that forces the artists and sound engineers involved to take their time and simplify.
“It’s fun that we're still painting with oils,” says Robison. “We are slowing it down, embracing all those imperfections and the collaborative nature of it and just how the people that are there in the session, they gotta be really good at it man. The way that we do it, the flaws really show through for good or bad so I enjoy that. We still are totally doing that and we are refining it all the time.”
There’s something about The Next Waltz and Robison’s vision that not only aims to protect good, traditional song writing as a craft but also preserve the old Austin mentality of a community of musicians.
“We live in a wonderful place where there's so many good folks and that was why I came here originally,” says Robison of the ever growing Austin. “We weren't necessarily trying to become millionaires or get on the radio, it really felt like it was just about the music and the lifestyle and I still love it around our little part of the world. There’s so much infrastructure for people to play original music that I just dont think there’s any place like it in the world.”
Robison and his team at The Next Waltz are not obsessed with the past or simply trying to recreate a time that has long gone, they are instead attempting to preserve the simple beauty of a good song filled with sincerity and human warmth.
“Everything that's from the good ole days was still brand new at some point. You have to create your new, cool, old stuff,” he says with a laugh.
Bruce Robison will perform with John Fullbright and Summer Dean on Saturday, April 20 at The Heights Theater, 339 W 19th. Doors at 7 p.m, tickets $28.
