David Roberts demonstrating shipboard living in style.
Well, there's a first time for everything and this is the first #ArtistAtHome that calls a 36-foot sailboat home. He sure can play the part of the old sailor with that - now trademark beard. This is my pal David Roberts of The Washboard Union.
Shortly before I visited Robert, the boys in the band were down in Nashville, writing and recording some material in in the legendary Studio A of RCA Studios. Those tracks eventually made it onto their debut EP which has garnered them both the Rising Star and Roots Artist of the Year awards at the 2016 Canadian Country Music Awards and earned them 3 BC Country Music Awards for Group, Songwriter and Roots Artist of the Year. David played three of them for me while we drank a few Granville Island lagers lounging on the back of the boat. While down in Tennessee, they were staying in a house that backed onto Woodlawn Memorial Park and Mausoleum that has a lot of the old country music greats interned. They also had a chance to go out looking for old, and interesting washboards. Some of which can be 100 years old. David tells me you can tell the ones that were actually used for washing as there will be notches worn on the side where the board rested against the bucket. He also literally bumped in to Taylor Swift - although I don't think she wrote a song about it.
Many thanks to David for having me aboard. You can see The Washboard Union play the Commodore Ballroom Saturday Feb 11.
