NEWS: Actor Tim Robbins Brings Debut Album To Auckland

Thursday , 27 Jan 2011

Oscar-winning actor Tim Robbins has just made his debut album at age 51, and will be performing material from it with The Rogues Gallery Band at Auckland’s Powerstation on April 30.

Though he is best known for his screen roles in such highly-regarded movies as Bull Durham, The Player, The Shawshank Redemption and Mystic River, and is also a successful writer and director (Dead Man Walking, Bob Roberts), Robbins grew up around music. His father, Gil Robbins, was a member of hugely popular early 60s folk band The Highwaymen (‘Michael Row The Boat Ashore’), and the actor recalls childhood visits to such famous Greenwich Village folk haunts as The Gaslight. Robbins’ own satirical folk songs were a feature of the movie Bob Roberts.

An outspoken critic of American foreign policy, Robbins’ recording debut marks a personal crossroads. A failed film project and his 2009 divorce from actress Susan Sarandon after a 21-year marriage, led him to asking key life-changing questions: “What had I not done? What would I regret not doing?” One answer was to record an album of the songs he had been writing all his adult life.

Performing with an outstanding band assembled by iconoclastic producer Hal Wilner, Robbins’ music was described by The Daily Telegraph as “full of emotionally complex and morally ambiguous narratives set to woozy, dreamy, American soundscapes.”