ROB LUTES
SONGWRITING
Since the release of his first album Gravity in 2000, Rob Lutes has steadily built a collection of exquisite songs that inhabit the intersection of blues, folk, Americana, and the contemporary singer-songwriter genre. As skilled delivering a Piedmont blues classic as he is performing his own acclaimed original songs, Lutes's masterful fingerstyle guitar work and soulful voice bring an unmistakable intensity to his live performances.
One of six kids raised in Rothesay, New Brunswick, the Montreal-based performer melds traditional influences into literate, melody based songs that have earned him a good deal of recognition, from a win at the Kerrville New Folk Songwriting Competition to multiple songwriting nominations from the Canadian Folk Music Awards and the Maple Blues Awards. A two-time CFMA Contemporary Singer of the Year, Rob's performances feature his own well-crafted songs along with selected gems from music history, along with stories that bring his own creative process to life and reveal funny and wise nuggets about the music world.
Rob's latest album Come Around earned him four Canadian Folk Music Award nominations along with a third nomination as Maple Blues Canadian Acoustic Act of the Year. His previous album Walk in the Dark (2017) was Folk n Blues Radios Album of the Year in 2018. Lutes has released six other full-length albums, including 2009’s acclaimed Truth & Fiction and 2013's The Bravest Birds which spent seven months in the Roots Music Report top 10 and hit #1 on the EuroAmericana Chart.
He performs solo, in duo with Quebec guitar legend Rob MacDonald, and in full-band format and as part of the roots supergroup Sussex, which has released three albums, Parade Day in 2016, and The Ocean Wide (2019), which earned a 2020 CFMA nomination for Ensemble of the Year, and Shine, coming out in September 2024.
Lutes has had several of his songs recorded by other artists.
Workshops
-
Rob will use historical references and traditions and his own songs to lead an exploration of songwriting and the creative process.
Rob is a firm believer that the best way to learn a craft is to practice it. Working individually and in groups, and following a couple different approaches, participants will generate songs or parts of songs during the workshop. Rob is a music history geek, loves songs and language, and enjoys being with people in a creative space. He knows he will be surprised and inspired by the participants in this workshop.
-
The great songwriter Sammy Cahn, when asked "Which comes first, the melody or the lyrics?" famously responded: "What comes first is the phone call."
Cahn did not write as a passtime or for his own creative enjoyment. He, like many songwriters from the Tin Pan Alley era, and many still today who write for advertising, film, and television, wrote songs as a form of employment, as an assignment for money.
Simulating this situation, Rob will talk about the Tin Pan Alley model - how the system worked during that golden age - and then assign songwriting tasks to individuals or teams so they can explore this "task" based form of songwriting.
-
Rob teaches the history of popular music in workshops and schools. In this session, he will use images, recordings, and his own performances to throw light on the fascinating evolution in American popular music over the 19th century.
-
The evolution of music, including the blues, was aided by many accidental heroes - figures who didn't see or intend the mammoth impact they had on popular music.
From Sidney Story, the alderman behind the creation of the red light district in New Orleans that was an incubator of jazz from 1897 to 1917, to Frederick Hager, the classical violinist from Pennsylvania who became musical director at Okeh Records and was persuaded to let Mamie Smith record "Crazy Blues" in 1920, the history of music has many of these fascinating, sometimes hidden characters. In this session, Rob will tell the stories of several of these figures, and perform or play recordings of the music linked to their significant, if unintended, place in music history.