We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Durand Robinson a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Durand thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. What sort of legacy are you hoping to build. What do you think people will say about you after you are gone, what do you hope to be remembered for?

I’ve lived a dozen lives in even more places. I’ve led adventure-based team building expeditions, worked as a professional graphic designer and copywriter for an ad agency, been the director of a year-round camp and conference center in the Alps, run a video production house, wrote and developed curriculum for children, been on the pastoral staff of several churches, a full-time touring musician and am currently designing and installing high end sound and video systems for schools, churches and theaters. But from the beginning until now, I’ve always been a songwriter.

I’ve always valued relationships more than accomplishment. No other activity in my life comes close to connecting me to people (both listeners and cowriters) the way songwriting does, providing us opportunities to explore together the matters of life, love, relationships, meaning and faith. That’s where you’ll be able to measure the legacy I leave. Not in the popularity of my music, but in the lives that have been touched, challenged, appreciated and healed by something they found in my songs.

In a day when the general public thinks music should be free like air, songwriting is definitely not about money. Being a life-long songwriter has always cost me financially more than it ever gained. Even pro writers barely scrape by. Thankfully, I have other skills that have paid the bills.

But I hope when I’m gone people will see why my music was worth investing in.

It’s helped me learn how to listen and not just talk.
It’s helped me see the world from the viewpoints of others
It’s helped me discover more about myself and my values as they surface in my songs
It’s opened my worlld to connections with listeners and co-writers that would have been missed had I not been a songwriter. Co-writers have become some of my closest friends.
I’ve been enriched to hear people tell me about aspects of my songs that made an impression or touched them deeply.
It has been and will be an honor each time other artists perform songs I’ve been a part of writing and watch the song go places I’ll never see.

When I perform or have my songs heard, it’s not about getting famous, I want people to talking about something significant that the song got them thinking about and maybe, just maybe, make some new discoveries that will help them in their life and relationships with others.

Durand, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I’ve been writing and performing since the early 70’s, when songwriters ruled the airwaves. As a young musician, influences like Jackson Browne, Emmylou Harris, James Taylor and Crosby, Stills and Nash shaped my sense of story, rhyme and harmony. My first radio performance was at 17.

I then spent over 25 years living and playing across Europe as a solo act and in various bands. But nothing fueled my passion for songwriting more than my years living in Dublin, Ireland. That’s why my music is a mixture of folk, country and americana songs with a celtic accent.

I love storytelling. Telling stories is as natural as breathing. Life is full of them. My goal as a singer-songwriter is to help the stories come alive. I go by Durand instead of Noel because of a story. I’ve moved more than twenty times. There are lots of stories behind that. I’ve lived around the world in France, Germany, Belgium, Bangladesh, and of course my beloved Ireland. I feel like I have lived a dozen lives in half a century and have only begun to realize what a treasure that is. The influence of other people’s lives, cultures and their unique stories seep into the lyrics and melodies of my music.

Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?

My personal experiences all share the same backdrop. Life has meaning. There are unseen realities that govern the results of our actions just like gravity does to a falling leaf. All people are valuable and worth my time and my respect. People don’t have to think like me to be my friends. (After all, I’m likely the only person in the world that believes exactly what I believe, so that would narrow the field of friendships pretty dramatically!)

It’s precisely why I’ve tried to surround myself with people whose lives are different than mine. It means I can learn from their experiences (both good and bad) and hopefully provide perspectives they may not have encountered before that have served me well.

It affects the way I write my music. People can’t figure out why I can write heart-wrenching break-up songs as a man whose been fortunate enough to be married to the same woman for over 40 years. I get to write stories about situations with some sense of integrity, not because I’ve lived them, but because I’ve lived through them by coming alongside someone else when difficulties hit.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

I remember my first co-writing opportunity with an artist while I was in Nashville several years back. We started discussing possible things to write about. I’d just left a friend who was facing a marital breakup and thought that might be a direction to consider in the song. The artist/co-writer, who I had never met prior to that day, began talking about her own situation of facing the final days of an unhealthy relationship. I listened, We asked each other questions. We cried (a lot.) And we came up with an amazing song.

At the end of the session, she looked at me through yet another wet kleenex and in one of those half crying, half laughing voices asked me, “do I owe you for counselling?” These are the important moments in life I live for. I didn’t do much, but I felt I made a difference.

Contact Info:

• Website: durandrobinson.com
• Instagram: durandrobinson
• Facebook: durandrobinsonmusic
• Linkedin: durand-robinson-51b98430/
• Youtube: durandrobinsonmusic

Image Credits
Dave Philip, Pete Garfinkel