Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Robert Gaulke. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Hi Robert, thanks for joining us today. Learning the craft is often a unique journey from every creative – we’d love to hear about your journey and if knowing what you know now, you would have done anything differently to speed up the learning process.

The first challenge was strictly ontological: what do I want to do with music? I really didn’t know how I wanted to approach music when I started out. There’s an inevitable trial and error process that feels very humiliating when you’re young. All I knew when I was a kid was that music and songs seemed like the best thing in the world and wouldn’t be great to be in The Beatles. I struggled with learning an instrument and finding my voice as a songwriter. My father was a classical musician and my brother wanted to be Eric Clapton, so it took me years to understand that songwriting was a different animal from becoming a virtuosic musician. They don’t teach poetry at Berklee School of Music. The most essential skill seemed to be guiding one’s curiosity through colossal errors of reasoning.

Robert, 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 write songs, poetry, and theatre and appear regularly in the NYC area. My hope is that I can provide a sort of art or entertainment that might be aimed at an educated public. I teach 13-year olds all day long; nothing wrong with them; I just want to create the sort of art that somewhat addresses more adult concerns. My hope would be that my audience finds my work accessible, yet interesting.

I work from the “troubadour” tradition (I came to understand this late in life). I generally start with a lyrical idea/poem and then try to fit the lyric to a set of chords or a groove. Everything starts with a poem; if it suggests something, I try it as a song. The bigger ideas get turned into theatre ideas. The ideas are out there; you just have to fast and grab them. I’m currently producing a theatre piece about a man who dedicated himself to sex, drugs, rock’n’roll, and helping people. People should know about Eric Scott Gregory and how he chose to live his life.

How can we best help foster a strong, supportive environment for artists and creatives?

Now that we are in very interesting times, I would hope that people would take the time to understand that a society has a need for “R & D” and even a “skunkworks” department. We’re guided by science, technology, and medicine and I feel that we work best when we question traditions and are open to new approaches. I’ve lived in Europe, Japan, and South America, and have consistently been impressed with America’s embrace of the new. I would hope that as a society we would continue to ask the question, “What does the future require?” I feel that artists, like scientists, are a part of the solution in developing new ways for us to see ourselves. In this sense, art, like education, or medicine, should be viewed as a needed benefit to a society and be supported against the vagaries of the marketplace. As technology ever increases, questions that were the province of scientists or philosophers might soon be on the mind of the average consumer; “What am I doing with my time? or What gives my life meaning?” might be put in high relief when one has the world at their fingertips.

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

I feel that I’m constantly trying to understand what or who am I within the context of current times. Again, an artist is like a scientist in the way they can give name to the unknown inside of all of us. There’s a taxonomic function at work. If I can create a sense of recognition or familiarity for someone listening to my work, then I feel like I’ve succeeded on some level. There’s a more specific goal in trying to make a sort of groovy sound with poetic ideas; I think of the work of global artists like Ruben Blades, Fela Kuti, or Caetano Veloso, in achieving something like this.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.bobgaulke.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bobgaulke
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bobgaulke
• Twitter: https://x.com/bobgaulke
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@BobGaulke
• Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/bobgaulke
• Other: https://www.threads.com/@bobgaulke

Image Credits

Images by Pavlo Terekhov