CM – Robin, what I wanted to do was go back to the beginning. You’re Californian by birth right?

RD – I was born in Oakland, California, home of the Oakland Raiders.

CM  – One of their other exports was Tower of Power.

RD – There you go! They have a lot of acts coming out of Oakland.

CM  – Yeah, I’m a big fan of theirs. Now I read that, as a young guy, you were probably as keen on sports as you were on music.

RD – Yeah, I played a lot a lot of ball. I’ve got a broken hip to prove it. I need a hip replacement – I’ll be a bionic man (laughs)

CM  – (laughs) Six Million Dollar Man.

RD – Yeah.

CM  – When did you make the decision that it would be a career in music for you Robin?

RD – That was maybe in tenth grade – came early. I was in a band – I was playing clubs in eighth grade. My father used to come and check on me. So I was already kind of working you know.

But then I got into high school – I was always playing ball. I was on the basketball team and couldn’t make some of the practices because I was playing or rehearsing so it was then that I had to make a choice between basketball and playing music.

I was already playing. I was backing up this singer named Vernon Garrett and we had put a record out, ‘We People of the Ghetto’. So my head was already in the music…

But I love playing basketball. My son plays ball – he got a scholarship to university, playing in Chicago.

CM  – I think I also read about your interest in music and bass wasn’t the only instrument you played was it?

RD – I started in about third grade. I come from a musical family. My brothers and my father could pick up anything and play it. My sisters played violin, my mom played piano. Most of my brothers played saxophone. So I started out playing trumpet and I played trumpet all through grammar school and junior high.

I was pretty good at trumpet. I always wound up being first chair – I could read pretty well. When I got to High School there were way too many trumpets so I played French horn mostly through Junior High. I was lucky – I played in an orchestra and we played at the New York World’s Fair.

CM  – Wow!!

RD – So that was my first gig (laughs).

CM  – Yeah. It’s a big one too.

RD – Yes, we travelled to New York. It was a rainy day – for a kid of my age it was just the thrill of a lifetime.

CM  – Fantastic. Now, you were in the orchestra, you’d done this gig in New York. What was it that put a bass in your hands and made that a permanent thing?

RD – Well my father brought home a little guitar and I played in a little high school band and played the trumpet but I always was fascinated by the bass player. And my brother played, I played. We got lucky – we played a couple of gigs in the town.

But a couple of the strings broke – it only had four strings so I started playing it like a bass and I just fell in love with it. Before, I’d watch the bass player and I was really ready to switch over and start trying to play this bass instead of my trumpet.

You know, I was good at reading music but if you took the music away I wasn’t really good at just playing from my heart. It was more of a technical thing, whereas on the bass it was all about what I was feeling because I’d never had any formal lessons and it was all self-taught so that won out hands-down.

CM  – Yeah. I listened to the drummer Poogie Bell talking about bass players yesterday and he said “you can know all the licks but if you play and I don’t want to dance, you wasted your time”.

RD – Yeah I have a band now, I have a young keyboard player. I’ll give someone a shot if they’re good people and a team player. He’s working his way up and that’s OK. And I always tell him “it’s not how many notes you play in a bar – it’s how many notes you feel”. Duke Ellington played three notes ‘bomp, bomp, bomp’ – people felt that. You don’t have to be a track star, playing ninety million notes.

CM  – Exactly.

RD – It’s all about making the person in front of you feel what you’re saying. And a lot of time, you’re playing right past them. Take Coltrane – he was a musician’s musician, people used to love him to death. But to the average person he was just playing a bunch of noise. The technique was so phenomenal; he just played over a lot of people’s heads. If you were a musician you could understand what he was doing and appreciate it but for the average ear…

And as musicians, we walk a fine line between what we like and what we know – or should know – our fans like. The average guy is not a trained ear – he just likes what he likes and a lot of times if he can’t understand it, he’s not going to like it.

CM  – Fantastic. Can I ask about Maze? Back before we knew them – I think they were known as Raw Soul?

RD - Raw Soul, right.

CM  – So when did you hook up with them?

RD – Well, I played with a local band round here, the Soul Messengers. We were a pretty big band in the area. We used to back all the people who came to town, like Etta James, Bobby Womack and some blues guys. Cecil McBee. I even played behind Rudy Ray Moore a couple of times. So that band split up and I remember I was on crutches – I think I had something wrong with my foot – and my brother, who always says “I introduced you to Frank” and I’m officially saying it now, had met a couple of the guys in May, Sam Porter and the original drummer.

So this guy brought them down to my house and they knocked on my doors. I came to the door and they just looked like a bunch of hippies (laughs). You know, I was in a different set and I said “OK who are these guys?” So we talked and me being out of a gig at that time, and they talked about playing original music and it really got me interested. So I went and check them out and talked to Frank and all the guys were really living in a one-room apartment over there in Berkeley. The bus has broken down in Berkeley on Milvia Street so a lot of the roadies were on the bus. Some of the guys and Sam were staying in this one-room apartment.

I went in there and talked to Frank. We had a good talk, you know, and I went and checked them out at one of these rock clubs. They were playing all original stuff so they had to work a different circuit to the one I was used to working. I went and heard the band and I just fell in love with it right away. The energy coming from the stage – it was just all original. They started out in Philadelphia and were thinking that California was the place to be because a lot of bands were making it out here. They’d gone as far as they could go in Philadelphia without becoming part of that Philly International thing. So, they came out here and a couple of people – the bass player was one – chose to go back home I guess because it was too rough of a ride out here you know.

So that’s how I got in the band and it was Frankie Beverly’s Raw Soul at that time. We played around different clubs all over the Bay Area. I was used to playing the R&B circuit, but playing original material in Raw Soul we had to play the rock circuit and it was a rough ride for a minute. Sometimes we didn’t have very many people in the audience; sometimes we had a nice crowd. Till we wound up getting this gig in San Francisco at this place called The Scene. It was a steady gig at a club and that’s where Marvin Gaye came and checked us out.

CM  – Ah, yes, yes, yes.

RD – And the rest is history after that.

CM  – Yeah. And this club was called The Scene?

RD – The Scene, it was over in San Francisco. A lot of people used to come over there. David Brown, Santana’s original bass player. We kind of got a following – it was funny because a lot of our following was white at that time. We had a great mixture of people. And we signed to Capitol Records and they promoted the band as being R&B, it just flip-flopped, it just turned around for some reason and as of today, Maze has never really crossed over you know. At least in the States.

CM  – So, Marvin saw you at The Scene. Did you ever work with him or did he just get you connected with record company people?

RD – His wife’s sister used to come to the club all the time and we befriended her and she liked the band a lot. She got Marvin to come down and hear us and Marvin dug us. He told Frank “you got to change that name – Raw Soul isn’t going to work”. So we got together and threw a lot of names in the hat – Charisma, different names and Maze just sort of won out.

He took us out on the road with him. He opened some doors for us, gave us some money to finish recording and stuff.

CM  – Wow!

RD - I remember one concert he did – it was in San Diego at the ball park and I was just amazed by his show. It was just so tremendous. Back in those days, we were like gladiators. They used to ride you around the ball park in those little golf carts after you performed… (laughs)

CM  – Oh my goodness!

RD (still laughing) waving to all the people. Those were the good old days.

CM  – So that’s a great start then really, isn’t it?

RD – Yes, it was a great start. Thanks to Marvin, we got our foot in the door.

CM  - When I was getting prepared to talk with you, I bought the first two Maze albums on CD. The first album sounded as fresh as when I first heard it the year it was released. I was kind of focusing on the bass playing all over again because the very first Maze song I ever heard was ‘Colour Blind’ – I had it on a 7” single.

RD – OK, yeah (laughs)

CM  – And that’s a really, really funky tune isn’t it?

RD – Right. (starts to sing the chorus then laughs)

CM  – “What colour have you coloured peas?” I love that. So, a band that got such a huge following in the States and over here in Europe too. What was it like to be part of all that for so much time?

RD – Man, it was like over 37 years. When the band first came out here it, it was a little more raw. They were playing some Sly songs, a couple of Santana songs, along with all the originals. And I think being in California for a period of time kind of mellowed the sound, plus my contribution mellowed the sound a little bit. That’s when the Maze sound really took shape.

It was a great ride – I have so many good memories. From start to finish with Frank – I mean I got to go around the world, I found that I had relatives in all parts of the country that I was able to get to. And just being on that stage, man, and playing and seeing how people would react to the groove – because our groove is a kind of hypnotic groove, you know. We stress the groove more than anything – not necessarily people’s chops. It’s not how good you can play or how much you can do – your focus is on this groove.

This groove is hypnotic. If you create the groove, the groove takes care of itself. People don’t hear all that other stuff – they hear the groove.

CM  – Probably the best example of that, and I’ve been fortunate enough to see you guys in the early 80’s….

RD – At Hammersmith?

CM  - … oh yeah. At Hammersmith Odeon. ‘Joy and Pain’ – it’s a perfect example of what you’re saying.

RD – Yeah, it’s dedication to that groove. Some people might say “they’re not doing much” but you know some of the finest things in life are the simplest things and they’re not as easy to do as they look. To sit in that pocket for the course of a song and not stray, it takes a lot of discipline. This is what I run into today, they are not very well disciplined. They want to move around too much before this thing is really set up – before they set up this groove. Everybody is moving around, improvising, and nobody’s really concentrating on the groove. So, it takes a lot of discipline to play the same thing over and over ‘til it creates this hypnotic kind of thing you know.

That’s kind of what Maze is about.

CM  – Because, live, that song stretched out to 10 minutes or more didn’t it?

RD – Yeah.

CM  – Now, the definitive version of that song isn’t the studio version – it’s the one from ‘Live in New Orleans’ isn’t it?

RD – Exactly – yeah.

CM  – This is the one that gets the radio play I think.

RD – That was a classic album. That was one show. It’s not like we pieced a bunch of shows together – that was one show, one magic show. And not too much cleaning up on it. We were just ‘on’ that night.

CM  – I know, because I’ve been to one of your shows, it’s an honest representation of what the band was like in concert.

RD – Maze was more of a concert band. That’s where we come from: playing five, six sets a night. Sometimes we had two gigs a night – play from 8 o’clock to 1 o’clock then get in the car and go and play after hours. There wasn’t a whole lot of money involved so you really had to like what you were doing. But that’s where we came from and I’d be the first to say we weren’t a great studio band. We made OK records but our niche is live man!

I’ve heard artists from the great Stevie, Luther, The Commodores – the list goes on and on – Patti Labelle who literally came back in the dressing room and said “wow, I don’t ever want to follow you guys. Why don’t you guys not be so good so when I come on… “ (starts laughing) … I mean really!

No-one wants to follow the band - that was the band’s claim to fame. We were great live.

CM  – You certainly were! So, this life with the band went on ‘til 2004?

RD – About 2004 yes.

CM  – And that’s when you decided to start on a solo career and you started to record the songs for ‘Do It Duhe’.

RD – Well, you know, I’ve always had a piano at my house and I was the first one to get the sequencer kind of stuff. So I was always writing and trying to do some things, but the commitment to Frank’s thing was such that it made it hard to do that on a total level.

So I got to the point where we were doing the same songs – I mean, they’re great songs – playing the same venues, the same people were backstage. I was getting the same room at the hotel. Things had just become a little redundant…

CM  – Like kind of a ‘Groundhog Day’….

RD – Yeah, yeah so I just thought, all the songs were Frank’s songs and even though the band made their contribution, his name was on the back of everything. Basically, at that time Maze had become just about Frank and I was really starting to feel like a sideman. I thought that there was no more ladder there in Maze to grow.

I had some things I wanted to say and life is short, so I thought let me make an attempt at it before my time runs out.

CM  – So, the first album then – you know that I’ve been listening to ‘Do It Duhe’ a lot. Were you setting out to make a musical statement Robin or did you just have lots of ideas in your head after years?

RD – (bursts out laughing) Yeah that first album was everywhere. It was all over the place. Like when you’ve got a dog caged up in the backyard, and he finally gets out and just runs wild. I was like that dog, running wild, I had so many ideas in my head, so many different directions that I just let it all out.

That’s what happened with ‘Do It Duhe’ – I had some instrumentals, some rap, some spoken word. It’s all over the place but, to me, it’s a true CD because I said to people “just play what you feel”. Some of the guys didn’t even know I was recording them. For example, on ‘Miles’ I had this keyboard player who used to play with Frank. He came by the house and let him hear that track. Of course there was a keyboard there and I just pushed the ‘record’ button and he was playing stuff and he didn’t even know that was going to make it onto the CD. When you do things like that you get the real thing! A lot of times when people are set up to record, and they’re prepared, you hit that red button and the mentality changes: “I gotta be well represented, I can’t make any mistakes”. It’s not the same as somebody just playing from their heart without worrying what else is going to happen.

CM  – I know what you mean. Anybody who’s played any amount of music would say that the best studio sessions were the ones that nobody else ever heard.

RD – (laughing) Like that first take. Because when you get to take three, take four, take five then it just turns into this other thing you know.

CM  – What’s a great example of that? ‘Sittin’ on the Dock of the Bay’ right? They did nine takes of that song and they said “let’s scrap it and go with the first take” and that’s what they put out on the record.

RD – I can remember doing some of Frank’s records – it was like doing boot camp. We did the second one in Colorado, we did the third one in Mississippi. I take my hat off to Frank – he knows what he wants, but trying to get there sometimes is rough.

CM  – There was a little time went by between ‘Do It Duhe’ and the one that I’m holding in my hands right now ‘Life’. You know that I love that because you’ve seen the things that I’ve said about it. There’s a whole other facet to this album because of the things that you were going through at the time that you were starting to record.

RD – Yeah. There was a little bit of that happened on the first one too. Going back to our early conversations about me playing ball. I was always playing ball and one time I ran into a blind pick and one time I got my neck snapped a little bit – I got a herniated disc in my neck. The result of that is, because all of your nerve endings come out of your neck, my pinkie got a little numb. I lost a bit of feeling in it for a bit of a time.

I remember being on the road with Frank and I was taking different medication – you know the show must go on. So there were a couple of times when I really went all out for the band. I was on the road was one time with a hernia (laughs). There’s a few times when I should have said “man I just can’t make it” but I’m a soldier so I just go and go what I got to do.

T think was some of the motivation for me just knuckling down and finishing that first CD. I thought “finish it while you can” because who knows where this thing is going to go or even it you’ll be able to play.

So, on the second CD, I’m going back to my basketball days, my hip was out. Me and my son were in leagues together. I can remember pulling myself out of a game – I was crying like a baby that night – and for the next four or five months I was in just so much pain with my hip. I must have just pushed that magic button. That slowed me down enough to concentrate. The first CD took me a while to do – they were songs that I’d had for a while. My wife said “stop telling people you’re going to do a CD. It’s been 5 or 6 years.” So I finally got that done but the second one, I got the bulk of the work done in about a year. A lot of that was because I wasn’t very mobile – I was here at the house with my bad hip.

I got through most of it and I was working on ‘Life Gets in Your Way’. My wife was in New York for her job and I was here at the house by myself and I just wasn’t feeling very well. I just thought I was pushing myself too hard. Every time she called me, she said “why are you in bed?” I said “I just don’t feel well”. So she came back home.

I started having these night sweats where I was wringing wet – I had a temperature one time of 104. They rushed me to emergency. I had an episode where I had the hiccups and I couldn’t catch my breath. They rushed me to emergency then. I think that time they kept me. Then they let me back out and then something else happened. My wife said I had to go to emergency three times. I don’t remember the third one. But one time they kept me in the hospital for fourteen days, trying to figure out what was wrong with me.

CM  – That’s a lifetime!

RD – Yes. It started with a lump underneath my arm. I thought I’d got that lump from working out so I went to the doctor. He sent me right across the way to the hospital to get an x-ray on it and that showed there was just a little fluid in there. But he wasn’t the kind of guy to take no for an answer so he sent me to an oncologist.

So I’m up in the oncology office and I’m like “what’s an oncologist?” It’s not a word I was too familiar with…

CM  – You don’t want to be…

RD - … until I looked up ‘oncology’ and saw ‘cancer’. I was wondering why he had me up there (laughing). During that meeting, he scheduled me to come back - it all happened real quick - the next day for a bone biopsy. Man, I wouldn’t wish that on anybody – that was so painful. My bite marks are probably still there on his couch (laughing).

CM  – (laughing) I don’t even want to think about it.

RD – Yes, so everything kept coming back positive. There was nothing in my marrow, there was nothing in my blood. But because of the night sweats, the oncologist pretty much had an idea what was going on. He didn’t want to commit to anything. During that time I was in the hospital and I had a biopsy of the lymph nodes that were underneath my arm.

And it came back – and the doctor came in the room and said “you have lymphoma, cancer of the lymph nodes. You have the aggressive T cell”. By this time, my stomach was swollen to about three times its size. It was like having three basketballs in my stomach because my lymph nodes were so swollen. I hadn’t been able to use the bathroom in a couple of weeks. I was all clogged up. They had me on morphine (laughs). I was like a sinking ship…

CM  – That’s not a nice picture.

RD – It wasn’t a nice picture at all. But when they finally figured out what was wrong and he prescribed that cocktail – that chemo cocktail – I remember on the 4th of July, I had a dream that night. During the daytime they had the BET awards and Beyoncé was on there, wearing a kind of robot costume. That night I was running from robots, I was in the gym (laughing) running from robots man. And I remember that dream. It stayed vivid in my head for a long time for some strange reason.

During the chemo I lost all my hair, lost about 40 pounds because I couldn’t eat anything at all. I just had to step away from the project for a minute. When I got well enough to get back to the project, I really wanted to express what I did in this song ‘Life’. So I got this guy Larry Baptiste who came out of the Narada Michael Walden school. He’s one of the guys who played background on a lot of those Whitney Houston, Aretha Franklin and Mariah Carey songs. He was actually – do you know Bill Summers – part of Summer’s Heat.

CM  – A fantastic percussion player! He was on the ‘Headhunters’ CD.

RD – Played with Herbie Hancock yeah. Great guy. I was fortunate enough to play with him a little bit.

Anyway, Larry wrote the lyrics for me and I told him I didn’t want it to look like it was me, but I wanted it to relate to me and for it to be universal, for people to relate to it. And he came up with this great lyric – that first line “sorry I can’t make it today – suddenly my life has changed”. That says so much, you know.

CM  – I like the lyrics on that because they’re very straightforward. Sometimes devotional lyrics are a little bit, kind of, cryptic and wrapped up in poetry and this isn’t at all.

RD – No, you can understand everything that’s being said. So that’s what motivated the second CD. Seems like I got to go through some physical trauma to finish these CD’s (laughing).

CM  – (laughing) so, you gonna stop now?? I haven’t read anything about any tour dates Robin. Are you going to be going out live with this album?

RD – Oh yes. Right now, basically I’m just doing everything on my own. The records are put out on my label.

CM  – Blaise Two, yeah.

RD – Tell you the truth Chris, I didn’t think it would be this hard to make this transition but it’s been a labour of love. Because if you didn’t love what you were doing, I don’t think a lot of people would have continued down this path.

I just talked recently with a promotion guy, who’s in marketing, who I knew from way back in the day. I found out that he’s the guy to speak to, you know. We just talked the other day about getting a publicist. A guy in Washington DC is going to handle the radio. So I really haven’t had the right team to get this on the level that I’ve been trying to get it to. But I think, now that I have this guy in my corner that I will be getting out there, doing a lot of things.

I’ve been working a little bit here and there. Since I’ve done my own thing, I’ve done a couple of TV shows, did some things in Vegas. Played at the premiere places here in Oakland – opened a show there once with Frank – the Oakland Paramount. We did a release party at Yoshi’s – a pretty big jazz club where all the big guys go. They’ve got a place called Kimbles, which is the other big jazz house, but it’s no longer here any more. But other than that, just clubs around the area.

A lot of times I do that just to keep the band tight, keep the band together. Because a lot of practice and no play, you know, the guys are like “what are we practising so much for?”

CM  – “Are we goin’ out?” Yeah. Where did you play in Vegas, just out of interest Robin?

RD – We played for the Roy Jones fight, when he fought Trevor Berbick. But we did a special for Jim Brown and it was at the…

CM  – Mandalay Bay?

RD – Yes. Mandalay Bay, that’s it! And the guest list was just phenomenal and it was a great night for us – we did well. Then we did a TV station in Chicago, WGN, which is a national station. Did like a morning show. And another ‘Good Morning’ show in Atlanta, Georgia.

CM  – Is that ‘Good Morning Atlanta’?

RD – Yes.

CM  – I spoke last year to Jeff Lorber on the day that he was going to appear on that TV show. It sounded pretty exciting.

RD – That’s exactly the one – yeah. That was about four years ago. But I’ve been searching for a good booking agent, trying to put a good team together to get this jump-started and on the level that I’m used to being on. I always say that here and now is like being in the D league in basketball. There goes my basketball roots… Got everybody scrapin’, kickin’ and scratchin’ and the referees aren’t calling any fouls down here (laughing).

It’s rough down here in the D League but like I say, it’s a labour of love but you keep on attacking and attacking until you finally get to the place you want to be. All I want to do is get out there and play, get on somebody’s tour, get my record played on the radio. Because I know there’s a fan base out there for me. It’s just about letting them know that Robin Duhe has a CD out. A lot of people know me from the Maze days, you know.

CM  – Of course, yes.

RD – Right now Blaise Two consists of me – I’m the CEO, artist, whatever else I have to do, my sister-in-law, God bless her heart, she’s been acting as my assistant manager, administrator. She’s worked in the government, high level. She’s good at what she does but she hasn’t worked in the music business and I keep telling her it’s a horse of a different colour. And my wife is my art director because she’s an artist. She came up with the Blaise Two logo and different things.

And VPS View Point Studios is actually my studio in my house upstairs because I can look out my window and the see the San Pablo Bay and the rolling hills. I’ve always said it’s not what you have, it’s what you’re putting into it you know. It’s not about having 58 channels and an SSL board and all this great stuff if you don’t have the tune to put into it.

CM  – If I think of conversations that I’ve had with people and think of music that I’ve heard, some of the old analogue recordings if you listen to them with a fresh ear, they draw you in much more than some of these full digital recordings.

RD – Man, when digital first came out I couldn’t stand it because it just cleaned up all that ambiance…

CM  – Yes. Yes!!

RD - … all that grit you know. Some of that noise was part of the ambiance of the record. I can remember being back in the studio when the engineer had to splice the tap (laughs). And all that kind of real-life stuff, nowadays you go on a computer and… the editing is phenomenal, it’s good but I’m from the old school. If it wasn’t right the first time, just play it over again. Instead of going in there, fixing it, cleaning it up technically – things that you can do now that you couldn’t do back then.

CM  – I even think, we talked on email about some of the basses you were playing, that the best sounds I hear come from wooden basses. I can’t stand carbon graphite basses, you know.

RD – Oh yeah. I only have one graphite bass. It’s my Steinberger.

CM  – Oh, ho ho. The headless one?

RD – Yes, the headless. To me, it’s like a novelty bass. I used to take it out when we used to do TV shows, like Soul Train and stuff like that, because it was just easy to get around, no trouble getting it on the plane. But I’ve never really used it – maybe once or twice on a gig. I think about changing it so I can put regular strings on it and tune it higher than my tenor bass and experiment with it. But nothing’s like the wood, man.

CM  – So what would you say is your favourite bass?

RD – I’d say the Spector, which I’ve had for many years. I like the way it contours to the body. And my second favourite would be the Lakland – they’re two completely different sounds.

CM  – I was fooled because I heard the Lakland and I thought it was a Musicman Stingray.

RD – I used to have a Stingray, a red one, and I went down to the factory in San Luis Obispo and met Ernie Ball, his son and everybody. It was a great experience. They had a bass that they had made for a female player but she didn’t want it, so I took it. It was a pretty, red bass with a zebra stripe around it – and I’m looking at it right now – and I played it for a while (mimics the mid-range quality of the sound). But the guys in the band kept saying “why don’t you get something with more bottom end?”

Carl Wheeler, who came from Tony Toni Toné, his friend gave him a bass – a Lakland. Carl has a studio, he records a lot of gospel stuff, and he let me borrow this bass for a rehearsal one time. Man, it had so much bottom end and everybody was smiling and happy, so that was it. I had to hang up my Stingray.

CM  – Is the Lakland a 5-string Robin?

RD – Yes it is. I got in contact with Jubu’s brother. Jubu’s the guitarist in Frank’s band now – he’s also from Tony Toni Toné. His brother Eric had a relationship with Dan Lakland so I got the number and I called Dan. His factory’s in Chicago and they sent me out a starburst 5-string Lakland and I just fell in love.

Not too much later, I ordered a 5-string fretless Lakeland before they started having them made overseas. The ones that were made in the US are so much better. I love my Lakland – you can get a Fender sound, a Musicman sound – it’s got a lot of body to it you know.

CM  – Fantastic! We’ve come up to date with the latest CD and we’ve talked about the touring that you’re hoping to do to promote that CD. Is there anything else in the pipeline Robin – any collaborations with other artists or recording projects?

RD – Not at this moment. Right now my focus is to get on somebody’s tour, trying to get the band out to be seen. I’m always thinking about my next CD. I’ve got some tunes in my head.

That’s a process. Once I get that studio recording vibe, I like to stay there. With the resources I’ve have, it’s hard to do anything but what I’m doing right now.

CM  – My my, we’ve been talking for 55 minutes…

RD – And we’re still talking!

CM  - Skype didn’t fall over. You’ve still got your pyjamas on! Robin, do you know, it’s been an absolute pleasure talking to you. I’ve been really looking forward to this.

RD – Me too. I appreciate the critique you did of the CD – it was so ‘on’.

CM  – I was lucky. You sent the CD a while ago so I had lots of time to listen, which is how I like to do things.

RD – Well, I appreciate everything that you’re doing. It really means a lot to me.

CM  – The pleasure’s all mine. It’s my way of saying thank you for years of fantastic music when you were part of the rhythm section in Maze. Seeing them was really one of the best things that happened to me while I lived in London.

I hope you enjoyed your first experience on Skype – this was a blast for me!

RD – Yes, it’s great.

CM  – I look forward to talking to you again soon – thanks very much for giving me an hour out of your day!

RD – Great talking to you!