Today we’d like to introduce you to Robert Cross.
Robert, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?
I grew up north of Los Angeles in neighboring Ventura County and have lived throughout LA, Ventura, and Santa Barbara most of my life.
I got interested in rock and alternative music around the time I started high school and started playing guitar specifically so I could write songs. It was a passion that just naturally developed in me as a teenager and was so great that I’d get excited at just seeing the Capitol Records building in Hollywood whenever I passed by it on the 101 Freeway. Living in and around LA, nothing seemed better to me than being a musician. I was drawn in by the rich history of all the various bands and artists that were known to have come out of here, such as the Byrds and Eagles in the 60s and 70s to Motley Crue and Lenny Kravitz in the 80s. I grew up with the deep, rich history of music from LA and always wanted to be a part of it.
I was very fortunate to have my uncle give me my first guitar, which was a used nylon string acoustic that he had lying around but had never learned how to play. Aside from that, I had to work and earn my own money to support myself and my passion. When I was 17, I started working at a small music store called Henson’s Music in Oxnard. Working there I was surprised to see how few musicians were interested in the creative side of music and instead were “working musicians” who were always on the hustle to find that next paying gig. Most of my co-workers performed in cover bands, playing Disco, Top 40, and religious music so they could perform at special events like parties, weddings, and quinceañeras.
While working there, I started playing in some of those cover bands and one of my first paid gigs was performing at a softball championship party at Cal-State Northridge. While I did get paid doing those kinds of gigs as a teenager I always knew my passions were in writing, recording, and performing my own music instead of doing cover songs and traditional pieces for special events. I knew the hustling musician lifestyle wasn’t for me and I instead focused on going to college. While I originally wanted to go to the University of California, Los Angeles since my grandma had graduated from there I ultimately went to the University of California, Santa Barbara in Goleta before moving back to the southeast of LA to La Mirada after graduating.
I enjoyed my time at UCSB, but it was frustrating for me to put my creative passions on hold while I was at school there. As beautiful as Goleta and Santa Barbara are, they aren’t as exciting as LA, and I felt very removed from the excitement of LA while I was at school there. I promised myself that after I graduated I would continue to pursue my songwriting and performance dreams, but the Great Recession hit right when I graduated, and that along with new tech had forced major changes in the music industry. While it was sad to see most of the physical music stores I had previously shopped at, such as the Tower Records on Sunset, go out of business, it was also exciting to see music and entertainment in general become more accessible through cellphones and streaming platforms.
One of the often unnoticed fallouts from this landscape change was the drop in guys who wanted to collaborate and be in bands doing original music. I still wanted to collaborate, play in bands, and record music, but the pool of talent for guys who were interested, available, and talented for it shrank dramatically during that time. I was fortunate to start a working relationship with my friend David Bucci, who’s a very talented guitarist, and I’ve been able to get my friend Scott Wintermute to play bass on a band project I call Satin, but it has yet to develop to the level I always hoped it would.
Technology has progressed so much in recent years that having a full-time, working band isn’t necessary to record, publish, and release your own music so with David and Scott’s help I released Satin’s first album ‘Drop Dead Gorgeous’ in April 2019. We had gone out and played several places in southern California into late 2019, but that came to a halt when Governor Gavin Newsom shut the entire state down in early 2020 with the COVID-19 restrictions he implemented. While it was frustrating to again be slowed down due to factors out of my control, I used that time to write and record what became Satin’s second album ‘Origami Heart’ which came out in Sept 2021.
I haven’t been able to get a full band together and play post-COVID so instead, I’ve been going out doing solo acoustic performances throughout the state of California since late 2022. I recently played at an art-house off of Melrose Ave in LA called Pauhaus, and before that, I played as far south as San Diego and as far north as San Francisco. It’s my goal to get out and play as much as possible to represent LA the best I can and to share my music with as many people who are out there to listen to it and (hopefully) enjoy it.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
Governor Newsom’s COVID restrictions ultimately led to several of the venues we had previously performed at to permanently close. That also slowed down a lot of the momentum and personal enthusiasm we had going and was a huge kick to my morale as opportunities are so rare and you always want to capitalize on them whenever they come up.
Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
I’m very passionate about the craft of songwriting, both lyrics and music. Most of my lyrical inspiration comes from my own personal experiences, and most of my musical composition is done on guitar, though I have in recent years composed a few pieces on the piano.
After playing in San Francisco earlier this year I was inspired to read Michael Shellenberger’s book ‘San Fran-Siko’. In his book Shellenberger explains the ideologies and destructive behaviors there that have contributed to the current state of the city (as well as others in California) and have led to the increase of homeless people here, smash and grab robberies and open-air drug use that has been featured in the news so much in the last several years now. Reading Shellenberger’s book and seeing the very things he wrote about with my own eyes has helped me to realize that it’s important to me to not only draw inspiration for my writing from within myself and my own experiences but also from what’s going on around me and try to absorb as much from the bigger world around me as possible and use that as inspiration to write and get better at songwriting.
We love surprises, fun facts and unexpected stories. Is there something you can share that might surprise us?
I have no real interest in professional sports or most movies that have come out of Hollywood in the past 10 or so years.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://satin1.bandcamp.com/
- Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/satin_sounds/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/satinsoundsonline/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/Satin_band
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCV9r0g5z7XBu2OrCqF7taJw
- SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/satinsounds
- Other: https://www.reverbnation.com/satinsounds
Image Credits
Christine Diaz
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