TW: And was he…bangin’ a gong?
RBW: He totally was. On the first couple of CDs he was my cohort. It sounded like a field recording. The initial idea was to do something edgy like the old Smithsonian records that I love. So I set up one microphone and an antique cassette four-track. And that’s how the whole thing got started.
TW: Now Raffi was there all alone for a minute raking it in, right?
RBW: He’s a fascinating character. Raffi was the first children’s music superstar. He actually walked away because he got so popular…and he’s the first one who got the bean-counters going, “Look at this! We can make a lot of money here!”
TW: And you weren’t too far behind…so were you aware that Uncle Rock could take off?
RBW: Sure, I knew there was a market for it. What I wasn’t prepared for was for how much
I’d enjoy it. The whole thing is fascinating because so many parents — even parents who are progressive — they come up to me after a show and they’ve sung along and danced around with their kid, who’ll be maybe three or four or sometimes five years old, sometimes older. And they’ll say to me, “We’ve never done this before. As a family — we’ve never seen live music before. We didn’t realize one could do this.” But it’s ancient! And kids are naturally uninhibited — filled with all this primal human stuff that’s always been there which has not yet been drummed out of them by technology. So it’s immensely satisfying…
TW: Tell me about the lift off and…Robert Burke Warren vs. Uncle Rock. Has he eclipsed you?
RBW: For quite a while he did — and I’m fine with that. I was actually working my own (grown-up) stuff when we did the first Uncle Rock CD Here We Go! I pressed out a hundred and they sold out [snaps fingers] like that. So I pressed up thousand and they sold out [snaps fingers] like that. And the plain truth was it was so much fun.
I still had plenty of shadows and darkness I wanted to explore…songs about lust, and death and betrayal and all the good stuff — but I was acutely aware that I was inside this window of time where…there was my son and myself and it’s going to go by fast. We don’t hunt, we don’t fish, we do Uncle Rock — I didn’t want to go halfway, I wanted to go whole-hog with him on this… so we recorded and performed together quite a lot for a few years. He’s 14 now and has his own band – Tofu Decoy.
TW: So if you wanted to make another Robert Burke Warren CD could you “not harm” your Uncle Rock fan base?
RBW: I’m not worried about it. And I have written some songs and performed some gigs as myself. I’m not worried about tarnishing Uncle Rock.
TW: Now I can’t say I’m really totally up on the cutting-edge Uncle Rock stuff but I’ve heard about the changes in the children’s book market including death and obscenity, and that it’s gotten a lot edgier. Do you find yourself tempted to go to a darker place with it?
RBW: That’s kind of like what I’m doing with “The Dumb Waiter” in a way, but this is RBW, not Uncle Rock…and actually I’ve gotten a couple of emails from Uncle Rock fans —
TW: [high voice:]”Can’t wait to see you as that dumb waiter…”
RBW: That’s right. I write back DO NOT BRING THE KIDS. But actually Uncle Rock is one of the edgier kids’ performers. I’ve got a song about death, it’s called, “Picnic In the Graveyard,” it’s actually about the Day of the Dead.
* * *
TW: And as to the shadows explored in “The Dumb Waiter?”
RBW: I love this play. It was the first obtuse or absurdist play I’d ever seen as an acting student, long before “Waiting For Godot.” And it gives me a chance to explore a lot of different zones as an actor because the character I play is sort of the alpha male, but there’s a subtext that…he’s not.
TW: Like a lot of alphas…
RBW: Exactly. And that’s part of the genius of this play. My character, Ben, is very abusive to Gus [played by Clay Tyson] while the actions Ben resorts to display an inner cowardice.
TW: Very often we read a play and come to most of our decisions about our character and we arrive with these ideas that are already pretty firmly fixed. But occasionally if we get off
book fast enough — there can be stuff that occurs with a strong director or in rehearsal whereby you come to a different understanding. Any of that?
RBW: I had an inkling, initially. But it was only when we got it on its feet — there was a revealing…of the engine of the play. And having said that there are aspects to the play that are still confusing, and I don’t think that’s a bad thing…the mystery quotient.
TW: This isn’t going to be in the round? This will be conventionally stage?
RBW: It’s going to be conventional. The director Bob McBroom is also the set designer; he used to do set design in Manhattan for a living. Very bare-bones, which is quite appropriate, I think. And — oh you have to check this out — when I was doing my research I came across these film versions of the play, and there’d be BBC and so on and then in 1987 Robert Altman directed John Travolta and Tom Conti and there’s a one minute clip on the internet and it looks…like a SNL parody, [announcer’s voice:] “The New Comedy by Robert Altman, The Dumb Waiter!..Two hitmen gather in a strange house, waiting for their next job!” And in fact, in this play Pinter did provide us with what has since become the iconic English mobster who you then saw in In Bruges, The Krays, and Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels.
TW: Tell me a bit about your co-star, Clay Tyson. He looks English.
RBW: He does, but he’s not. Clay’s great. He’s got a great sense of authority on stage and
he’s got great volume. When I heard him I went, “Yes!” — and I knew we were going to have fun.
TW: Does that allow you to back-off at times?
RBW: It does. To keep it from becoming being two guys shouting at each other. But he’s got
a great presence, and “watchability” which is something that’s indefinable. And — although I can’t see myself…I think there’s something very watchable about the two of us.
TW: I wouldn’t doubt that for a second.
