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ROBERT CRENSHAW: BACK HOME, STILL
MAKING MUSIC
Dreams can take you far.
As a boy growing up in a close-knit musical family in
the 1960s and 70s, Berkley High School grad Robert
Crenshaw “wanted to be the fifth Monkee or Beatle. I
always liked the camaraderie of a band.”
Crenshaw, fresh off a rousing performance at Memphis
Smoke in Royal Oak to celebrate the release of his third
solo CD, “Dog Dreams,” just completed a short concert
tour with veteran musicians Don Dixon, Jamie Hoover and
Bill Lloyd. The quartet played in Tennessee, North
Carolina, Washington D.C., Cleveland and Chicago.
The week-long tour was “life-affirming,” Crenshaw said.
“I hadn’t been on the road for a long time, and
reconnected with a part of myself I thought I’d lost. I
had a blast!”
“Dog Dreams” features soaring harmonies and an
infectious mix of toe-tapping pop melodies and
introspective ballads, most penned by Crenshaw. Music
critics’ favorite Marshall Crenshaw accompanied his
brother Robert, Hoover and others on an assortment of
instruments.
The name of the album came to the 45-year-old Crenshaw
after he watched his pit bull, Lilly (pictured on the
cover) sleep and dream.
One of the record’s highlights is a ridiculously catchy,
cut-loose romp through the Vogues’ “Five O’Clock World,”
recorded in New York City with another brother, sound
engineer John Crenshaw.
Jeanne and Howard Crenshaw, longtime Berkley residents
who now live on a golf course in Gaylord, instilled a
deep love of music in each of their four boys.
“There was always music in our house,” Jeanne Crenshaw
said. “Howard had a guitar, which he used to ‘pick’ for
fun, and we both enjoyed singing. Howard taught Marsh
his first chords when he was around 5.
“Rob was always attracted to the drums,” she added. “I
remember him leading a procession of first graders into
the gym at Angell School for a Christmas play – and he
was playing a snare drum!”
That experience eventually helped Crenshaw attain the
kind of pop stardom he’d dreamed about as a kid. In the
80s, he played drums and sang backup vocals on
Marshall’s first five highly-acclaimed CDs, on national
television shows and on concert tours across the U.S.
and abroad.
The first time Robert heard one of their songs on the
radio – appropriately, that tune was “Something’s Gonna
Happen” – “I jumped up and called everyone I knew,” he
said. “But when you start thinking of yourself as a ‘pop
star,’ you’ve got real problems. Fame is a temporary
thing. You might get 15 minutes of it if you seek it
out, then you find it lacks substance.”
After living and working for several years in New York
City, Crenshaw and his wife, artist Tammy Park-Crenshaw,
moved back to southeast Michigan in 1993 to be closer to
their families.
The couple resides in Oak Park. When he’s not creating
and performing music, Robert builds and repairs
furniture for Guaranteed Furniture in Berkley and for
his wife’s Happy House Furniture business.
“My life is so totally different than it was twenty
years ago,” Crenshaw said. “What I’m doing now is right
for now. What I did then was right for then. If I can
make a record every two years, go out for a few weeks a
year and play locally a bit, I’m a satisfied man.”
Dreams can take you very far indeed. They have taken
Robert Crenshaw on a remarkable musical journey around
the world. And all the way back home again.
By Ron Campbell / Berkley, Michigan / February, 2004 /
e-mail: roncamp22@juno.com
-Robert Crenshaw is scheduled to perform at the Berkley
Art Bash on June 19. Please call organizer Maureen Monte
at 248-544-0611 or e-mail her at maureenmonte@aol.com
for details.
-The Michigan Animal Rescue League in Pontiac is the
nonprofit, “no-kill” shelter where Robert and Tammy
Crenshaw found their dog. MARL may be reached at
248-335-9290, or by logging on to
www.michigananimalrescueleague.org.
An edited version of this article ran in the February
19, 2004 edition of the Berkley & Huntington Woods (MI)
Mirror. |
