Various cousins who babysat him had their own preferences in music they listened to while they were with him. Robinson’s influences expanded via his extended family.
![forest hills drive live poster forest hills drive live poster](https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/URIAAOSwjCxd3tul/s-l640.jpg)
His father’s taste ran to groups such as The Four Seasons. His mother’s older siblings were into doo-wop, so Robinson grew up listening to what she liked - groups such as The Crests, The Del Vikings and The Coasters. They listened instead to Nat King Cole, Johnny Mathis and Sam Cooke. Although his parents were baby boomers, they were, uncharacteristically, not into Dylan and The Beatles.
![forest hills drive live poster forest hills drive live poster](https://mir-s3-cdn-cf.behance.net/project_modules/1400/da431f23966039.5632bd0a4d00d.png)
The family spent idyllic summers in upstate New York in Phoenicia, west of Woodstock, where the backdrop of the Catskill and Adirondack Mountains were a definitive early influence. Robinson Treacher was born in Forest Hills in Queens and was 3 when his family moved to Oceanside on Long Island. It’s hard to believe all this has come from the New York City area, but it has. There’s a sense of something being reborn when he sings. Robinson’s version, recorded live with audience participation supplying percussive clapping, seems to grow out of bygone Southern soil: Oh Miss Bell, / Oh Miss Bell / Hopali Miss Bell, Hopali Miss Bell / Oh Miss Bell, she promised me / that when she died / she’d set my people free. In an early Lomax recording, a chorus of female voices engages in a call-and-response field holler. Particularly satisfying is a song borrowed from the Alan Lomax collection, a work song called “Hopali” which kicks off his most recent album, Porches.
![forest hills drive live poster forest hills drive live poster](https://geo-media.beatport.com/image_size/1400x1400/97a5e4fa-3a72-4064-9ff9-4ac666b61197.jpg)
Like a tent revival shouter, rooted in gospel and blues - a mix of silk and gravel - the sound is coming from a core somewhere deep. It doesn’t matter which song in his repertoire he sings. There will be comparisons to other great singers - David Gray and Van Morrison come to mind - but his approach to his material is unique. The first time the voice of Robinson Treacher reached my ears, I knew the folk community had found something special.