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.

Read more …