yesterday's rain

folk songs and donuts...

I seem to recall in the 90s in Carp or even before running into Don Robertson...for some reason he was working at Tyler's Donuts..maybe he owned it at the time...but I used to go in there and still do...I knew about Don from the music scene...this goes back to the Bluebird Cafe days..I played there a few times and I think nearly everyone did at one time or another...those were some good times..but Don was an enigma ... a big burly folksinger who didn't look like a folksinger...he wrote stuff for Burl Ives and others...

but I used to go get coffee and talk music with him and mostly pester him... he'd listen sometimes... sometimes not...he had an album called "Yesterday's Rain" and I recall that song was really good...really beautiful....of course now the LP is as obscure as the best of them...

so Robertson died in Ventura recently, but I wonder if he knew that at one point in our lives some punk kid with a guitar wanted to be just like him!

Feb. 11, 1939 - July 5, 2012

Donald was born in Mt. Vernon, N.Y. He grew up and attended school in New York and Connecticut. He moved to Santa Barbara, in 1961 and lived in that area for the rest of his life.

He worked at many jobs, including photography, reporting, bartending, and donut making, but his real love was for folk music. He was a self-employed musician and song writer, and a member of ASCAP. He was a singer, and played the baritone ukulele, nylon and steel string guitar, and twelve string guitar. He recorded at least one album: "Yesterday's Rain" on Jet Set Records in 1968. One of his songs was recorded by Burl Ives.

As a live performer, he was a member of the "Freeway Singers" a folk group that held forth at 'Me and Ed's Pizza' near Santa Barbara City College. He was well received and a regular at the 'Rondo'. He also played at 'Gatsby's', the 'Nexus' and 'The Timbers'. In the late '60s, Don was in a duo called, 'Don & Tina', that performed regularly at 'John's at the Beach' in Ventura. He was a regular at the 'Bluebird Cafe' in Santa Barbara in the early 1970s, as well.

In the 80s he sometimes played with "The Floyd County Boys," who also sang and performed many of his songs. His strong and beautiful voice will be missed by many. Donald wrote two columns for the "Coastal View" newspaper in the 1990s - 2000s: "Plane Nuts" about aircraft and air shows and "Out There" about UFO phenomena. He had tremendous knowledge and love of these subjects.

I got the feeling that Don was equally at home playing the twelve string guitar and singing songs as he was making donuts...there's an art to both, you know