Rob has written over 2,000 songs, recorded 8 albums and 2 musicals, in addition to various chamber works. Though he thinks of himself as a poet before a musician, it seems God has poured through him a consistent musical and lyrical flow that began in grade school and continues to this day
I wrote fireflies as a “real-life parable”, when the unlikely changed my vision and I saw everything more clearly. If the story of being guided home by fireflies seems far-fetched, what they illustrate seems more pertinent than when I wrote the song- “all around us the darkness has descended; here a little light can go a long way; each little light is joined as a reminder; of the brilliance of the coming day.”
This song exposes the three kinds of brokenness in the world and weaves it through with the alienation we experience as their result. It was written on the eve of the US declaring war on Iraq and touches it and everything with it.
Gospel Plow is collection of traditional songs with social/spiritual stirrings. I first heard Lazarus and Diverus (or Dives) performed by June Tabor and the Oyster Band, and began to research its text. It is a setting of a story told by Jesus in which the Kingdom of Heaven inverts earthly conditions. It is the vindication of the underdog and an eschatological call to a life of kindness. I hope it speaks to you as it did to me.