A Conversation with Rich Robinson – HuffPost 6.20.14

Mike Ragogna: Rich, The Ceaseless Sight, what’s the vision of the album and what was the creative process?

Rich Robinson: I knew I wanted to make a record and it worked out perfectly, time-wise. I knew we weren’t going to be touring after 2013. Instead of going in with full songs, I had more skeletons. I had a chorus or a verse or whatever and then when we got into the studio, we used that energy of, “We’ve got to get this done.” We had a short time, we only had a month to make the record. A lot of times, that happens in Woodstock, or in the studio in general. You have a couple of ideas, but when you get in the context–especially with me, because I like to write with drums in the room–you get in that context and it kind of clears the path and allows for that energy to come through and create those songs. I didn’t necessarily have a context going into this record. For twenty-five years, I’ve always tried to approach making records as a collection of songs that create something slightly greater than one song as a whole piece. The sequence of a record, the songs of a record, how does the verse fit into a song, how does the chorus fit into a song, how do they songs fit into a record, how does the record fit into my body of work? How does that fit into twenty-five years of doing this? To answer the question of the uniqueness of this record, a lot of times, I would have songs done before I went into the studio. For twenty-five years, I would have ten or fifteen almost done going into the studio, but this time, like I said, I’m just using skeletons.