For every season in Robert Hubele’s life there’s been music.
Be it the blues, folk and now children’s music, his devotion to performing and song writing has followed a winding journey that brings him to the Chinese Bunkhouse on May 18 as part of the Steveston Folk Guild’s ongoing series.
He started with the blues back in the late 1960s while working as a ticket clerk for the CPR in Calgary.
“I was going out with the station master’s daughter - that’s how I got the job,” he quipped when the News chatted with him recently. “And I became friends with a Red Cap (station porter) named Butch Williams who said he’d lend me his beat up, old guitar for the weekend so I could learn how to play House of the Rising Sun.”
Williams showed him the chords and sent Hubele off with the guitar and tiny amp.
“I took it home with me and all of a sudden, I could play. And I thought this was so cool,” he said. “But I somehow ended blowing up the guitar, I don’t know how.
“It must have cost me $100 to get it fixed before I gave it back to Butch. But it was worth the money.”
That’s because it got the musical ball rolling for Hubele, who was driven by the back beat of the blues.
“It’s always been the blues. Since I was a little kid, Bill Bailey, Won’t You Please Come Home is the first song I can really remember,” he said. “And it was my favourite aunt who played that kind of music that stuck in my head.”
He went on through a Hippie phase, spending the summers out of university on Vancouver Island’s Long Beach where he continued to develop his musical talent.
“I was living with two other guys in this commune and one of them was this real patient fellow who’d sit for hours and play blue back beat for me while I diddled around trying to play the lead.
“It’s always been a part of what I wanted to do,” he said. “And I woke up one morning with a guitar and wrote a little song and thought, wow, I can do this. And that opened up a floodgate and I started writing like crazy.”
Hubele also furthered his education in the blues with a collection of albums he was introduced to, including B.B. King’s Live at the Regent, which he said was the best blues record ever made.
“Years later I got to meet B.B. and had him sign that album,” Hubele said, adding that while he admired King he never went as far as naming one of his guitars such as King’s Lucille.
“I’ve got a bunch of them and I consider them to be tools,” he said. “I love ‘em, but I also look forward to getting a new tool, too.”
With musical experience and now songs in hand, the next thing for a then young Hubele was to find a place to play.
“At the time I looked like this far out Hippie and the guy booking the acts at folk club at university liked what I did and booked me a bunch of times and I got the bug to perform,” he said. “I never did finish university. I figured I’d be rock and roll star. So, away I went.”
At first it was a solo folk act. Then he joined a few bands. And when the gigs were not as frequent, Hubele re-visited real life as a heavy equipment operator in Calgary.
“But no matter what, I’ve always come back to music,” he said. “I’ve done so many different things to keep my head above water. I was even a house husband and raised the kids while my wife worked at a high-tech electronics company.”
Now, it’s music. And it includes an entirely different audience from those early days.
“I’ve got five grandkids and that’s the best. They are the love of my life,” he said. “And people would ask me if I’d written songs for them. And geez, I really hadn’t. So, I sat down and started writing and wrote one for each of them and then some collective grandpa songs and ended up with a total of nine.”
He then came up with some sci-fi stories called Little Jimmy Would Not Stop and Little Jimmy Wouldn’t Listen and put them together with the songs and came up with the Sleepy Time King album.
“They all got it for Christmas and played it for their sleepover friends, who thought it was pretty cool,” Hubele said. “They just discovered about two years ago that this is what I do.
“Now, when we together in Montana for a family reunion each summer, I get to provide the music when the kids put on a play.”
Robert Hubele plays at the Chinese Bunkhouse on May 18. Show time is 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $10 at the door. For more information, visit online at StevestonFolk.net.
