Roebuck to Perform on the Historic Masonic Theatre Stage
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Clifton Forge, VA (Sept. 26, 2016) - On Saturday, October 8 at 7:30 pm, Phillip Roebuck will take the stage of the Historic Masonic Theatre. Born in Norfolk, Virginia, Phillip Roebuck, actor and self-taught musician is one of Virginia’s most original musicians.

He's one of the most unique singer-songwriters you'll see pretty much anywhere, from sea to shining sea. Mixing and bending genres such as swamp blues, jump blues, hollers & stomps, shanties, ballads & breakdowns, and of course tearjerkers

Roebuck has won accolades and admiration far and wide for his freakishly entertaining performances. Phillip thrashes the resonator guitar and stomp board joined onstage by wife, Phoenix, working the upright bass. His original tunes -- including those on albums "Under the Matchlight" and "Fever Pitch" -- marry backwoods, Southern drones with unbridled rock 'n' roll passion.

PHILLIP ROEBUCK is a Virginia-born, New York-bred songster and bare bones one-man band. With punk rock intensity, Roebuck stomps out beats on a classic, depression-era drum apparatus, while strumming the banjo with a fierce ragged-but-right style. Some might call it Roots music for the new millennium.
Although he has played over a thousand shows in venues and on festival stages in the U.S. and Europe, Roebuck can just as easily be seen performing on a street corner in New Orleans or New York City or Norfolk, where he has spent nearly a decade honing his skills as a one-man band.
Roebuck was born in Norfolk, VA into a huge musical family (“I think I have 60 cousins, something like that”), so big that they have a music festival every July out in Pungo, a rural county of his hometown, Virginia Beach.
He was also an only child. His father, a singer-songwriter, moved Roebuck and his mother, then a hairstylist, traveled around the country in pursuit of a musical career. By the time they moved back to Virginia Beach, when Roebuck was in junior high, he had attended 19 different schools.
In high school Roebuck was versatile; surfing, performing in theater, and by then, he was also performing in clubs he wouldn’t have been allowed into otherwise. He was also constantly songwriting. “It always just flowed for me, although the better songs were harder to come by…but you write 10 or 12 of them and boom, you find a good one.”
Roebuck was influenced by folk (Cat Stevens, Jim Croce, and the music his father was making) as well as punk rock. Punk he was introduced to by his Uncle Kenny, whose band had once opened up for the Ramones.
After high school, Roebuck went to Philly to attend acting school. After a couple years, he quit, moved back to Hampton Roads, and started his first band, The Hollowbodies, with his cousin Shea Roebuck. In 1993 the two moved to New York and not much later signed with A&M Records. Phillip also signed as a songwriter for Warner Brothers. He was only 23.
But then the label was bought by Universal the same month The Hollowbodies’ debut single was to be released. One minute the Roebucks were ready to hear their songs on the radio, get the acclaim they so wanted. And the next, there was nothing.
After The Hollowbodies split, Roebuck started performing in the New York City streets. He taught himself to play the banjo by playing for eight hours a day every day for 30 days in a row, down in the subway. And slowly, he started building the one-man band, adding in whatever he needed to get the job done; a suitcase as a bass drum, drums on his back, a cymbal here or there.
Come to find out he was once hired by Spike Lee to perform in a commercial and talk about being a street musician–the spot aired during the 2000 Academy Awards.
“Playing on the street has always been a holy thing to me. Those are real musicians. It was never the opposite, like, oh that’s pan-handling–which some people see it that way. It was always, to me, the pinnacle. If you could play in the street, you must be really good.”
In the course of all that time Roebuck recorded five solo albums and over a dozen more with numerous bands. In 2009, he wrote an operetta for Julliard.
Phillip Roebuck’s most recent acting experience has been as a singer on AMC’s Turn: Washington’s Spies.
Phillip Roebuck has built a recording studio at his mother’s home in Hampton Roads, but you can still find him playing the streets of Norfolk with his quintessential folk/punk sound.
The Washington Post declared, “On stage, he is a rollicking storm of punk rock, folk, rock, blues and bluegrass. Phillip Roebuck is known as a one-man band with a banjo in his hands and a drum strapped to his back, but he prefers to identify as a songwriter and plays every show like it's his last. All in all, he's one of a kind”.
Tickets for Roebuck may be purchased online at www.historicmasonictheatre.com and range from $15 to $10. Tickets may also be purchased the evening of the show or by calling 540-862-5655 from 11 to 2 Mondays through Fridays. | | | | | |
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