I know why the songbird sings: A conversation with Robin Lane Published by Carla DeSantis on October 7, 2013 in Artist Features, News A lot of great artists have influenced me over the years, but none so profoundly that I wanted to start a non-profit with them. In the past year, however, meeting singer/songwriter/educator Robin Lane has changed the course of my career and my life. And as you will soon see, Robin is responsible for changing a lot of lives Check out this trailer from a film being made about her life: http://www.whenthingsgowrongmovie.com/ Robin Lane's Story Robin’s band, Robin Lane and the Chartbusters, was a phenomenon in the northeast in the early ’80s, but never became as well known on the national scene. Wondering what Robin was up to these days, a quick Google search revealed that Robin has been facilitating A Woman’s Voice, songwriting and recording workshops with trauma survivors and at-risk youth since 2001. I had just been through a harrowing experience helping a friend deal with abuse in her own life, and was devastated to see firsthand how little help was available to her in both resources and family or public support. I immediately shot off an e-mail to Robin and we became fast friends. It’s a little more than a year later, and Robin and I have started up a non-profit, Songbird Sings, to bring her programs to those who can benefit across the country. Watching the recent media firestorms around sexual abuse survivors Mackenzie Phillips, Elizabeth Smart, Jaycee Dugard, and Samantha Geimer (Roman Polanski’s victim )—and the public skepticism victims endure—shows me just how shame plays a huge role in keeping people from coming forward. Through Robin’s programs, however, many women are re-claiming their lives. Robin's first experience on record was singing with Neil Young—Robin’s life was rooted in music early on. Her father (Ken Lane) was Dean Martin’s musical director and wrote the theme, “Everybody Loves Somebody Sometimes.” She was also briefly married to Police guitarist Andy Summers before the band was a glint in anyone’s eye. Since October is National Domestic Violence Awareness month, I thought it would be the perfect time to talk to Robin about the way she is using music and her personal experience to heal so many lives scarred by trauma. If your life is haunted by similar experiences, there is help. Click on the link above to learn how you can help to Break The Silence. Carla DeSantis: What was your first professional music recording and how did it come about? Robin Lane: It was singing on the song, “Round and Round” with Neil Young. I knew Neil from The Rocket House, later the Crazy Horse band. Everyone used to sit around smoking pot and playing music. Neil and I sang the song together. Later, when Neil was recording his second solo album, my good friend Danny Whitten (Rockets, Crazy Horse) thought we should all record the song together. Or maybe Neil thought this was a good idea. I went into the studio with Neil and Danny and some others and the three of us ran through it, oh, maybe two times at the most. Then it was recorded and it was a take. I said, “Don’t you want to fix anything?” But Neil was probably the first person where less is more in the studio. Just get it down. Later the punk bands did the same thing. Carla: How did your video get on MTV the very first day that the network launched? Robin: I’m sure Warner Brothers just put it on. That was the good part about being on a major label.

Who’s going to argue with Warner Brothers? Carla: What has been your best gig ever? Robin: I don’t remember most of them. Probably gigs at The Rat or The Paradise in Boston when we were in our prime and everyone loved us. Definitely the worst ones were playing on the west coast with The Undertones. They were a great band, but they hated us. They thought we were too pop and their fans hated us. It was always a double and equal bill, but it became the mods and the rockers. Big fights broke out with ice cubes and lemons being thrown at us on stage. A guy grabbed the mic from me at the Whiskey and yelled, “You suck! You suck!” while all of Warner Brothers was there. I grabbed it back and yelled at him. I guess I can remember the bad rather than the good. The best shows now are house concerts or other solo shows, with other musicians or with my old band. Now I am much more appreciative. Carla: How did you meet Andy Summers? Robin: He was going out with my girlfriend and I was babysitting at her house. Andy rang the bell (I didn’t know him) and asked if Della was there. I said no but come on in and I’ll play you my songs. I didn’t know he was a musician or anything. He fell in love on the spot. But he loved the music more than the girl. Of course that’s what music does to you. ........................ This interview continues to focus on Lane’s own experiences of abuse. Reader discretion is advised. Carla: Can you discuss the nature of your abuse? Robin: Uh, oh. I didn’t know you’d be asking this question. Jeez. For one thing, my brother and I brought ourselves up. I used to think my mother was just neglectful and that it wasn’t such an abuse issue as I never felt abuse. But the nature of neglect is that you can’t name it, so it is the most confusing thing ever trying to figure out, “Where did my lack of confidence, no self esteem and self-sabotage traits come from?” This was a big part of my own abuse because it was my whole upbringing. I don’t think my mother ever asked me one question about school, me, my day or anything like that. Nor did she ever say I love you. She thought the fact that I told my own daughter “I love you” every minute was going to spoil her. But then, because of the way I developed, I constantly put myself in very, very scary situations in my later teens. I was raped at gun-point with a silencer on it because I fell for a scam, hook, line and sinker. I was panhandling in front of Schwab’s Drugstore on the strip in LA. I got into this car and drove to what could have been my doom, but it was a rape instead. That’s not such a good thing either and with a gun no less. I wasn’t afraid at the time, just mad. But later, of course, the yucky stuff came out. I never told anyone so I guess I was keeping it underground. Later I did talk about it a humorous way, totally out of touch with my own emotions. Then there’s Daddy dearest. This is the hardest part to talk about. When I was 19 or so and a lovely young lady who didn’t know I was a lovely young lady, I spent some time with my father who I had always wanted to love me. My parents were divorced so I only saw him maybe three times a year. There were a couple of really awful incidents that make me sick to talk about. Later I told his fourth wife about it because she was pouring out all the sex details of my Dad’s life with showgirls and it was triggering everything for me. I said to her, “Please stop. He did that to me too.” She flipped out and said she was going to tell him I told her this. I ended up telling my father in the most conciliatory way, saying I forgave him (this was 16 or so years later). But he looked in my eyes and said, “How could you say that, Rob? Everybody knows you’re crazy. You’ve been in the bin. I want you out of my house.” He lived up on Lake Tahoe, and all I wanted to do was pull a Virginia Woolf in the lake. But something kept me from doing that. It was my daughter, of course. I needed to be there for her and I

knew this deep down. My father made his feelings about me pretty clear when he changed his will leaving everything to his fourth wife and nothing to me or to my brother. So I was the bearer of the bad tidings. This is what happens in the families of the abused. If the victim tells then she/he is ostracized by the rest. My stepmother said, “Get over it, Rob.” OK. I’ll just do that. It is such a betrayal when parents do this to their own children. It is such a betrayal when anyone does it to any child. But there is still much good in people, and that is the core of what you have to get to. Carla: How did you come up with the idea for “A Woman’s Voice?” Robin: When I moved out to western Massachusetts, about nine years ago, either by chance or synchronicity, I just happened to be walking by a storefront in Turners Falls. It was just about the most down-trodden town around, except that it’s really beautiful too with all these old factories on the Connecticut River. It has little bridges crossing over and there are a few leftover mansions on the hill. But this town has had much crime due to low economics and no available jobs. Anyway, I was looking for the community health center and I saw an open door and some women inside. I walked in and asked them if they were the community center. They said no, but that they were having a writing group and would I care to join? I wasn’t doing much so I said yes. When they found out what I did, and that I had been working with youth-at-risk and teaching Julia Cameron’s course for artists, “The Artist’s Way”, they asked me if I would do both at their Women’s Center. So I did. I had no idea what I was getting myself into. The first group of women to join my songwriting workshop all had some kind of life trauma: domestic abuse, childhood abuse, addictions and most assuredly mental health issues. I didn’t know this or understand at all who these women were. However, I began to see that as the lyrics got written, I was going, ‘Whoa! This is incredible!’ Then we started talking about the details. It wasn’t so much the bare bones, but enough to know that I was working with some serious abuse survivors. I called the workshops ‘A Woman’s Voice’ and one led to the next. Through the process, my own stuff started to be revealed. I took many trainings and healing workshops from other people in the area and learned about being ‘Trauma Informed.’ That means we have to understand that people who come in for cures and are in need can often times have abuse in their lives. That is what is causing them to either act out, go insane, become abusers themselves, be the abused in domestic violence situations. These are people who become addicted, never have money or self esteem. They have no way of getting better. Usually health centers and doctors and even psychiatrists can drop bombs on you without even knowing this because they are not aware of the PTSD that you may be living with. This is occurring right now in many mental health hospitals. They are not treating or listening to the stories that people need to tell in order to heal. This awful stuff that happens to some of us is not a pretty topic and people are just not inclined to talk about it or listen to it. Health professionals become dismissive at just the time they should be paying attention to what has really brought these people into their clinics. Not just the stuff that’s showing up. This is a complicated fix. I had no idea that my own trauma mattered. The abuse I went through, the rape, the father who was a bastard to me and the betrayal of my trust as a young woman is hideous stuff but not as hideous as some of the stories I have heard. But it sure came out in other ways. I had awful rage for awhile and I didn’t have a clue that it was repression. Carla: Can you talk about the pivotal moment when you realized how important ‘A Woman’s Voice’ is? Robin: The ‘aha’ moment. Yes. One day, one of the women I was recording flipped out as I was

playing guitar to a click track for her song. She threw her headphones off and ran out of the room. The other women sat there stunned. I was thinking, ‘Drat, that was a good take.’ A few of the women followed her out into the hall and I thought I’d better see what was going on. This was my program after all. The women were soothing her while she was crying and shaking. I just stood there listening to what she said. Later she told me the whole scoop. She had been taken out of her family’s home because of the abuse that was occurring there and placed with a foster family. The foster family was a Satanic cult. They would all get together, about 30-40 people, and use this woman, who was girl at the time, for the ritual each week. She was placed in a casket and then nails were hammered in. I don’t know what they did with her after that or with the casket (as if this part isn’t bad enough), but the sound of the click track triggered the sound of the nails being hammered in and that is why she flipped. This illustrates why everyone working with abuse needs to be trauma informed. This is just one story but it was pivotal in my realizing afterward that these songs were bringing up a lot for these women and that I had to be careful and learn about boundaries. From then on, I always checked with the women as to how they were in their recovery, if they could handle their own stories and other participants peer stories. Ninety percent of the women I have worked with have begun healing through writing their songs, through the sea of tears that are shed. This one woman has graduated from UMass with a Masters in Music Therapy. The healing power of music is phenomenal in itself. Add the potency of your story, the music takes it outside of yourself and you can look at it from a distance, not so much in harms way. This is not a cure but surely it’s a beginning. If you are suffering from any kind of abuse, there is help available to you. Visit the resource page of Songbird Sings for more information. You can heal when you begin to Break the Silence.