Robert Finley

After a lifetime of hard work, Robert Finley has established himself as one of the leading voices of contemporary blues. Born and raised in the small town of Bernice, Louisiana, Finley spent decades playing on the street and leading the gospel group Brother Finley and the Gospel Sisters, before finally making his recording debut at the (anything but early) age of 62 with the 2016 album *Age Don’t Mean A Thing*. This album caught the attention of Dan Auerbach, founder of the Easy Eye Sound label, leading to a long-standing collaboration that includes *Goin’ Platinum* (2017), Sharecropper’s Son (2021), an autobiographical album, as well as the critically acclaimed Black Bayou (2023). The latter, an 11-track tour de force fusing Southern soul, jazz, folk, blues, rock ’n’ roll, and more into a raw and resounding tribute to Finley’s home state of Louisiana, was met with a flood of praise from major international media outlets—SPIN, The FADER, No Depression, American Songwriter, Paste, Uncut, and many others—with MOJO even declaring in a five-star review: “Black Bayou is undoubtedly the album Finley was destined to create, filled with stories that only he could tell.”