Bio! Robert Terry WachobI was born on February 24, 1948, in Normal Illinois, and my standard joke is that I have been trying to get back to normal ever since.Sometime about the age of ten I wanted a guitar. An old man with a runny nose and a single lightbulb in his home gave me my first guitar lessons. His name was Mr. Hancock. I still appreciate those lessons.
I listened to music in my home. Rogers and Hammerstein, Frank Sinatra, Johnny Mathis, The Everly Brothers, Sons of the Pioneers, Chet Atkins, Elvis, the Beatles.
In high school we had a rock n roll band called the Meteors, and practiced in the home of the lead-rhythm guitar player?s parents. His father worked in a music store with Carl Russell, and came home with a new, traded-in guitar practically every week. His father also traded cars about as often. They introduced me to Chet Atkins, The Ventures, Los Indios Tabajeros, and Django Reinhardt.
I started writing songs in junior high school. I notice a lot of them tended toward serious subjects, but some were also light-hearted. I figured each song should have some development to it, where something was learned or gained or appreciated, or merely enjoyed.
Following a divorce, I joined a nightclub band called the Hopewells, but broke off due to extreme motivation to have a family again. That means I fell in love, but I was also looking for greater fulfillment in life. Travel was not the primary engine of life for me. Neither could I ignore the songs welling up inside me.
I traveled extensively for a couple years, doing a single act, wound up in Nashville, signed temporarily with an agent, starved a bit, often, and not just in Nashville, and wrote 150 or so songs.
In the early 1980s, I discovered a wonderful direction in life, finished my bachelors degree in sociology, then obtained a teaching certificate, married, briefly tried a group formed in Branson, Missouri, called Country Plus, and now have ten children. I credit God with all good in my life.
I still write, have a computer with software for recording, and have been ?caught? in the act of recording with the kids in the background. Music to me is a relationship of service and I have not yet found the musical need that I can serve.
My soapbox? Musicians, and the industry, contain some of the finest people there are. The most beautiful music has not yet been written. The most beautiful voices, not yet heard. Through my writing, I am trying to do my part to help bring that about. There is a great need for gifted social commentary. Life is good. Music helps make it that way, and can help make heaven and earth one.
Robert ...
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