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Artist
Robin Sylar
12+ albums
SurfAlllesser known yet streamable artistsFUCKING AWESOMEa little bit of texas feeling
about
Describing a December 1998 Robin Sylar performance at Fort Worth's Keys Lounge -- wherein Robin took the stage with an open-tuned, capo'ed Telecaster a la Albert Collins, his guitar strap adorned with Christmas lights -- for Buddy magazine, Dallas-based blues scribe Tim Schuller had this to say: "Mark me, few of the renowned guitarists on this planet are a tenth as good as Syler. A master of finesse and tone, he's a fine blues player who also excels at guitar instrumentals of the sort that fall under that fall under the ‘surf guitar' mantle." Indeed, the 2000 edition of Rick Koster's Texas Music characterizes Sylar as "the state's finest purveyor of the sort of surf music made famous by Dick Dale and the Ventures." The author continues, "Syler, though, being from Texas, has his own rocking twists on the genre, creating a form he calls ‘surfabilly.'" Listening to Robin play, you could clearly discern the thread connecting the most distinctively expressionistic modern bluesmen like Alberts King and Collins; ‘50s rockabilly madmen like Paul Burlison and Link Wray; highly individuated ‘60s axe-slingers like surf kingpin Dick Dale and Jeff Beck in his proto-psychedelic Yardbirds daze; and decadent-but-stylish ‘70s rockers like the English band Free and Robin's friends the Werewolves (Dallas' answer to the Exile on Main St. Stones, whose almost-hit "Hollywood Millionaire" -- from their Andrew Loog Oldham-produced 1978 album for RCA -- he covered on his second CD). It's ironic tha
