RHODY LIFE

Rob Ballou returning to Ted's Stadium Pub

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After a few months of functioning primarily as an upscale neighborhood bar and restaurant, Ted’s Stadium Pub is bringing back live music to their outdoor patio.

The establishment at 1145 Park Ave. in Cranston is having mostly solo acts perform to entertain dining and drinking audiences. These performers range from playing piano to strumming their six-string for a few hours to provide a good time.

On June 4 at 7 p.m., Cumberland singer-songwriter Rob Ballou will be doing some of the latter. He has a knack for blending the styles of folk, country and blues together to create an original sound.

Ballou and I had a talk about how COVID-19 affected his everyday life, doing virtual shows, shaking off some jitters and rust, and wanting to work on some new material at some point this year.

ROB DUGUAY:  The COVID-19 pandemic has affected people in numerous ways, so what’s the biggest effect it’s had on you? Did it force you to change jobs or anything else, or did you end up spending a lot of time indoors with your family?

ROB BALLOU:  Yeah, I spent a lot of time indoors with my family. We didn’t take any vacations last year or anything like that. I was fortunate to keep working the whole time, so that part wasn’t too bad. The biggest thing I’ve been missing is live music, not just playing but going out to see other people perform. People that I like, local bands and stuff like that, but it’s been tough on everyone in different ways. I have been fortunate to have secure employment, so I didn’t have to worry about that, but the social life has definitely suffered.

RD: I can totally relate to that. When it comes to your job, did you have to work from home a lot or have you been doing the normal commute this whole time?

RB: It was a little of both. At the beginning we mainly worked from home and last summer we started to go out into the field more, but we were kind of instructed to keep meetings outdoors. In fact, I work in the railroad industry and most of the offices I would go to for meetings were closed and all of those folks were working from home as well. There were some meetings that we did outdoors, but it was how we did business, and just recently in the last two months or so it’s starting to go back to what it used to be pre-pandemic with more in-person meetings with a mix of Zoom calls and things like that.

RD:  It’s good that things are returning to somewhat normal. Over the past few months you’ve been posting videos of yourself on Facebook playing original songs on an acoustic guitar. Do you see live streaming as something you plan to keep on doing even as the pandemic hopefully subsides?

RB: Yeah, I plan to continue with that. It was something I was doing before the pandemic, especially with original songs. If I perform a show at a club, I’ll generally perform a lot of covers and mix in some originals, so I feel that online is a good platform for trying out new songs and seeing what kind of reaction I get. It’s just a way to share my art to a wider audience so I plan on continuing that.

RD: Speaking of live streaming, you recently got to perform on “The Artist Jackie Show,” which is broadcast via Facebook Live out of a practice space in Pawtucket on Monday nights. How would you describe the experience?

RB: It was a great experience. I was happy to do it and it was nice of Artist Jackie to invite me on her show. Jonathan Grice was the other featured act that night and he’s a phenomenal musician so it’s always good to play with other local musicians. On that platform, my music is getting out to people outside of my circle and I like to do that because hopefully I’ll pick up some new fans by getting out to a wider audience. It was a great experience, we had a lot of fun and they kept it kind of low key. It was easy going and we had a good time.

RD:  That’s awesome. How long has it been since you played at Ted’s before the upcoming show? Do you have any jitters going into it or do you feel the need to work off any rust you might have?

RB: My last actual show was at Ted’s last August, so it’s been about 10 months since I’ve played a full acoustic show. I went to an open mic at Askew in Providence about a month ago and it was the first time I had performed live since last August, and I did have jitters that night. I went there because knowing that I had the show coming up in June I wanted to make sure that I could shake off some rust ahead of it. It definitely helped because the other night on “The Artist Jackie Show” I had a lot more confidence in my playing and singing. I think I’ll be good for June, but definitely that first time I had gotten up in front of a microphone after so long it was kind of one of those moments of me wondering if I still remember how to do this.

RD: What’s one main thing you’d like to accomplish musically this year?

RB: I suppose that I would like to write some new songs. With the pandemic, while being isolated you would think that I’d have written a bunch of songs in the last year, but I really didn’t work on writing too many songs. I did work on music every day but I just couldn’t find that inspiration to write new songs so I’m hoping that I get back into that. It’s been almost two years since I released my last album, so it would be really nice to work on new material and maybe get into a studio at the end of the year and put something out for 2022.

Ballou, music

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