TONY
ROBERTS
Tony Roberts followed the creative pull of the unknown from Boston and Berklee to Key West, Barbados and the open road—turning travel, songs, documentary film and the people he encountered into one continuous body of work.
THE ROAD AS AN INSTRUMENT
Tony Roberts came to music through words. He wanted to be a novelist or poet, began writing stories, poems and lyrics, then learned enough guitar and piano to give those words melody. At Berklee College of Music in Boston, he developed his songwriting and arranging while learning the value of the musical relationships that would follow him for decades.
That road eventually carried him to Key West, where a working musician could play night after night without leaving the island. The opportunity was real, but so was the trap: constant gigs could pay the bills while leaving no room to write. Tony learned to leave, to move and to let unfamiliar places return him to the reason he made music in the first place.
WELCOME TO TODAY
In 2010, Tony sailed from Key West to Barbados on a soul-searching journey. He returned with original songs and documentary footage, then discovered that the two belonged together. The resulting hour-long film and album, Welcome to Today, joined surfing, friendship, music and island life into a single multimedia work.
The film premiered at the Florida Keys Eco-Discovery Center in July 2011. A share of its proceeds supported the American Cancer Society, the Lupus Foundation of America, the Bahama Village Music Program and a fund for youth surfing in Barbados.
CHASING THE SUN
Tony later set out on a sixty-day journey through the South and along the East Coast, visiting friends, family and anyone with a story to tell or a song to sing. The road reopened his songwriting. Those encounters and changing backdrops became Chasing the Sun.
The record itself carries the geography of Tony’s life. Ideas began in his Key West apartment; other parts were recorded in Boston with longtime bandmates and at the Ramble Room in Key West. The separate sessions were brought together as one album.
THE ROUTE 1 PROJECT
When the Route 1 Project reached Key West in September 2017, Tony appeared at the exact intersection Motherlode had come south to find: a Boston-connected songwriter rooted in Key West, a traveler who used the road as a creative instrument and a documentarian who understood that music and film could reveal more together than either could alone.
