ROBIN SYLER | 1951-2005

By MALCOLM MAYHEW
STAR-TELEGRAM STAFF WRITER

SYLAR

He knew blues, surf music and rock 'n' roll," said Wes Race, a longtime friend who also produced some of Mr. Syler's music.

But he could also do country-Western and just about everything else. He could do just about anything he set his mind to."

Mr. Syler, 54, was found dead in his home Sunday evening. The Tarrant County Medical Examiner's Office ruled his death a suicide.

His funeral was Thursday in Dallas. It drew some of the biggest names in North Texas' music and art scene, including musicians Jim Suhler and Smokin' Joe Kubek, and acclaimed cartoonist Mike Judge, who once played in a band with Mr. Syler. Local blues singer Johnny Mack performed

Mr, Syler was born March 12,1951, and grew up in the Dallas area. He moved to Fort Worth several years ago and quickly became a part of the city's blues scene.

Influenced by musicians such as Jimmy Reed and Albert King, his style was completely his own. He often performed at the Keys Lounge on Westcreek Drive and J&J Texas Roadhouse and Blues Bar on Woodward Street.

"Robin wasn't so much a great blues player as much as he played the blues great," says another friend and fellow musician Sumter Bruton. "He was a great player, a wonderful player. He played rockabilly, blues, rock 'n' roll and surf music, and played ‘em all well."

In the 1970s, Mr. Syler played in the band Krackerjack with legendary blues-rock guitarist Stevie Ray Vaughan. He later shared the studio and stage with players such as Doyle Bramhall, Jimmie Vaughan and Homer Henderson.

Mr. Syler's interests went beyond music, but he aproached other projects with the same eclectic enthusiasm.

"He was into hip, funky, esoteric things," Race says. "He made some of his own cowboy shirts. He was beginning to build and work on bicycles before he died. He did some of his own decor at home."

But Mr. Syler will mostly be remembered for his genre-defying music.

"You couldn't put him in a certain mold," Bruton says. “He played rock ‘n’ roll. Let’s put it like that. He really did.”

-from Ft. Worth Star Telegram - December 2005

(- from Buddy magazine – January 2006)

Brilliance and the dark are sometimes accompanists. Everyone who attended Robin Sylar’s funeral in December knew of his brilliance. On a good night, everything of merit in the American electric guitar experience could be heard from him. If you let your eyes pan over his mourners, you saw more than a few who knew the dark well themselves.

Sunny types were rare in Sylar’s orbit. He was a walking battle flag against conformity and people like that don’t run with Pollyanna. He would’ve been that way if he had a choice, but he didn’t. He was off center to the marrow and for years his life was a celebration of that. Exactly when the celebration stopped is hard to pinpoint. His mental state, long precarious, had been stressed by recent physical woes including a stroke that diminished his playing ability, and back problems that gave him constant pain. In December, he put a firearm to his chest and that was that.

He was often referred to as a "guitar player's guitar player"

Sylar and I were brothers in melancholy. It wasn’t like we’d chosen to be on that path but there we were, and we recognized it about each other. There were times we might have talked about it but then the drinks arrived or a song came on the jukebox that warranted our deep discussion. Or he’d just plain clam up.

Sylar was famous for joining you at your table on break at a gig, and then going silent. When jazz pianist Bud Powell did this, he was said to be “in a state of grace.” Sylar was often referred to as a “guitar player’s guitar player.” That’s the sort of appraisal given artists who elude mainstream approval but awe initiates.

Bassist/composer Homer Henderson (an initiate if there ever was one) believes he first saw Sylar playing with the Millionaires at the Cave on Greenville Avenue. He would become a staunch Sylar ally. “He played with a lot of class,” stated Henderson. “He made all the other guitar players seem like they were struggling. He really knew how to construct a solo without all the long-winded Stevie Ray Vaughan bullshit and you can quote me on that! Blues, jazz country, Link Wray—he didn’t really have to sit there and figure it out, he just listened to it and he could play it.

By the 1980’s, Sylar and Henderson were playing together regularly. Or, as regularly as a twosome could whose repertoire was (to say the least) eclectic. In those days, most club owners didn’t know there was such a word.

Dallas Blues Society founder Chuck Nevitt recognized Sylar’s uniqueness and recorded him but the sessions stayed in the can at Sylar’s request. He thought their emergence would be inopportune in light of his collaboration with Doyle Bramhall on the latter’s Bird Nest On The Ground, cut slightly after the Nevitt production. The journalist Ken Shimamoto also perceived Sylar with clarity. He appreciatively and accurately profiled Sylar in the Fort Worth Weekly (4/7/04), writing, “His left of center ideas and delivery clearly set him apart from the pack of bluesicians.” Not that Shimamoto viewed Sylar as wholly in the blues niche. He called him “Šomething Entirely Other,” an appraisal Sylar would’ve probably liked. For years, Sylar was in an excellent trio with Bramhall drumming and singing (usually with Mike Judge on bass). I remember them holding forth in some long-gone dive in the West End. It was one of those nights when Sylar came to my table on break and sat there in silence. The threesome also played the Lakewood bar Schooner’s and they’d get that place rocking like an adrenalized zoo. They played blues far more excitingly than many bands that played nothing but, and often spiced the mix with “Penetration,” “Pipeline” and other pre-Beatle guitar instrumentals. Sylar had the jump on a million bands that would soon cram the “surf guitar” bandwagon. He had been a Pulp Fiction star years before the movie was made. Sylar was raised in Dallas but moved to Fort Worth. Homer Henderson says Sylar later came to rue that.

“In the end he hated it. (He said) ‘I’m dyin’ over here, I hate it.’ Heard that shit for years,” asserted Henderson.

A good thing about the move was that it put him close to poet/security guard Wes Race. At bookstores or hole in the wall bars Race would recite his sage, street-wise poems flanked by Sylar on guitar and Henderson on bongos. It was beatnik-y but lacking in parody, witty without being dumb. Thoroughly recommendable is Sylar’s CD Bust Out on Wes’ indie imprint, called (what else?) Race Records. After releasing a couple of CDs by artists who screwed him, Topcat Record’s Richard Chalk could have hardly been blamed for targeting some sane, safe, commercially viable artist for a session. Instead, he chose Sylar.

The result, Tricked Out, weird even by Sylar standards, is essential to any fan of musical Texana and sonic trespass. Several people eulogized Sylar at his funeral, none more movingly than Sonnie Collie, a bassist who knew Sylar for decades. His recollections were profound, compelling, and well spoken. I hope I don’t severely skew a certain thing Collie said about Sylar’s having made a choice, and deserving respect for that. He sure gets my respect for it.

Sylar made a stand against conformity. He knew the dark. Many people fear the dark, cower before it, or in simpering voices deny that it’s there. Not our Sylar. In the end, he didn’t merely face it—he embraced it.

We’ll all see him soon.

© 2006 Buddy Magazine and Tim Schuller

from www.realbluesmagazine.com

December 14, 2005

Dear Folks,

Circa 1970s

Robin knew he was The Greatest (that's NO exageration)..it bothered him immensely that he lived in a Society that doesn't recognize Real Talent. Like virtually all True Genius artists, Robin lived in a 'different place' than the rest of us and outside of creating his Magic Music, life was often painful, incomprehensible or just boring. Robin Needed-to-be creating his Joyful Magic for people and when his opportunities for doing that dwindled, so did his Reasons for Living. Like always, when we lose someone like Robin, it brings home the reality that we are 'Our- Brother's- Keepers' and yes, maybe we could've all done a little bit more for a guy who gave us back so much more in return...inside the cover of Robin's CD "Tricked Out" there is a group photo of the Legendary Texas Blues band, Krackerjack, circa 1971, and standing next to luminary bandmates Uncle John Turner and Tommy Shannon, is a serious-looking Robin Syler. On Robin's left is his young 'pupil', Stevie Ray Vaughan...... with much sadness,

Andy Grigg
Real Blues Magazine

From Richard Chalk, TopCat Records
Date: Wed, 14 Dec 2005 11:04:06 -0600
Subject: Re: Robin Syler R.I.P.

Circa 1990s

Circa 2004