The Roberts: a whole ‘sum greater than its parts’ Band featuring CWU faculty still going strong decades deep

Katherine Camarata

Lead Editor

From Santa Fe to Roslyn, from one band to the next, four men sharing one name have come together over four decades to fill ears with sonic delight and get people moving to the rhythms of their sound. The band reaches across genres, ranging from rock, country, funk, blues to reggae.

Jovial audience members enjoyed beverages and bar grub at The Brick in Roslyn on Feb. 18, the oldest saloon in Washington, as they eagerly waited for The Roberts’ set to start. Two tables in the middle of the dance floor parted to make way for red and blue beams of light pouring over the stage as the band’s hands met their instruments and took the crowd on a journey.

The Roberts band primarily features associate professor of ITAM Dr. Robert Trumpy on vocals and bass, ITAM professor Dr. Robert Lupton on drums, Rob Witte on guitar and vocals and Bob Van Lone on lead guitar and vocals. Even when one of the Bobs isn’t available, the continuity remains: they have a fifth Robert, Robert Frazier, who occasionally fills in.

Playing professionally doesn’t feel like just any job when the group cares so much about each other, according to Witte.

“The Roberts are pretty tight in terms of friendship,” Witte said. “We’ve known each other for 40 years, and we came together because we’re musicians, and we’ve been through hell and back. We’ve always played together, even if we’ve lived in different places, so it’s cool now that we’re living in the same town.”

Witte continued: “The better you know the people you’re playing with, the more you can anticipate what’s going to happen and make it emerge as a sum greater than its parts.”

Trumpy aligned with this exact sentiment, although in an entirely separate interview, and said, “the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. It’s just a whole lot of fun. We laugh a lot.”

Though they’ve played in other states and countries, The Roberts said upper Kittitas County is one of their favorite locations for gigs; they said the Feb. 18 show was one for the ages.

“When we get into a groove like that, where we can all hear each other, we all feed off of each other a lot better,” Van Lone said. “The whole last set was a highlight for me.”

Witte concurred, saying: “My favorite is The Brick. They have a professional engineer, the pay is nice and the crowd. Every time we’ve played there, they’ve just been fantastic, and it creates a feedback loop when you have a good audience. They’re dancing, they’re into the music, it pumps us up.”

The Roberts played an original track called “Rose-Colored Dawn,” which was written by Witte about the love of his life in winter of 1992.

“It was love at first sight,” Witte said. “I became a complete idiot. I wanted to spend Christmas with her and she went back to Wisconsin … We weren’t going to spend Christmas together, so I thought, ‘you know what I’m going to do, I’m going to write a song and record it and get it to her.’”

The love may have been infectious, as the audience cheered after each song and various women would pull others out of their seats and onto the dance floor. The feelings alive in the concert air served as more than just a roaring time.

Trumpy and Lupton explained how nonverbal communication plays an integral role when performing.

“On stage, playing in front of a live crowd, a part of you instinctively knows what everybody else is doing,” Lupton said. “You feel that energy and that creative side, and I get goosebumps just talking about it. You have the set list, you have everything you need to follow and then you take off. Those are those nights where you come home and you can’t sleep because you had so much creative fun.”