Storyteller Robert Finley Brings the Images of Louisiana to Life on New Album ‘Black Bayou’ (Exclusive)

Robert Finley has spent his days so far surrounded by his grandchildren and great-grandchildren, just as he always dreamed he would be at his age.

“I missed my flight yesterday, so I spent the night in Dallas, so my granddaughter came to pick me up,” Finley, 69, told PEOPLE in a recent interview. “I just got to spend quality time with them.”

It’s a sweet slice of an already sweet life for the soulful singer who made the world fall in love with him in 2019 when he appeared on the show’s fourteenth season American talenteventually making it to the semi-finals and then returning to the All Star show earlier this year.

And it was these fans who couldn’t wait to hear Finley’s fourth studio album Black Bayouwhich seems to pulse straight from the Louisiana native’s heart and soul and includes the undeniable “Waste of Time,” the music video for which is featured above.

“It’s hard for me to write music,” Finley says of creating his new album Black Bayou. “But if the music is there, then the memory is all I need to tell the story. The story is just a trip down memory lane, and 90% of the stories are really true.”

Robert Finley.

Jim Herrington

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Because the memories of Louisiana live forever in his mind.

“I remember our farm more than anything,” Finley reflects. “My dad was a sharecropper, so there were times when I wasn’t allowed to go to school because then we had to collect the harvest, so there were no exceptions. You had to enter it. You could go to school for a few months, but then we had to withdraw the school when the corn was ready, or the peas. School was always in the background.”

It’s an image Finley can still picture in his mind, despite losing his sight to glaucoma in the past decade. “We weren’t hungry because we grew our own food,” Finley remembers.

“We had our own chickens, we also had a dairy cow and we went to the store to get flour because I remember we ground the meal ourselves. So, salt, flour and bacon powder were pretty much all we went to the grocery store for. All of our clothes were actually hand delivered by what we then called the owner of the property.”

Robert Finley.

Jim Herrington

Life was good, but soon the family wanted something different.

“One year, as soon as we finished harvesting, we decided to call it quits and almost all of my siblings left home,” Finley recalls. “Everyone had their own dreams of what they wanted to be.”

One wanted to be a butcher, another a truck driver, and yet another wanted to be a mechanic. But for Finley, the dreams were bigger.

“I just wanted to be an entertainer,” says Finley, who recently took his entertainer status to the next level by performing on CBS Saturday mornings. “Now I’m living my dream.”

Robert Finley.

Jim Herrington

It’s a dream, Finley says he knows not everyone can survive. Take the story he tells in the song “Nobody Wants to Be Lonely.”

“That one is about me going to a nursing home and visiting friends,” notes Finley. “And then you see so many people there who never have visitors. These children sometimes abandon their parents and think they are doing what is best for them, but in reality they give them a life sentence as if they have committed some crime when they get old. But the only way to avoid aging is to die young, or your day will come.”

And that’s why Finley believes in the importance of music with a message.

“Music wakes people up to things they never thought about,” he says. “It’s a way of serving people without taking them to church.”

Finley says he’s glad he can still give that kind of testimony at this point in his life. “Everything happens for a reason,” he concludes. “I truly believe that if this had happened to me 30 or 40 years ago, I would not have been mentally prepared to deal with success. Success will destroy you if you can’t stay humble and focused.”

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Source: HIS Education