Singer, songwriter and musician Steve Robinson who hails from Scunthorpe is currently working on his next album in his adopted homeland of Florida in the USA. His Folk music songs include many memories of growing up here in Scunthorpe.

Steve grew on firstly on Caenby Road on the Riddings Estate before the family moved to nearby Westcliff’s Coventry Close when he was 12 years old, and it is his memories of Westcliff and of his home town that are included on many of his songs.

              Steve Robinson 

A song which featured on his last album called ‘Come Back’ was written about his experience when he returned to his home town in the mid 1990s to have a look at the place where he spent his teenage years.

He recalls, “The last time I went back to my hometown of Scunthorpe, was some 15 years ago. It was my first visit in four or five years and I wanted to indulge my nostalgic side by driving down my old street for a look at the old house where I used to live. If was expecting to feel all warm and fuzzy about the experience, I could have saved myself the trip. At the very least, I could have packed a pair of glasses with some seriously tinted lenses.

I remember pulling into the close, at the rear of the house and glancing over at the old garden gate that I'd opened and closed so many times over the years. Ideally it should have been a tender, poignant moment, but it didn't quite turn out that way. A group of young kids were kicking around a football, just like I'd done with my mates all those years ago, and seeing a car they didn't recognise, they ambled over for a closer look.

These kids were very young, probably no more than 5 or 6 years old, the boldest one sided up to the car window for a better look at whoever was invading his territory, I looked up, and our eyes met just long enough for him to dismiss me with a swiftly delivered reverse V-sign hand gesture.

Apparently, things had changed. I had changed too, of course. Specifically, I'd changed my mind about wanting to hang around my old house, and instead I quickly retired to my old local public house in order to console myself with a couple of pints of John Smith's bitter. As melodramatic as it sounds, I remember feeling a little like a door had truly closed on my past, and I felt like such an outsider. It was really an odd experience, and I've yet to return. I think I'm a little frightened of what I might find next time.”

Steve says ‘Come Back’ is one of the songs from some of the conflicting emotions that can rise to the surface when looking back at a fateful decision to leave the place where you were born.

His new 16 track CD which is due to released later this year includes the song ‘The Boy from down the Hill’, Steve recalls his memories of being a teenager and the daily trudge up the hill to the Thomas Sumpter Comprehensive School, “I lived on Coventry Close, the front of which was actually on Swinburne Road, when I looked out of my old front window I could see the Trent View House flats. I'd walk up Bridges Road to school, we'd walk around the block of flats and enter via the school playing fields.” 

Happily settled in America with his own family Steve says,
“It seems like there's always a part of you that feels like you might still belong there, yet you've gone and made a home and a new life in another place entirely. With this, comes that vague, yet persistent feeling of rootlessness that you carry with you. And let's not forget the slow, guilt-ridden realisation that you once saw fit to ditch your family and turn your back on your heritage and all that, which is something that weighs more heavily on your mind as you watch your own child grow into adulthood (one of my biggest karmic fears is that my daughter will end up marrying an Englishman and move to the land of my birth!)”

He continues,

“So, the world spins madly on; family members come and go; your old hometown changes, and you change too. Then, one day you wake up and realise that you've been gone for 28 years. It hardly seems possible, but I've now lived  considerably longer in the US than I did in the UK. It's a strange feeling, I can tell you. Yeah, so much has changed, and still you have all these questions: Could I ever go back? Would they want me to come back? Did anyone actually notice that I left?"

The link to Steve Robinsons website http://www.steverobinsonmusic.com/