Nothing low key about Bobby the bass guitarist

From jamming at the Youth Cafe to playing in front of 80,000 people, it’s been a whirlwind of a career for Robert (Bobby) Arnold.

Robert and his trusty bass guitar emerged on the thriving Mullingar music scene in 2011, when he was aged 16, but his relationship with music goes back much further.

Robert’s mother Linda helped pave the way for her son’s future career by introducing him to different artists as a child. “I’ve always been interested in music, it’s just something that has always been with me.

“I probably got most of it from my mam, she was always listening to music and showing me music growing up, she constantly had tunes on.”

He knew he would be a musician someday, and through some trials on the drums and guitar, he settled on bass.

“I got my first drum kit at 11, and I played them for a while and liked it, but they were just too loud and noisy. Then I started playing the guitar, and I was listening to bands like Green Day and Busted, trying to learn what I could.

“Although I was playing both regularly, I wasn’t really getting on well with the guitar or the drums, so at 16 I decided to pick up the bass, and as it turns out, I was able to play that fairly well.”

From that point, Robert’s music career took off and he soon joined a band.

“One day I was just chilling at the youth cafe, and Good Man Sheila needed a bass player, so I just jumped on it and tried to help them, and it just ended up working.

“One week later, I was already playing a wedding with them, and I didn’t even know half the songs, I hadn’t a clue what I was doing.”

Robert continued to learn over the next two years, consistently gigging around Mullingar until he turned 18, when he moved to Brighton to pursue a degree at the British and Irish Modern Music Institute.

“I went to Brighton to study bass for a year, but I ended up not fancying the degree. That didn’t matter though really, because I learned so much while I was over there, the teachers and the musicians I surrounded myself with taught me so much.

“I came back home having learned a lot, and I got back into Good Man Sheila after a while.”

Just before Covid, Robert had moved on from Good Man Sheila to a more personal project, called Bobby and the Blunts.

They had gained momentum before the pandemic kicked in, but Robert admits that “kind of took the funk out of it”.

Remember the Covid years, he said: “There were some cool parts of it, there was a lot of solidarity between us local musicians, we were all creating at home and jamming, kind of sending each other songs and working on them.

“Bobby and the Blunts still managed to get quite a lot done at the time, we had a production in Belvedere with Mark Bennett and a music video.

“It was kind of hard to get going again after Covid, but things picked up eventually when people started coming back out.”

When asked about his love for the Mullingar music scene, Robert said: “It’s just incredible, just to have the sort of talent on your doorstep to be able to bounce off is amazing. The likes of Paulie Martin, Shane Bardon and Stephen Shanley, those lads are local heroes and they are incredibly talented.

“It’s so easy to learn without getting actual lessons from people, Paulie Martin has given me more lessons than anyone else, without actually sitting down and giving me a lesson.”

Like any industry, music is constantly changing, and in Robert’s time as a gigging musician, things have changed quite a lot. Post-Covid things are picking up again, and younger musicians are coming out again to learn the trade: “We are starting to see a lot more guys come out with their guitars, although it would be nice to see more bands, it’s still good to see musicians out again.

“Either way, the talent is definitely starting to come up again, I’m no young lad any more, but to see younger people coming up is brilliant. If there’s any way that I can help them, I will because that’s the way it was for me.”

When asked for his fondest memories, Robert mentioned playing with the Blizzards, and playing in Croke Park: “That is up there – to get on the pitch at half-time was amazing, it was no Kendrick Lamar half-time show, but a half-time show nonetheless.”

Still in the early days of his career, and not yet 30, Robert hopes to continue slapping his bass around Mullingar into the future. He is currently working on projects called Blueberry Hill and Coin Flip, and he regularly gigs with other local musicians, such as Joe Newman and Cian O’Farrell.

You see him in Danny Byrne’s on Thursdays, every other Sunday in Canton Casey’s, John Daly’s and Smiddy’s.