Rob McGilton’s new album, “My Undivided Attention,” is a destination reached on a long, winding road. The journey started at age five with piano lessons from Mrs. Harmon (a good teacher with very bad breath) in his small hometown of Snoqualmie, Washington. He practiced every day for at least 30 minutes, the amount of time his mother put on the electric stove timer.
In high school he learned you could make money with music. After college he learned that playing for a drunk, rowdy audience in a rural roadhouse meant you wouldn’t have to dodge empty beer bottles if you kept them dancing.
He discovered composing as music director of a musical comedy at Northwestern University and went home after graduation thinking he could be a successful songwriter. After 12 years as a journalist and PR writer, he quit a secure job and headed south to Los Angeles to test that theory. The lesson learned? Maybe you can, but only if you learn the craft and don’t quit.
After LA, Rob began a stretch of 20 years playing and singing in restaurant and hotel bars in Seattle. He studied jazz piano with a legendary local teacher who told him, “Here you are, back from LA with long hair and hip clothes—but playing the old 10th chords like Teddy Wilson (1912–1986).” Ouch. The truth can hurt, and also motivate. McGilton’s playing improved.
In the late ’70s Rob began a pattern of pursuing other career choices when songwriting success wasn’t happening. He promoted concerts by jazz big bands, singer Lena Horne, the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, fiddler Mark O’Connor, and world-famous classical guitarists. He taught creativity classes to University of Washington MBA students and corporate employees. He produced a national Neighborhoods Conference for the City of Seattle.
In 2013 he and his wife Sally relocated from Seattle to her small hometown of Chewelah, near Spokane. Rob began composing again, but this time with a new approach to the creative process he learned from books by best-selling novelist Steven Pressfield: “The War of Art,” “Turning Pro,” and “Do the Work.”
Out of this work ethic—conquer resistance, show up every day, work like a pro—came a musical, “The Goshen Country Club.” In two years McGilton wrote the script with 28 songs and entered it in a Seattle-area New Works Festival that attracts as many as 200 entries. His show didn’t make the cut, but now he had momentum. He got serious about singing and began composing for a vocal jazz album of his own.
The new record was recorded in Portland, Oregon early in 2025 with production and co-arrangements by Grammy-winning pianist Randy Porter.
Its nine original songs show the influence of people McGilton admires: Randy Newman, the late Dave Frishberg, and Lorraine Feather—lyricists who use humor, the “untrustworthy narrator,” and quirky characters to comment on human foibles and social issues.
Examples: a short-lived supermarket love affair; a guy whose complete history from the Department of Lies totals 30 boxes; a cell phone-obsessed dude whose “Undivided Attention” is anything but. An older man has a bucket list focused on life’s “small, sweet pleasures,” and a radio guru reveals the three magic words for getting unstuck: “Do it anyway.”
The album is available on CD or as a digital download at RobMcGilton.bandcamp.com or preview the Songs here on the home page
