Legend’s tribute to the love of his life
BRISBANE singer Robert Forster is releasing music love letters to his wife as she battles cancer.
The acclaimed singer and co-founder of The Go-betweens released new song Tender Years on Wednesday, the second from his forthcoming album The Candle And The Flame, which he recorded with wife and musical companion Karin Baumler in the wake of her ovarian cancer diagnosis in July 2021.
She finished her course of chemotherapy treatment in March, shortly before their last day in the studio.
“The recording sessions for the album were done sporadically over six months,” Forster said.
“Sometimes just one or two days a month. As that was all Karin’s strength and condition allowed her to do. So we had to record ‘live’, catching magical moments and going for ‘feel’. And that became the sound of the album.”
Forster previously released track She’s A Fighter, which was the only song he wrote after the shock of Baumler’s diagnosis.
The other eight songs in the album, including Tender Years, he’d written over the three years prior, penning lines such as ‘I’m in a story with her, I can’t live without
her’.
In a post to Facebook in October, Forster explained: “Ever since we met, Karin and I have sung and played music together in our home, and in these dark days we turned to music once again. I had a batch of new songs I’d written over the last years,
and we started playing them together.”
“One night, when sitting cross-legged on the couch, after we had played a song, Karin looked up from her xylophone and said, ‘ When we play music, is the only time I forget I have cancer.’ That was a big moment.”
Following the album’s release on February 3, Forster will embark on a national tour in May, taking in a show at Princess Theatre in Brisbane on May 26.
Forster’s career stretches across nine studio albums with The Go-betweens and eight solo albums.