Robert Lee: musician

MD, multi-instrumentalist and composer Robert Lee has written scores for many theatre shows and produced two full-length musicals. He plays with various bands including Herbie Treehead’s Disaster Band and the Fantastic Flea Band, and composes and performs all the live music for Goronwy Thom’s variety troupe Slightly Fat Features

At what age did you start playing music?

I kind of started teaching myself when I was very young, about five. We had an old piano at home and I’d make up stories and play story games on it. It all came out of that. I was the youngest child. I spent a lot of time on my own – what else did you do in those days? My brother and sister played a bit and my mum and dad were musical.

What do you play?

Anything with keys – like accordion and piano – are very much the same thing to play; guitars, ukuleles, drums. I was lucky enough to learn the violin and viola and can play those quite well. I play whistles and comedy trombone, but I can’t play brass instruments to any high standard, really.

Did composing come naturally to you?

It did. It seemed to be the obvious thing to do. I didn’t have lessons from a teacher, I just wanted to make music. Ultimately, I went to Leeds university. I wasn’t a brilliant classical performer, but I played them some pieces I’d written and they let me in to do a degree in music composition.

How did you start working with Slightly Fat Features?

I knew Rob Ballard, who was Eddie Izzard’s partner when they were young, and he’d do loads of brilliant shows at Croydon Warehouse and needed a piano player. I remember thinking that the rehearsals were an absolute shambles, but the minute the first night opened it all became clear that you make a virtue of the chaos. Out of that I met Herbie and we all coalesced around Goronwy when he started doing variety nights in Sidmouth. It was very rough and ready to begin with, but it was fun.

What sort of stuff do you do for SFF?

I play music, basically, for pretty much all the acts. I write the odd song that we perform. I do sound effects and all that kind of thing. The job is to communicate to the audience the intention of the performers and to amplify it, to do all the things that music does in films. It’s great working together. I’m so grateful because it’s a complete antidote to a lot of the other things I do. We’re going to the Just for Laughs festival in Montreal. I’m really looking forward to it.

Slightly Fat Features is at the Theatre Royal, Bury St Edmunds on May 25, at the Brighton Fringe on May 26 and at Montreal’s Just for Laughs in July/August, ahead of a Christmas run at London’s Leicester Square Theatre.