Robby Hecht

At age 18, Robby Hecht made a “strangely confident and final” decision to commit to music as his calling and career. At college in Madison, Wisconsin, he poured out his first wave of song ideas but, as he approached performing, there were doubts. It was not until travels in Europe, a time in San Francisco where he formed the duo AllDay Radio, a move back to his hometown of Knoxville and a final shift to Nashville – that he learned he’d been suffering for years from bipolar disorder. Robby’s newfound consistency and stability were rewarded with a rush of opportunities and victories. He placed second at the prestigious Telluride Troubadour Contest, a contest he would later win. He took a title at Kerrville New Folk Competition, a national nerve-center of contemporary songwriting. Nashville songwriter, Robby Hecht paid Folk Alley a visit in the spring of 2015 to play some songs and tell us about his approach to songwriting. Hecht is a songwriter with a mission. He took it up before college, because he decided he wanted to sing and that part of that process should be creating his own songs. That was 18 years (or, as he says, half his lifetime) ago. Now, living in Nashville, he is still writing songs, on his own and with collaborators including Amy Speace. Hear the interview and watch videos from his session below!