It took only a few minutes of seeing The Spring Standards in concert before I knew that this was one creative trio. I caught them here in DC at the Red Palace when they played with Ha Ha Tonka. It wasn't just the fact that Heather Robb, James Smith, and James Cleare all played every instrument at some point. It wasn't the fantastic voices or the terrific songs. It was that, as I told Robb, their set was so theatrical. It was a stage show: the way they played, the way they bantered with each other, the way they bantered with the audience.
It was like a stage show, as it turns out, for good reason: Robb is an actor by training who still is involved in theatre in New York City. She attended Syracuse University, where she majored in theatre. (In a true small world coincidence, we were both there in the Department of Drama at the same time: I as a professor and she as a student, though we did not know each other.) Robb claims to be somewhat of an introvert, something not readily apparent in her charismatic stage presence.
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