Local musician releases first album

It took five decades, and a push from his son, for Ron Rubin to finally take his music out of the attic and record it for the world to hear.

Rubin, a Rockville Centre resident for more than 30 years, has been playing guitar since he was 12. In the late 1970s, he played with a local band called The Yardleys, and even went on tour in England. But that ended a long time ago, and today Rubin is a clinical social worker in the mental health unit at Queens Hospital.

But in his free time, he still writes and records music. A few years ago, he and his son, Sean, converted the attic of Rubin’s Rockville Centre home into a studio.

“I had been up there for years just recording and writing songs,” Rubin said. “About a year ago, Sean came home and said, ‘you need to record this and do something professional with your stuff.

“It was really him that pushed me to do this,” Rubin added.

Rubin’s son had grown up with his father playing music, and decided to pursue it as a career. He studied classical upright bass at the Hart School in Connecticut. Since his graduation, he has been moving more toward producing others’ music.

“Since I was a kid, he was always telling me about playing in bands in the 70s and 80s,” Sean said. “I almost felt it was a little unfair for him to not have anything to show for it. It’s not readily available to a public consumer, and nothing is current. Everything is at least 30 years old.”

The album was also the first time Sean had produced a record from start to finish.

“This is a very new thing for me as well,” said Sean. “I just stated getting into doing engineering and producing in the last two years. So I like to think of his record as being one of the first I completed.”

Four of the five songs on the record were ones that Rubin had recorded over the years and never released. He and Sean worked to retune and re-record them. The fifth song, “A Child is Born,” was written specifically for the record.

“It’s kind of just a collection of songs, but each one is a different genre,” Rubin said, adding that one song is acoustic, one has a reggae feel, one has a blues feel and more. “I think each song represents a different kind of genre and style I have.”

In addition to helping record the album, Sean also played on some of the tracks with his father.

“It was a great experience for me to learn from him to see what he needed and what ways you have to fill in the gaps,” Sean said. “I wanted to get a record for him so he could show people what he could do. And it was a way for us to bond and collaborate.”

Rubin’s record is available now at www.bandcamp.com and will soon be available on iTunes.