Written by: Alex Green

Robert Fisher, the singer and braintrust of the critically-acclaimed outfit The Willard Grant Conspiracy has died.

Fisher was 60.

According to his record label Loose Music, Fisher died after a battle with cancer.

On their Facebook page the label wrote: “Robert Fisher of Willard Grant Conspiracy died of cancer yesterday. He had been suffering throughout 2016 but typically of the man he never made any fuss whatsoever. He was busy still holding down his day job and recording tracks for his 11th album. We first heard his music back in 1996 when Loose were doing press for Slow River/Rykodisc. The album was called “3am Sunday @ Fortune Otto’s”. It totally blew us away – this was music from another planet…and the voice…Robert Fisher sang as though he had already seen, understood and lived through the big picture. A booming baritone, capable of both immense power and heart-breaking subtlety. Loose worked the press for his early albums and then were honoured to start releasing his albums ourselves, starting with the out and out classic Regard The End in 2003.”

A native of Lancaster, California, Fisher’s WGC was based in Boston and over the course of their career became a musical collective that had a revolving door of over 35 musicians who played with the band. Among those musicians were everyone from Kristin Hersh of Throwing Muses to Chris Eckman of the Walkabouts.

Loose went on to write: “…Robert who was the beating heart of the band, in fact many people thought he was called Willard. So now Robert has gone, it’s awful, it’s sad, it’s difficult to come to terms with. But we have his music, music that was often pre-occupied with death, but as Andrew Mueller commented “was also strangely life-affirming”. So put on a WGC album, crank up the volume – and wish him well.”