Photo by Melissa Miller courtesy East Town Association
Robin Pluer
Robin Pluer
She’s outstanding in any setting. Robin Pluer, not flashy but distinctive, wearing a hat and clad in something chic, whether a thrift store discovery or her own creation. Musically and sartorially, she was the ideal partner for Paul Cebar in ‘80s Milwaukee. “I went up to him and introduced myself,” she recalls. It was circa 1979, Cebar was singing Mose Allison at UWM’s 8th Note Coffeehouse. “No one looked like him,” she continues. “Baggy tapered pants, slick-back hair, a Guatemalan bag, a beautiful hat.”
Pluer and Cebar gained regional popularity in the ‘80s as members of the R&B Cadets. After the band broke up, Pluer married, moved to New York, divorced after 9/11 and returned to Milwaukee where she remains a local treasure, performing regularly in low-key settings and on stage each July at Bastille Days.
Music surrounded Pluer who grew up with her older brother’s Motown records and her Polish uncle’s concertinas. She joined an all-girl band in third grade and learned sight-reading in choir at Muskego High School, where she met saxophonist Juli Wood, a future R&B Cadet and occasional accompanist for Pluer nowadays. “My dad got me my first singing job,” she says. “He cut it out of the want ads—Wanted: Singer for Disco Group.” The year was 1977, the group was called Night Fever and it was “Fly, Robin, Fly” for a year and a half. “Singing disco wasn’t my cup of tea,” she insists, but the experience helped hone her as a performer.
Pluer and Cebar, sometimes accompanied by saxophonist Rip Tenor and bassist Al Anderson, began performing together in 1979 as The Milwaukeeans. By 1981 they teamed up with the band formed by Kenosha brothers John and Mike Sieger, the R&B Cadets.
Kind of Amazing
Her calendars from the early ‘80s were full. Whether with the Milwaukeeans or the Cadets, she sang almost every night of the week. “It might be Monday at Hooligan’s, Tuesday at Teddy’s, Wednesday in Green Bay, Thursday in Chicago, Friday at Century Hall and Saturday at Harpo’s,” she says. “It was kind of amazing. Music is all I’ve ever done in my life to make money. It was never a lot of money, but I could make $25,000 a year in the early ‘80s with rent at only $150 a month!”
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She came closest to stardom, regionally, with the R&B Cadets, but the band broke up shortly after the release of their 1986 album Top Happy when the Sieger brothers were offered a contract by Warner Bros. for their other band, Semi Twang. “For me, all is forgiven,” she says. In recent year, the R&B Cadets have regrouped for occasional shows at Shank Hall and private parties.
“COVID put a definite feeling out there for listening and appreciating live music,” Pluer says. She performed numerous “porch concerts” in front of her home and the houses of friends in Milwaukee’s East Side and Wauwatosa. Word of the events spread by Facebook, Nextdoor and through neighborhood associations. “Some concerts were in the dead of winter—people were sitting in parkas on lawn chairs, they were so hungry for live music,” she recalls. Two years on, Pluer still performs porch concerts, often accompanied by such esteemed local musicians as Peter Roller and Glen Ash. However, Cathedral Square will be the site of her biggest concert this year, the annual Bastille Days performance of songs associated with Edith Piaf, Lili Patouchou, Catherine Souvage and other midcentury French songbirds.
She first performed at Bastille Days in 1995 and has returned every year except the two years when COVID cancelled the festival. Plauer had lived in France for one year as a high school exchange student and loved the culture, but never thought of singing French songs until Milwaukee promoter John Ertl contacted her about Bastille Days.
“I locked myself in my pantry and learned those songs,” Pluer recalls. “Every time I sing them, they feel fresh and real—they never get old.” Although most of the audience won’t speak French, “music is the international language,” she insists. “You don’t need to understand anything but the emotion. I just appreciate that people keep coming to see me sing. There’s no such thing as retiring for a musician! It’s what I do and who I am, and as I get older, I’m happy people are still coming out and supporting me.”
Robin Pluer will perform July 15 and 16 at Bastille Days and with the R&B Cadets on Aug. 7 for Musical Mondays at Lake Park.
