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BluesWax Sittin’ In With

David Bromberg

Part Two

“I Do American Roots Music,

and I Always Have”

By Dan Harrell

In Part One of this interview David Bromberg described his meeting with the Reverend Gary Davis. “I walked up to him and asked if he would give me lessons. To my huge surprise, he said, “Sure,” and gave me his address in the Bronx. He said, “Bring the money, honey.” It was five bucks, and it was never more than that, although later it was more, in that I would spend a day leading him to wherever he needed to go.”

Bromberg learned from B.B. King, too. “B.B. tried to get his single-string playing from Lonnie [Johnson]. His choice of notes is strictly his own, but his phrasing comes straight from the church. And most of the black blues guitar players phrase like a preacher – and that makes each note more important. I tell people – and they think I’m making a joke – that the best notes I play are rests. I’m dead serious about that.”

Now sixty-six, Bromberg occupies a position along with unique vocal stylists like Bob Dylan, John Prine, or John Hiatt, and with great instrumentalists, or more specifically “pickers,” like Doc Watson or Willie Nelson. But wherever you want to place him, everyone agrees that Bromberg has his place.

He hit the ground running in New York’s late 1960’s music revolution, where he quickly became a preferred sideman and studio must-have for Dylan, Jerry Jeff Walker, Dr. John, and other top bands. In 1972, he released Demon In Disguise with its pair of hits – “Mr. Bojangles” and “Sharon “– that became the soundtrack of my life that year. But less than ten years later, Bromberg placed himself in near exile from performing.

Decades ago he moved from California to Chicago and enrolled in the Kenneth Warren School of Violin Making, where he began a search for knowledge about American violins, or fiddles if you prefer (Bromberg assures me they’re the same thing). He’s now a world-renowned expert at identifying and appraising violins, violas, and bows.

“When I started collecting violins made in the United States, it was commonly thought that there were no good American makers. To be good, it had to come from Europe. And, operating on the assumption that Americans are not genetically inferior to Europeans, I didn’t see why this should be so, and I started collecting violins made in the U.S.”

This month, Bromberg releases Use Me, with a very imaginative concept that he explains below. BluesWax got to preview a copy. The CD is “full-frontal” Bromberg, with his singing and playing showcased prominently on every track. This reporter found it pleasantly reminiscent of his Demon In Disguise breakout record – yes, with embraceable lyrics and tight, driving music. But it’s the stunning, in-your-face vocals that give soaring life to an eleven-song set of not-Bromberg-written tunes (except one). Many are blues, blues-infused, or American roots tunes; all with palpable authenticity channeled via Bromberg’s excellent playing and inimitable voice.

Dan Harrell for BluesWax: You’ve had a long relationship with Jorma Kaukonen. What are you going to do when you play with him next week [in San Francisco]?

David Bromberg: That show should be interesting because usually when I’ve played with Jorma it’s just him and me sitting at the front of the stage playing old blues. But this time I’m going to have my quartet with me, so we’ll do some of that as well. I always have a good time playing with Jorma.

BW: When did the two of you first get to know each other, and what things have you done together over the years?

DB: We were introduced by a man who is now an actor named Erik Frandsen, whom I went to high school with. I gave him some lessons, and he became a brilliant guitarist in his own right. He was out in San Francisco and knew Jorma, and he introduced us backstage at, I think, the Fillmore East. But we started getting close when he and Jack [Casady] were doing Hot Tuna and they came to Chicago. I don’t know why, but he called me up and asked me to sit in. This was the period when I wasn’t doing much playing, but I had a ball, so whenever I was somewhere he was, or he was somewhere I was, we’d play music together. More recently, he asked me if I’d teach some at his Fur Peace Ranch.

BW: You also did workshops at the Ashokan Center in New York State and some other places, and you offer lessons on your Web site. What’s it like to teach? What is a typical class like? Do you enjoy teaching?

DB: Ashokan is Jay Ungar’s summer camp. Jay’s been a friend of mine forever and ever. He was part of my band for years. He wrote “Ashokan Farewell,” which was the theme for Ken Burns’ Civil War PBS documentary. I can only teach what I know, so I ask the students to give me a list of songs that I play that they want to learn. Then I break it down piece by piece and try to teach them how to play it. It’s difficult because your classes, no matter how small, have people of different skill levels, and people invariably want to learn the thing that’s the hardest – the farthest from what they can do now. So it takes some time to do even one piece. It’s hard work, but it is rewarding. I’ve met some wonderful people who have become good friends, but it is hard work.

BW: Tell me about your bands.

DB: My quartet consists of Butch Amiot playing bass and a great, young fiddler named Nate Grower. We have a brilliant mandolin and guitar player named Mitch Corbin, and we can do a wide variety of material. The quartet is also part of the big band, which adds Josh Kanusky on drums, three horn players, and the three Angel Band singers. With them I have an even bigger palette and can do even more stuff. There’s some things that can’t be done without the horns. And there are some things that I don’t get to in a big band performance because I can only do a few things with the quartet. And I may be going out with an in-between-sized band behind the new CD. If I have a drummer and a B3 organ player, I can do pretty much everything that’s on the CD.

BW: That’s a great CD, by the way. I hate to be too gushy, but…

DB: Oh gosh no, I want to hear it. I like that. There’s a point there that I’m waiting for writers to pick up on. I was hoping that some writer would look at this and say, “How the hell did he get these people to do this? Why would all these people write a song for this guy – let alone produce him?” I mean that’s a big commitment even for just one tune. These are busy people. They must like what I do, because friendship doesn’t get you that. They knew what to do with me, those guys. They all did.

BW: You were honored at the International Folk Alliance Conference in February, but I noticed that you delivered the keynote speech. What did you talk about?

DB: I talked about how difficult it is to get your head above ground. I told them I think that if you’re going to really try and make a career in music, it’s very difficult if you don’t locate yourself in New York City, Los Angeles, or Nashville. Because any town you’re in, it takes a certain number of months to become known in that town. And as soon as you’re known there, that’s pretty much as far as it goes. But if you get known in New York, LA, or Nashville, the press there is read nationwide, so things can go much faster for you. I talked about a lot of other things that I can’t remember. It was fun.

BW: Let’s talk about the new CD Use Me a little. For those who don’t know, explain the concept.

DB: Well, I called up these people and asked each of them to write or select a song for me, and then to produce me doing it. To my surprise, almost everybody I asked said yes. It took a long time to put it together because to get my schedule and their schedule lined up was hard. Each track was done in a day, sometimes just in a session. It was really, really great fun.

The odd thing about it is that the album sounds more homogenous than any of my albums that I’ve done before, where I’ve produced the whole thing myself, or someone else has. I mean, you’ve got a Mexican waltz [“The Long Goodbye” by Los Lobos], a country tune [“Lookout Mountain Girl” by Vince Gill], a deep blues [“Diggin’ in the Deep Blue Sea” by Keb’ Mo’], a soul song [“Use Me” by Bill Withers], some funky-rock [“Bring it with You When You Come” with Levon Helm and “Old Neighborhood” by Widespread Panic], and some rappin’ funk [“You Don’t Wanna Make Me Mad” by Mac Rebennack AKA Dr. John]. It’s got everything on it, which [could be] a bad thing to tell people about it because if you tell them that, they say, “Oh, I don’t like blues” or “Oh, I don’t like country” and you lose them right away.

BW: I hope they give this one a chance because it’s very good. You said in the liner notes that making it was a humbling experience.

DB: Thank you very much. Well, I worked with some hugely talented and busy people, and that they would take the time to do so much for me was humbling.

BW: You said that the track “Ride On Out a Ways,” written by John Hiatt, makes you realize how much your tastes have changed. Why?

DB: My tastes and my guitar playing, too. I really like the solos I play on it, and there’s nothing flashy in there at all – there’s nothing to make anybody say, “Wow, how did he do that?” There’s none of that. It’s just, I think, musical and I’m very proud of it. These guys truly knew how to use me.

“I plan the first tune, and it tells me

what the second tune should be.”

BW: You say nice things about all the performers/producers on Use Me, but you seemed particularly complimentary to Dr. John.

DB: Well, Mac and I go back a long way. We used to get called for sessions by one of the great producers, Arif Mardin, one of the backbones of Atlantic Records, most famous recently for producing Norah Jones. When he called one of us, he usually called the other. I think we were his spice, because we both sound like ourselves. There’s nothing generic about Mac’s playing or, I guess, about mine. At one point, I was living in New York, but recording in LA, and Mac was living in LA and recording in New York. And I reached him and told him I wanted him to play on a track, and he flew out to play on my record. He’s such a wonderful guy. He’s an icon and one great human.

BW: The song “Diggin’ in the Deep Blue Sea” by Keb’ Mo’ is a slow, funky blues, but it’s also got a lot of meaningful words in it about our dependence on oil and it’s devastating effects on the environment, so it’s totally relevant to our times. How did that song come about?

DB: You’d really have to ask Kevin and Gary Nicholson, who co-wrote it. John sent me a tape of it and said, “Do you want to do this?” And I said, “Oh yes!” I loved the tune. We surprised him at the session. This was the only one [on the CD] where the producer did not select the musicians, because Kevin was on the road. We booked a studio in D.C., where he was and had a day off. I got some musicians I knew from Woodstock and they all hit it off from the beginning. But what surprised Kevin was that we wanted to do it that slow. He said, “You’re a brave man.” There’s two reasons why one has to be brave to choose such a slow tempo: the slower it is, the harder it is to keep it steady, and two is that a lot of radio people get impatient. So I say [to them], go on to the next one, because to me the groove on it is fantastically threatening and ominous and I love it. It’s a deep bluesy sound that you don’t hear a lot, even on blues records.

BW: Is there any particular style that you like more than others? How would you describe what you do?

DB: I do American roots music, and I always have. Included in there is rock ‘n’ roll and blues, and country and bluegrass and whatever I like. I guess if someone came and said you can only play one kind of music, these days it would probably be blues. Or soul. Or both.

BW: A sort of Buddy Guy – Bill Withers combination?

DB: There you go.

BW: What do you like about playing blues? By the way, in 2008 you said you were making a Chicago-style blues album. What happened with that project?

DB: I don’t know if I’ll be able to do that project now. One of the centerpieces of it was going to be the first song on this CD [“Tongue,” the only tune written by Bromberg]. So I’m not sure I’ll do it right away, but eventually I’m sure I’ll do it. I don’t know exactly what I like about playing blues, I just know I like it.

BW: I read that you never have a set list for your performances. Is that true? How do you prepare for a show?

DB: That’s true. I think I picked that up from Jerry Jeff Walker, who I used to play guitar for. I plan the first tune, and it tells me what the second tune should be. These days I need to warm up because I’m older and have a little arthritis or something in my hands. So it takes a little more time. Of course there’s a sound check, so if there’s something we need to work on, we do it during the sound check.

BW: I know that Linda Ronstadt [who produced “It’s Just a Matter of Time” on the new CD] is a long-time friend of yours, and Laurie Lewis, too. Have you ever done anything with Chris Strachwitz or Arhoolie Records?

DB: No, I haven’t, but I sure do love Arhoolie Records. Linda is a great friend, and Laurie is deeply talented.

BW: You’ve appeared on more than one hundred albums. What projects stand out in your memory?

DB: The Dylan sessions were enormously fun, both the ones I just played on [New Morning and Self Portrait] and the tracks I produced [some released later on the “official bootleg” Tell Tale Signs]. Working with Bob has always been rewarding. Some of my own sessions were lots of fun, too. On the first album, I had both Dylan and George Harrison, uncredited. They didn’t tell me not to credit them, but I felt it was more diplomatic. I wanted them for their music, not their name.

BW: Is it hard to get record companies to sign off on collaborations like Use Me?

DB: Yes. By today’s standards, this was a very expensive CD. In today’s world, not that many pieces of hard copy get sold. It was very difficult to get through to some of the record company people that we spoke to. They didn’t believe that, a) these people were going to work with me, and b) that [their artist] was not going to be the featured artist. [We] didn’t really need much from their companies – they were going to be sidemen and producers and songwriters. Generally, you don’t need permission for that, but in some cases we got it anyway. You know the cover doesn’t have everybody’s picture and name on it, just mine.

BW: Whose music are you listening to these days? Why?

DB: I’m very fond of a band called Ollabelle, and I may be doing some shows with them. And I’ve recently been exposed to John Herrington, who worked a lot with Steely Dan. He is a wonderful songwriter, a great guitar player, and an excellent singer. I’m crazy about him. I also like Johnny Duke, who’s now playing for Little Big Town, which is a big country act. Johnny was a blues guitar player when I ran into him, and we started working together when he was fifteen. I showed him everything I could. He went to Berklee School of Music, and when he graduated he moved to Nashville.

BW: Do you have any other projects in the works right now? Is there any collaboration that you’d really like to do?

DB: Not really, but I’ve got an appointment I’m going to have to leave for soon. I’d like to do something with Dion. I played on some of his records back when, and he’s a very solid human being, and I’ve always really liked him and enjoyed working with him. I’d like to do something with Lyle Lovett, and one of these days I’d like to run into John Mayer.

BW: Well then, one final question. What do you like to do in your spare time to get away – when you aren’t buying instruments or playing music?

DB: When is that?! [hearty laughs all around]

BW: Thank you so much for your time, David, and for your music.

DB: Not at all. Thank you for your interest.

Dan Harrell is a contributing writer to BluesWax and is president of The Write Answer in San Jose, CA, specializing in writing, public relations, and marketing consulting. Contact him by commenting below.