After a 22-year hiatus, Bromberg and his guitar to hit the stage on Feb. 17
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David Bromberg
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By Craig Harris
Special to Reminder Publications
David Bromberg and Angel Band
Mahaiwe Performing arts Center, 14 Castle Street, Great Barrington
Feb. 17, 8 p.m.
For further information, call 413-528-0100
The standards for Americana music were set, during the 1960s, 1970s and '80s, by guitar, mandolin and fiddle player, vocalist and bandleader David Bromberg. The consummate session musician, Bromberg contributed his playing to more than one hundred albums by such artists as Bob Dylan, Ringo Starr, Tom Rush, Tom Rush, David Amram and Vassar Clements. As front man for a big band and a quartet, he's masterfully melded folk, country, bluegrass and jazz for more than four decades.
While he's devoted most of his attention, since 1980, to violin study and running a violin shop, Bromberg's first studio album in seventeen years, "Try Me One More Time", shows that he's lost none of the fire of his earlier work.
"I didn't think that I was going to make another album," said Bromberg by telephone. "I've spent enough time in windowless rooms. "
Bromberg, who performs at the Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center in Great Barrington on Feb. 17, had not only taken a hiatus from recording but, for twenty-two-years, he had barely touched a guitar.
"I did an occasional show," he said, "but it was very occasional. Those gigs were like a softball game at a picnic. If somebody's got a bat and a ball and a glove, you play softball. Then, you don't think of it again until the next picnic. That's what it was like for me for a number of years."
A pair of jam sessions that he agreed to host bluegrass on Tuesdays and blues every Thursday after moving with his wife, Nancy Jacobson, to Wilmington, Delaware, restored his passion for music.
"When we moved here, I had some conversations with the mayor," he recalled. "He said that he would really love to have live music on Market Street, which is where I live. I thought I'd be able to endure it for a month or so. What I didn't expect was that I really love these jam sessions. There're some wonderful musicians. I get a lot out of it."
The many talent musicians and vocalists that Bromberg and his wife met through the jam sessions include Michael and Terry O'Byrne and their daughter, Candice, with whom they formed Angel Band. "There were always a lot of really good pickers," Bromberg said, "but there weren't a lot of good singers. Michael O'Byrne is a fine guitar player and Terry and Candice, have wonderful voices."
Recording sessions for Angel Band's debut album provided an impetus for Bromberg to record "Try Me One More Time". "The engineer, Marc Moss, was so good," he explained, "I was extremely impressed."
A backstage conversation with Chris Hillman and Herb Pederson was the next step in Bromberg's return to the studio. "We were talking about how we started and whom we learned from," he remembered. "I mentioned that I had been one of the people who had led Reverend Gary Davis around. They asked me if I could play any of that stuff so I played a few songs. They said, 'Gee, you should be playing that on stage and recording it'."
Inspired by the discussion, Bromberg returned to Moss's studio, then in small Elkton, Maryland.
"I sat in the studio for maybe two hours," he said, "and played one tune after another. It was kind of fun."
The project went into overdrive when Moss moved the studio to Bromberg's hometown in Wilmington. "(Moss) set up a studio virtually right across the street from me," he said. "With my wife's urging, I'd go there every now and then, when I got the itch, and put some tunes down. Before I knew it, there was an album."
A solo effort, "Try Me One More Time" is Bromberg's most intimate album to date, combining blues tunes by Reverend Gary Davis, Robert Johnson and Blind Willie McTell, traditional folk songs, Dylan's "It Takes A Lot To Laugh, It Takes A Train To Cry" and an original title track.
While he continues to perform with both his big band and quartet, Bromberg is making an increasing number of appearances as a soloist. "I get a big kick out of the musicians that I play with," he said. "They're some wonderful players. It's not usually as relaxing for me, playing solo. If a tiny club, that's one thing, but, if it's a larger crowd, it's harder."
Graduating from the Kenneth Warren School of Violin Making in 1984, Bromberg continues to devote much of his time to the violin. "My main interest was always about how to look at a violin," he said, "and figure out who made it, when and where. That's my field. I don't make or restore violins. People bring me violins and, when I can recognize what they are, I tell them."
Bromberg's own collection of violins includes more than two hundred and fifty instruments. "One of the first violins that I got to learn on was made in the United States," he said. "I figured that made a lot of sense because I play American music. I have a collector's mentality so I started looking for American violins. When I was on tour, I would visit a violin shop, tell them that I collected good American violins. As often as not, they would laugh in my face. But, I was convinced that Americans were not genetically inferior to Europeans so why shouldn't they be able to make a good violin. As it happens, I was correct. So, through no virtue of my own, I stumbled onto something. Now, I receive calls from the most important violin shops in the world. By default, I've become the expert."
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