David Bromberg
David Bromberg may be the most influential musician you’ve never heard of, but his impact on contemporary music is undeniable. The multi-instrumentalist singer-songwriter has performed and recorded with the likes of Bob Dylan, Willie Nelson, George Harrison, Jerry Garcia, John Hiatt, Keb’ Mo’, Linda Ronstadt, Widespread Panic and a host of others. His seven-minute recording of Jerry Jeff Walker’s “Mr. Bojangles,” interspersed with tales of his own travels with Walker, initially catapulted him to extensive FM radio play in 1973, and he hasn’t looked back since.
Touring at the back end of his 2016 release, The Blues, the Whole Blues and Nothing But the Blues (Red House Records), Bromberg and his band tap into the quintessential American genre, which also had a profound influence on the Philadelphia native. But expect familiar licks from country, folk, jazz and a variety of other types of music when he appears on Saturday, Aug. 4, at Shank Hall.
It’s all “Americana” music to Bromberg, who is able to cite multiple musical muses for his unique guitar-playing style. “Doc Watson and Bill Monroe in bluegrass; Conway Twitty and George Jones in country; and Charlie Christian and Grant Green in jazz,” says Bromberg. “I have always been an omnivorous listener.”
But his primary inspiration was the Reverend Gary Davis, the blind Baptist minister, gospel singer and guitar player with whom Bromberg studied early in his career. Davis developed a unique picking style using only his thumb and index finger, while using all five fingers, thumb included, to play the chords on the neck of the instrument. “He was one of the greatest guitar players to walk the Earth, and if he had any antecedents, they never recorded, because I have never heard anything like him,” Bromberg says.
Davis introduced Bromberg to gospel music, and the young guitarist started attending African American church services for inspiration. He found that inspiration less in the musicians themselves and more in the cadences of the gospel preachers. “In the middle of a sermon, a good preacher pauses so that you pay attention to what he’s going to say next,” Bromberg says. “That’s the way B.B. [King] and Albert [King] played, and that’s the way I play. I like to joke that the best notes I play are the rests.”
The approach is similar in some classical jazz recordings—most notably those of saxophonist Charlie “Bird” Parker. However, Bird brought a little more to the party than most of his contemporaries. “Charlie Parker didn’t use as many rests, but he used them beautifully,” Bromberg says. “He’d put notes that you’d never think of in a million years in the middle of a measure, and they served as rests. The other notes around them lost their importance.”
Bromberg became a major force on the folk and blues circuit of the 1970s, but in 1980 assumed a self-imposed 20-year exile from touring and performing. Along with his wife, artist Nancy Josephson, he opened David Bromberg’s Fine Violins in Wilmington, Del. “I was burned out from the road,” says Bromberg, who had studied to become a luthier prior to opening his shop. “What fascinated me was how some people could look at a violin or cello and tell where the instrument was made and by whom without seeing the label. I wanted to be able to do that.”
Bromberg himself plays a little “country fiddle,” along with guitar, dobro and mandolin. Sideman Nate Grower will likely pick up the fiddle duties during Bromberg’s Milwaukee concert, performing along with bassist Butch Amiot, drummer Josh Kanusky, guitarist Mark Cosgrove and, perhaps, cornetist Peter Ecklund.
Bromberg also will draw heavily from his 2016 album, which taps into the musician’s love of the old blues masters he first heard as a young man listening to 78 rpm records. “There’s a lot of different types of blues on that album,” Bromberg says. “We decided to start it off with a dyed-in-the-wool blues of Robert Johnson’s ‘Walkin’ Blues,’ but there’s also country blues with ‘Kentucky Blues’ and gospel-influenced blues with ‘Yield Not.’”
Bromberg’s love for the genre is very evident in The Blues, the Whole Blues and Nothing But the Blues. Expect that love to generously spill over when the David Bromberg Quintet plays Shank Hall on Saturday, Aug. 4, at 8 p.m. Twila Jean opens.