David Bromberg Quartet

David Bromberg Brings His Quartet To Boulder For eTown Radio Show Taping

:: David Bromberg Quartet ::

:: w/ Gretchen Peters ::

:: eTown @ Boulder Theatre :: June 3 ::

CANCELLED - Sunday, June 3 eTown Taping with David Bromberg and Gretchen Peters

Due to an unforeseen medical situation, David Bromberg is unable to travel to Colorado this weekend for his eTown appearance. 

As a result, this Sunday's eTown taping, also featuring Gretchen Peters, has been cancelled. 

All tickets will be refunded through the Boulder Theater box office.

David is recovering and will be performing soon. 

eTown expects that they will be able to reschedule the show sometime later this year. 

We apologize for any inconvenience and appreciate your understanding.

By Brian F. Johnson

Back when David Bromberg started making music in the late 1960s the term “Americana” did not yet exist. Bromberg took bits of blues and folk, rock and bluegrass and a whole host of other styles, and put them together into what he called “kitchen sink” music.

It was a versatile platform that garnered great amounts of attention and eventually lead to Bromberg playing with everyone from George Harrison and Bob Dylan to the Grateful Dead, Jerry Jeff Walker, Willie Nelson and The Eagles, to name just a few of the enormous A-list of musicians with whom he collaborated.

“I never saw any reason not to play the music I liked, and I liked a lot of different kinds of music,” Bromberg said during a recent late-night Skype interview with The Marquee, while he was on tour in Italy.

But less than a decade after his 1972 self-titled release, Bromberg reached what he thought was the end of his career and went through what he called his early mid-life crisis. “I’m only entitled to one, so I can’t do it again,” he said. “But it was a personality crisis. Being a musician is who I thought I was and that’s all I thought I was. So it was a very difficult thing.” Bromberg dissolved his band, stopped playing guitar and went to luthier school to learn about violin making, and more so about identifying instruments and their lineage.

Bromberg had never pondered that maybe he just needed a break from music, and a break from the constant touring he was doing. With the exception of one song that he recorded in 1990, Bromberg didn’t record again until 2007, when he released a solo acoustic album Try Me One More Time.

“It was difficult to come back, too, but in a different way. When you don’t play for 22 years you lose things. You lose technique and it’s taken a lot of work to get back to where I was. There are things I can do now that I wasn’t able to do 25 years ago, but there are also things that I could do 25 years ago that I can’t do now. So I’m working to get it all. I want everything. Why think small?” Bromberg said.

Now, several years after his return to the stage, Bromberg seems like a man who is perpetually content in the process of learning, and his latest album Use Me, which he released last year, shows a musician that is happiest when he’s stretching his comfort zone.

The liner notes of Use Me explain that after a concert in Wilmington, Del., where Bromberg lives and runs David Bromberg Fine Violins, John Hiatt invited Bromberg to his studio to mess around. “I thought, ‘Well, jeez, if I get to fool around with one of the greatest songwriters on the planet, why don’t I fool around with one of his songs, and maybe he’ll write me one, and hell, it’s his studio let him produce me, if he’ll do it,’” Bromberg explained.

That idea lead Bromberg to call some old friends in the business to see if they would do something similar, and folks like Tim O’Brien, Dr. John, Keb Mo, Widespread Panic, Vince Gill, Linda Ronstadt, and Levon Helm all jumped on board.

“For me, it was really humbling because I don’t care how good a friend you are to the people that I worked with, they don’t do things like this out of friendship. They need to think it’s a project that’s worthwhile. So it was very humbling to me to get that amount of reinforcement and confidence from people,” he said.

Bromberg also explained that the project put him in situations that pushed his limits. The track “Blue is Fallin’,” written by Tim O’Brien, was a particular learning experience for Bromberg, who admitted that he is “furiously jealous” of O’Brien. “Everything that he does, singing, playing guitar, playing mandolin and fiddle and banjo and bouzouki, seems effortless. He’s a marvelously deep musician and I’m jealous,” Bromberg said.

He added that while “I tend to put more personality than voice” to songs, O’Brien really forced him to sing the song. “He really worked me hard,” Bromberg said.

The album took two-and-a-half years to make, as Bromberg flew from city to city to record with all of the different musicians, songwriters and producers as their schedules allowed, and thus it was an expensive album to make. But Bromberg said Use Me also serves to answer that question musicians always get asked: “If you could play with anyone, who would it be?”

Bromberg said that there are a couple of musicians he wasn’t able to connect with on the album due to scheduling and that the possibility of a Use Me II has been kicked around, but plans aren’t currently underway for that.

For now, Bromberg is happy to continue playing shows on this second leg of his career and is at peace with where he is in the world. Always one to throw a little humor into the mix, Bromberg said simply, “You know, I may not be the best guitar player in the world and I may not be the best singer in the world, but I’m the best David Bromberg there is. I’ve got that covered.”

 

:: David Bromberg Quartet ::

:: w/ Gretchen Peters ::

:: eTown @ Boulder Theatre :: June 3 ::

CANCELLED – Sunday, June 3 eTown Taping with David Bromberg and Gretchen Peters

Due to an unforeseen medical situation, David Bromberg is unable to travel to Colorado this weekend for his eTown appearance. As a result, this Sunday’s eTown taping, also featuring Gretchen Peters, has been cancelled. All tickets will be refunded through the Boulder Theater box office.

David is recovering and will be performing soon. eTown expects that they will be able to reschedule the show sometime later this year. We apologize for any inconvenience and appreciate your understanding.

 

Recommended if you Like:

• Levon Helm

• Tim O’Brien

• Dr. John