A brief chat with David Bromberg

Yellow Scene: Give us a brief history of you…

David Bromberg: Well, I was born very young. I started playing guitar when I was about 13 and had the measles. So I learned to play lying flat on my back. I eventually found my way to Greenwich Village and I worked in places that they called “basket houses,” because the owners of the places didn’t pay you – the only money you got was when people were kind enough to out it in the bread basket that you passed around. So I did that, and mostly I accompanied singers. After a while, I got hired by Tom Paxton. Then I went on the road – I was Jerry Jeff Walker’s band for a number of years. I was the full band, although occasionally we’d have other people play with us, but mostly it was just him and me. Then I got called to play with Bob Dylan – I played on three of his albums. I wrote a song with George Harrison. I started writing my own songs and performing them, and here I am. Actually, there’s more. I got burned out, and I stopped performing for 23, 24 years. I never claimed to be overly bright – what happened was it was really bothering me that I didn’t play when I was at home. I wasn’t jamming, I wasn’t writing, I wasn’t doing anything that a musician does, so I decided that I might have been a musician once but I wasn’t any more. So I stopped performing, and at the time my career was going really well. The reason was because I worked so hard. I was on the road at one point for two years without being home for two weeks. That’s going to get to you. So I went to violin making school. I had to find a way to live my life. I didn’t want to be one of these guys who drags himself on stage and does a bitter imitation of something he used to love. I was kinda curious about violins – I wanted to understand how people could know who made a violin just by looking at the outside and not referring to the (usually wrong) ticket on the inside. So that’s what I learned. Music is one of these things – nobody gets to the bottom of it. You never learn it all. So for that reason, it fascinates me.

YS: Describe the sound of what you’re doing now…

DB: Good. I have always been someone who didn’t see any reason not to play whatever music I liked. As a result, I always played a variety of styles. Almost anything I heard on guitar, I wanted to do. I started playing whatever I liked, which was commercial suicide. It’s amazing I got as far as I did. The record stores had no idea what bin to put me in. The word “Americana” hadn’t been invented yet. I was just Mr. Miscellaneous for years and I kinda liked it.

YS: Do you like playing Colorado?

DB: I’ve always enjoyed Denver. There are nice audiences there. That’s all I could ask for. I guess I could ask for more, but it wouldn’t make any sense.

YS: What are your plans for the set?

DB: I have never in my life had a set list. I have no idea what I’ll play. Hopefully, it’ll be good. It makes it more interesting for me and for the guys that I play with.

YS: When this tour’s done, what do you have planned for the rest of the year?

DB: I kind of do that the same way I do my sets. We’ll see what comes up.