There are few guitarists more versatile and revered in blues and roots music than David Bromberg. Willie Nelson, Jerry Garcia, John Prine, Gordon Lightfoot, Doug Sahm, Johnny Shines, Leon Redbone, Bob Dylan and George Harrison are just a few of the people Bromberg has accompanied. His virtuosic style includes, and often blends, blues, country, jazz, folk and rock ’n’ roll with consummate ease.
Bromberg passed through the Edmonton Folk Festival this summer, and while he was in town he sat down with Holger Petersen, host of Saturday Night Blues, to talk about his illustrious career.
“I used to have six pages: three pages of people that I performed with live, and three pages of people that I’d recorded with,” Bromberg says in the conversation with Petersen. “I’d put this on the table where they sold the CDs. There would be one ringer in each list, someone I had never played with. If you could pick out the ringer you’d get a free CD. If you could pick out two, I’d kiss your butt on Main Street in broad daylight, because nobody could do that.”
From 1970 to 1980, Bromberg was working constantly. There came a point when he just burned out, though at the time he didn’t recognize it as such. “For one stretch, I was on the road for two years without being home for two weeks,” he details. This was an eye opener for the in-demand guitarist. “I was too dumb to realize it was burnout. When I was home I wasn’t practicing, I wasn’t writing and I wasn’t jamming. I just looked at that and said, ‘There is nothing of a musician there.’”
Over the next 22 years, Bromberg took only rare studio sessions while focusing on a new career studying, repairing and collecting fine violins.
Since 1990, Bromberg has been back in fine form, recording solo projects, doing sessions for others and getting back on stage. He has relocated from Chicago to Wilmington, Del., where he has been adopted by the city as an artist-in-residence.
A world of music knowledge and history in humorous anecdotes is available in the full interview, below.
Bromberg’s observation on the differences in style between black and white blues guitarists is interesting, to say the least. Let us know what you think in the comments.