Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob left Such Podcast. My guest today is the one and only David Bromberg. David, you're having what is billed as your final concert April tenth at the Beacon. How and why is it your final show?
Well, I'm seventy eight, and there's a lot of parts about touring that are hard on this seventy eight year old body, and so I felt I kind of had to stop. But you know, I've always said I'm not the one and only David Bromberg. There were seven David Brombergs before me. You know. You know, in this business, how do you get in the business? You buy your way in. And I didn't have a lot of money, so all I could buy was David Bramberg. And now that I've had it for a while, it's not worth
anything anymore. I couldn't sell it.
Ah, Okay, are you known for your sense of humor? We've never talked before.
Oh, I'm sorry. I don't know if I'm known from I don't know if I'm known at all. I think on the whole I've remained anonymous.
I wouldn't say that's the case, because I certainly remember when your first album came out in Columbia with the white cover, etc. Let's get back to the show, but I want to talk specifically about you essentially parking your career to get into the violin business. Tell me about that decision.
Well, I got burnt out. But now bear in mind I never said I was smart, and I didn't figure it was burnout. I thought I could never burn out. I thought maybe I was really wrong and that I shouldn't be doing it at all. I didn't want to be one of these guys who drags himself on stage and does a bad impression of what he remembers he used to do. And I was burnt out. Really, if I'd taken a break for six or nine months and
come back, it would have been fine. I took twenty two years instead because I found a different life for myself.
Okay, but very specifically, how did you come to the conclusion, Because this is a business that most people never stop, never give up.
How did I come to the conclusion. Well, I don't know how to answer that. It manifested itself. What are you doing doing this if it doesn't feed whatever it fed before? I was doing a show first, I should explain to you that I've never had a set list. I just think of the tune I want to play, and I play it. And I was doing a show in New Jersey and I couldn't think of anything I wanted to play. And the truth is I didn't want to play. And when I confronted that, it told me I should be stopping.
Okay, you had that gig in New Jersey. In retrospect, did you have hints this was going to happen or was it like this just this one show hit you.
I didn't really have hints, but I should let you know that I'm not a very observant human, and things that would point certain conclusions out to other people I blithely let fly by. So I can't recall any other hints.
Tell me more about my being an observing person.
Oh boy, people will will put one and one together and get two, and I don't see one or one. It's difficult to explain beyond that.
Well, is this something that has haunted you your whole life or these just on big decisions.
No, this is something that's haunted me my whole life. And I have a therapist, so I'm not going to get into it with you.
Okay, you're a therapist. Have you always been in therapy or is that something recent?
I was in therapy when I lived in Chicago, and then I moved to Wilmington, Delaware, and I was only for the briefest period found a therapist in Philadelphia, but wasn't going anywhere, and so recently I've started again. So there's been a basically a twenty year twenty two year gap between me having any serious therapy.
Well, it's very hard as someone who's in therapy for a long time, and to the state, it's very hard to find a good therapist. And the more you know, the harder it is. How'd you find one?
I had a friend who I trust, who has always referred me to the best doctors, refer me to a therapist who couldn't take me on, but recommended another therapist. And I called that therapist and she's really good.
And is there any issue of medication?
Yeah, I have to find a psychiatrist who will prescribe, because I've been taking antidepressant drugs now for a very long time, and I'm not sure that's the right thing, because depression really jumped on me recently.
Really, can you tell me more about that. No, okay, so was this something? You know? It's funny because Bruce Springsteen mentioned I believe in his book that he was on antidepressants. And for someone I'm a little bit younger than you, but not that much. I'm seventy and sixty really fucked me up. And I just turned seventy recently.
And it's very disorienting because, like, when you're sixty, you realize everything you've been told is basically bullshit, Like you find out it you don't have to buy this serially, you don't have to go to see that movie. If it's good, you'll find out. And when you're seventy, you realize, now, wait a second, what was important to begin with it? It is depressing.
Well, yeah, I have a lot of remnants of a rather peculiar childhood, and I think that's responsible for the therapy. My father was a psychiatrist.
Really, they say that shrinks have the most screwed up kids.
Well, I think that may be true. I've heard it said that doctors always resemble their specialty. That is that pediatricians are kind of childish and you know like that. But my dad, my dad became a psychiatrist for reasons because he was raised his mother was a monster. A monster.
That's that's pretty definitive. Since she was your grandmother. Why was she a monster?
Oh boy? My grandmother was the first ange knew of the Yiddish theater in Europe because her father had the first touring group that performed in Yiddish. So she performed with Tomashevsky and all of Grace. As a matter of fact, if the script called for infants, my father and Paul Muni were the two who were used as children. So she was you know, I really don't want to get into bed mouthing my family. She was difficult. She thought of herself and not much about other people.
Was it a result of her being a diva or was it just her personality?
Beats me?
Okay, So your mother's parents obviously Yiddish theater in Europe. When and how did they get to America.
They got to America in the early part of the twentieth century, so my father was beginning to grow the folks being decided that my grandmother was too old to be an ingreenoue, so she gave it up entirely. She didn't want to be anything else she was the Ingau and my folks came with their parents.
So both of your parents were, as we say, born in the Old Country.
Not my mom. My mom was actually born in the Old Country Brooklyn, Okay.
So how did your parents meet?
I believe they met because my maternal grandfather was. He was a very interesting man. He was a poet and a businessman, a thoroughly honest socialist, and a politician, and he was extremely popular. Part of it, I think is due to the fact that he was painfully honest. I mean, he was a socialist. And when he died, he left his wife penniless because if somebody needed money and he had it, he'd give it. So he basically gave away everything.
But he was a great man. As a matter of fact, his funeral was to this day the biggest in the history of New York City. If you read any book about Firolo laguardiad always mentions him, and usually will mention that that funeral, which went through all five boroughs, and the police report was one hundred thousand people. And what was his name, borrough Charni Vladik.
Okay. So then you're so my father is living where when he meets your mother.
He's living in the States, I mean in Brooklyn. Yeah, I think so. Uh. And he was one of many people who really admired Vladik my maternity and that's how he and my mom met.
Okay, And how many kids in the family.
In which family?
In your family? Siblings? Three?
I have two. I have a brother and a sister.
And where are you in the hierarchy middle as am? I I heard that coming? Okay, So what are your what? What do your brother and sister do?
What?
How to you know? What the path did they end up taking.
My brother is now retired, but he was a community a community service guy. I mean like he had the same job more or less as Obama. He served the various communities. And my sister was an artist, but she became a scientist through an Listen, nothing in my family really goes straight ahead. There's just funny stuff. She was at a cocktail party and she was talking with somebody
and she started to talk about memory. And there was another thing that she was because there were two topics she loved, and my father got the Scientific American and she would read it to find out her favorite topics. So she was talking to this woman, and she knew a fantastic amount about a couple of subjects and nothing about the rest of science. So this woman was the director of She was the chief of the science department at the university, which I don't think my sister knew
and gave her I don't know what it's called. So she went to university and became a scientist. These days, she basically translates from English to English from English written by people for whom English is the second language, and so she translates scientific papers from English to English.
Okay, and you grew up in Philadelphia. How the family get from Brooklyn to Philadelphia.
I didn't grow up in Philadelphia. I was born in a hospital in Philly. My dad was in the Navy, but when he got out of the Navy, we moved to Queens. And when I was four years old, the family moved from Queens to Tarrytown, New York. And that's basically where I was raised.
I remember going to a Chinese restaurant in Terrytown. I can't remember the name. My parents. We go back and forth to New York. Okay, so you're growing up. All the hopes and dreams are in the older sibling. You're going to school. Good student, bad student.
I was a fairly good student. I did well, not as well as my older brother, but I did well. To give you the picture, my older brother went to Harvard. I went to Columbia.
Where did your sister go? Since we're going this far.
My sister went to a whole bunch of art schools, one after another.
Okay, so you're growing up, You're doing well in school, you have friends, Do you play sports or your nerd? What kind of kid are you?
I was a pretty solitary kid. When I got to be thirteen, music took over my life. I learned to play when I got the measles when I was thirteen, so I learned to play lying on my back. I borrowed one of my brother's guitars and one of his books. I could already read music. I had studied flute since I was about eight, so teaching myself from the book was fairly easy. And as I say, music took over.
Okay, So in a Jewish family, usually kids started taking piano lessons. I remember taking piano lessons at age six. You never took piano lessons, you just started with the flute.
I won't say I never took piano lessons. I took a few, but I remember my mom asking me what would you like to play in For some reason, I said flute, and so that's where I went. I think I took the piano lessons after the flute lessons.
Actually, and you'd learn flute with a private teacher or with yes in public okay, And you were taking flute before you had this epiphany. Did you like playing flute? Did you take to that?
I don't think I really took to it.
No, Okay, So you had measles. It's nineteen fifty eight. Elvis has got, you know, some purchase on the world. The folk boom is sort of happening, but really booms sort of a little bit later in the early sixties. You're there picking up the guitar. What are you playing?
I was playing whatever was on the radio. And at that time, or shortly after, the folks Scare happened, and so I found a record in my parents' collection. I never saw them listen to any of the music that they had. They had about twenty records, and one of them was the Weavers at Carnegie Hall, which I just loved, and so I got involved with the folk scare, which was parallel to the other scare.
Okay, now you're talking about being able to read music. Those of us have come a little bit later than you were really getting into the guitar because of the Beatles were playing chords. So at that particular point in time, you were playing the notes, you were playing the leads.
No, at that particularly, I started out learning the chords too, and I could figure out the chords for anything on the radio at the time, so I was doing that. You know, the rock and roll tunes, the folk tunes, whatever it was, they were all pretty easy to figure out.
So this came naturally.
I think I was able to concentrate and teach myself. I actually know somebody to whom I believe music came naturally. I had to work hard for everything.
Well, let me put it a different way. I remember playing guitars and my friend said, okay, now we're going to change key. I remember telling myself, I'm out. This is a step beyond me. I could learn how to do that, but I don't have that facility. Are you saying that every hurdle you had to work to go.
Through, Yeah, pretty much. I think that's true. And it's been pointed out to me that I play music from a variety of genres, which I think is true. My records have all been salads. And the thing is, I never heard anything played on the guitar that I didn't want to play myself.
So can you tell me about your brother had a guitar.
My brother was studying classical guitar and he had a couple of nylon string classic guitars.
Well, needless to say, you know, when you're starting out, certainly picking out notes. Nylon string guitars, they're hard to play with a wide neck. Usually the action, I mean, it's not an easy jump.
Well, the action was quite playable because he was taking lessons and knew what he was doing, and wide neck didn't scare me. I have rather large hands and I've never had a problem with a wide neck.
Okay, so you're thirteen. Measles doesn't go on forever? The measles? And where does that leave you musically?
Playing everything that's on the radio? And I started, I started did taping things because I had a wolln Sock tape recorder, and then I realized I never listened to the tape, so I stopped that.
Okay, your parents had a wolen sack. I mean that was not common in the house in the fifties.
Maybe it was a voice of music.
Well, whatever it was, how did you end up having a tape recorder in the house? Who bought that?
I may have, but I can't remember. Maybe it was a birthday president, I just don't recall.
Okay, so you're now playing everything on the radio. You're doing this in your house. Do you start playing out when you go to a friend's house, when you go to summer camp? Do you have groups anything like that?
I started playing out a bit when I got old enough to play in bars. I played in bars and I played you know, the classics, Sophisticated Lady in Teeth for two and all that. So that was one part of it. And then I did go to camp and played guitar there. I played guitar everywhere.
Okay, So how did you make the hurdle of playing in bars playing for money? Did you say I want to do this or I want to be recognized? What was the driving cast there?
I started playing with some other people and and we were looking for any kind of a job. So we found a job in a bar where at first I wasn't old enough, so I didn't do it. When I was old enough, I could do it.
Okay, you're saying playing the classics for those who don't know. I mean, people have no idea how big the folks scene was. It was even a you know, the hootiny Andy on TV. Tell me about how the folks scene burgeoned and then to what degree you got involved.
Well, wait a minute. When I said the classics, I mean the jazz standards. That's what you're playing right in bars. Wasn't really funny, I.
Understand, But ultimately you were talking about being infected by the folk virus, and it seemed like you ultimately got into that. Yeah.
I used to go down to Washington Square on Sundays, take a train into the city and go down there, and people were playing together, and you know, I learned from that experience. And from there I would sometimes wander over to McDougall Street, where there were clubs, and I performed at at one of them. There's a book about the early Folks scene and a guy said, one time a guy came in and applied to go on the stage, and you know, it was a hoot and any kind
of thing. Anybody could go on the stage. And he thought, oh, this is going to be terrible because the kid had a bad haircut and it looked weird. That was me, and he said when he played it was you know, very good.
Okay, you're a nice Jewish boy. Your father's a doctor. Do you view music as a career or do you say you know you've been driven into you have to be a professional, go to college and this is just a sideshow.
I thought I had to go to college at first, but I kept playing and you said something I wanted to pick up on. But my memory is not so good. Oh yeah, you said, I'm a nice Jewish boy. I was born to Jewish parents, but it was really impossible for me to be religious. We would celebrate Passover and at every sator at some point my father would say this God must be a very insecure creature to require so much constant praise. I mean, how am I gonna go go worship with that?
Well, what I was referencing that that is certainly very interesting, is the values as opposed to go in a shool or barmitz for anything like that. You didn't have arms?
I did you?
Did you did, okay.
I mean, my parents gave me a choice to have it or not, and I chose not and that was the wrong answer, so I had it. I actually didn't have any choice, okay.
But usually in a Jewish family. I'm speaking from my own experience and observation.
You know.
I knew I was going to college before I went to any school, you know, and they say, you know, be a professional. And this was driven into before I could think for myself, is all I'm saying. And to vere from that, my parents were not that supportive.
Well. In my second year at Columbia, I had a bit of a breakdown and took a leave of absence, which I've never ended actually, So there I was not in college anymore, and I was playing music and going down.
To the village. How hard was it to drop out?
I went and did it the right way. I went to the dean's office and spoke to them, and he sent me to the campus psychiatrist, and he recommended somebody for me to see. So I dropped out and started seeing this psychiatrist. My father was very angry that I hadn't asked him to recommend somebody, but you know, there we go again.
How much as dropping out was college didn't work or I'm on this music path and I have to pursue it.
You know, I've never asked myself that question. I think I couldn't handle college. I think that was the main thing, but there had to have been some of the other involved there. I don't think that human beings do things for the black and white reasons all the time. I know I certainly didn't.
So you stop going to school, what's your life like? Then? You live in Indian City or you live in back in Terrytown.
I was living in the city and I got offered a gig. I'm a State Department tour, which turned into two State Department tours, and after that I got various gigs here and there. I played rhythm guitar for a Calypso singer. You know, I did whatever I could get.
Well, you know, there's this new movie about Blood, Sweat and Tears talking about their State Department tour and the deleterious effects thereof What were the State Department tours you were on? The first one was in Southeast Asia. The band was a band called the Phoenix Singers, and the Phoenix Singers were an offshoot of the Bellefonte Singers, and it was three very well operatically trained black musicians singing folk music in shirts open to the navel, accompanied by
two heterosexual Jewish guitar players. And I think the point of it was to show them that in America, white people can work for black people. I wasn't required to figure out why we were there at the time. I was just.
Required to play, and that's what I did.
Okay, So you've dropped out of college, you found some gigs. Is there a dream or you just fumbling? Oh?
I think I was just fumbling. And I think I've always just fumbled. I've never had a goal in music. Except at the point where I could take a cab home from a gig in New York City. I had it made. Everything else was gravy. It was enough to be able to take a cab home at three am and not have to go into the subways and wait and wait.
What kind of living situation did you have and how are you paying the rent?
I had a few different places, is usually one bedroom at first shared with another musician. I had a place on a six floor walk up on McDougall Street, in a tiny, little place, which I shared with another musician, and unbelievably small, even smaller than the Paris apartment. Paris apartments are smaller than New.
York And were your pearents financially supportive? It all?
They were? My parents were very supportive financially. I tried not to ask, but they really helped me through that period. I remember being on the subway, across the aisle from a woman with a bag full of groceries and being just that close to asking her if I could have something from there, because food was hard to come by, and.
I would, Now, it's the right And now it's the early sixties and the folk boom is booming and in people are coming to New York City to participate. Where were you? Then?
I found my way back to the village and in this apartment I was describing on McDougall Street, and I eventually got a gig at the gas Light, which is also on McDougal Street, to block over from my apartment, and I was the opening act for everybody for fifty bucks a week, and that was a wonderful period. I got to play with some incredible artists on the same bill with and sometimes on the same stage. You know, sometimes I would get to play with some of those people.
And some of those people were.
Skip James Wow, Don Reno and Bill Harrell, Doc Watson. There were all kinds of people whose records I loved.
Now you're playing out to what degree? Are you as student of the instrument and going home and playing in your apartment? I mean, are you really working hard? You say, well, no, I play at the gig and I might work out a little bit at home. Are you spending hours practicing at home too?
You know? I spent hours practicing at home. And when I was going to Columbia, I wandered down to the village one afternoon and I passed a place that at the time was called the dragons Den, and there was a sandwich sign outside that said Reverend Gary Davis here this afternoon. So I paid my money and went in. I had heard I actually had a record that had
one side of the Reverend. In the other side was Pink Anderson, who was a singer who would draw crowds for medicine shows anyhow, So they were both basically street singers. And so I went in and I listened, and it was the Reverend. It was incredible He was one of the great guitar players, one of the greatest I've ever seen. And he was also I don't think people mentioned this enough, he was also a fantastic singer. He was really really good.
And after this set I approached him and asked if I could take lessons from him, and he said, yes, five dollars, bring the money, honey. That was the reverend. That was Reverend Gary Davis.
And how long did you take lessons?
A few years? Learning to play his tunes the way he played them. I tried, what would a lesson be like? Well, first of all, it would usually last the whole day, and his wife would make lunch at some point, and he was extremely patient man, and so he would play something and I would try and copy it and he would correct me. But he was a great teacher, and he was very very patient, but he'd also he'd also screw around with you. I remember one lesson he was
teaching me. The song called I'll Be all Right, which is the song from which We Overcome, was taken same melody, and at one point he played a chord which I didn't recognize, and I said, what's that chord? He said, this isn't E ninth. I said, what wasn't he ninth? He said, this isn't e ninth? Oh okay. So I went home and I learned and practiced. In the next week, I came back and I played it for him, and he stopped me. He said, what cord are you playing there?
I said, in E ninth? He said, wasn't he ninth? Well, this isn't e ninth. No, it's a B minor. And then anytime he knew I was there and he was playing that tune, it would be a B minor, but it could also be an E ninth. I mean, there's only one note difference, and it's not a sharp contrast.
And how did the lessons? How did you stop taking lessons with him?
See, at one point I got promoted to where I wasn't paying him for the lessons, but I was taking him to his gigs. And that was very important in my life because we went to a lot of churches, and I discovered that I was never as welcome anywhere else as I was in the church as he brought me to. And so that made me curious, and I started occasionally going to other churches, and I learned a lot about guitar playing from the other churches where there
were no guitar played. What I learned was, well, I'll give you an example of what I learned. If you think of BB King's playing, and I was playing single note things at this time, as well as the reverence things. BB King's choice of notes is his own, but his phrasing is that of a preacher. And it was like a light going off when I realized that, you know, BB plays with a lot of rests, and arrest is
a musical note, and so I got it. The thing about those pauses is that when the preachers would preach, sometimes they would sometimes they would stop, and everybody would want to hear what he would say next, how he would finish the sentence. And that's a great thing for public speaking, but it's also great for playing blues guitar.
Okay, you're taking these lessons. Meanwhile, Dave van Rock is playing Dylan comes to Town. Were you integrated in that scene or was that separate from you?
You've got the wrong timeframe. That was before I moved down to the village. I did meet and get to know Dave, and I did something that I didn't realize was so good but it was really good. I was in the village and there was a kid showed up playing dulcimer, which I never considered an instrument, and he had a really great song called Fairfax County and I
heard that song and it's a ballad. Now, Da von Rock is usually known for his hoarse voice and his kind of bluff performance, but when he does a ballot it's tremendous, so I knew this was This tune was for Davon Rock. So I took the kid with me until I could find Van Rock. We wounded her around the village. We found him backstage at the bottom line. It was Tom Paxton's gig and he was visiting Pakistan. They we were old friends, and I introduced them David,
here's David, David, Here's David. And I left and I never saw Dave von Rock again. The next time I ran into David Massingill, who wrote the song, was at a memorial for ven Rock, and Massingle said that after that night when I introduced them, they were always together. He would drive him, he would sometimes be the opening act. They were road companions, so that was a good thing I did.
Okay, since you set the timeframe that you're a little after sixty two, etc. In the folk Boom. To what degree were you aware of it? And to what degree did you say, I want to be into this, or maybe I'm too late, or I want to know these people.
Well, you know, this is another example of me not putting two and two together. Necessarily. You see a whole thing and you wonder how I was going to integrate myself into it. I never thought of that. All I thought of is where can I get a job and how can I do it well. I sometimes get asked, you know, I've done a lot of recording sessions with some very famous people, and I've been asked, was it like doing a recording session with Bob Dylan? I said, well,
the the important words there are recording session. It's a job, and I concentrate on doing my job. I don't let you know I was a huge Stone fan, but I wouldn't be starstruck.
I had a job to do. Okay, how much was doing the job properly and how much was getting paid?
Well, if it was somebody really famous, the whole thing was doing the job properly. But you don't get to do that until you gain a certain amount of recognition yourself. You know, I did a lot of gigs that were I mean, the first album I was on was something called Psychedelic Soul, and I don't want to say that it was bad, but everything they printed after a few months was sold to Red China.
It was bad.
And I played on a lot of you know, bad beginner things, and for a while I had I would be called by a producer named Tommy Kay Thomas Jefferson Ka, of course you know Tommy.
Yeah, I don't know personally, even put out albums under his own name.
Well, the thing about Tommy was he wanted to be who's that great producer who ended up in.
Jail, Phil Spector?
Phil Spector. He wanted to be Phil Spector. He always wears sunglasses and slouched and said, anyhow, the thing about Tommy is you never got paid scale. So after a while I didn't have to do those gigs, and I stopped doing them. I'm telling Tommy, you know, if you're not going to pay scale, I'm not going to do it. And actually I got paid double scale a lot. I don't remember if it was that period, but I used
to get at least scale. And Tommy said, well, listen, you've got to play this one the other guitar players. Eric Clapton, I said, are you seriously? Said yeah. So I go to the studio a couple days later and I look around. There's another guitar player, and I go to Tommy. I say, Tommy, you know that's not Eric Clapton. He says, yeah, but it looks just like him, doesn't He Well, yeah, you know, when you're just starting out, you meet all the bottom feeders first.
Oh. Absolutely, So at this point in time, now you pick up the guitar, when you're thirteen, you ultimately expand other stringed instruments. When does that happen? Oh?
You know, I wish I could name a year when something happened. But you know, in addition to not putting two and two together, I never recorded when something like that happened. I just loved that it happened and went through. I mean, I'm.
Talking I think traditionally I don't need to like February second, nineteen sixty four. I mean, did you sit there and say, oh, look, there's that instrument I want to learn how to play, or did you consciously say I need to expand my repertoire or were you just infatuated with every stringed instrument you wanted to play them all?
Not exactly. The first instrument, not a guitar, that I took up, was the doughbro. And there was one dobro player, a really good musician in New York at the time, and I figured, well, two wouldn't hurt. And so I started to learn a little bit of doughbro, very basic stuff, and I could I could sit in with people in play. So that's what got me to playing doughbro. Fiddle was more complex and I can actually describe it. I didn't take play fiddle until I was leading my own band
and Jay Younger was in the band. I don't know if you're familiar with Jay, but you're for certain familiar with at least one of the songs he wrote, called the show Can Farewell, that Ken Burns used as the theme for his thing on the Civil War. So I started to think, boy, I loved his playing, and I started thinking, I want to play fiddle, and I know what I want to sound like. I want to sound
like Jay Younger. So I bought myself a fiddle and proceeded to to learn how to feebly play on it played on a I played on a few of my records, usually with a couple of other fiddlers playing at the same time.
But how did you end up playing on Jerry Jeff Walker's bo Jangles Mister Bojangles.
I was running around the village and there was a harmonica player named Donnie Brooks who ran around. He was a good guy. I'm really sad he's not with us any longer. But Donnie thought that Jerry Jeff and I would get along really well. At the time, Jerry Jeff was part of a jazz fusion band. I usually know the name of it, but for some reason it is Circus Maximus. I think that, Yeah, they had an AM I mean an FM hit with one of the fusion things.
But that band didn't like the stuff that Jerry Jeff wrote. So he and I would play together and I really enjoyed doing it, and I wanted to do it more. But you know, he was part of that band. But I got gage for us actually, and I started just to take a step back. Jody Stecker became a good
friend of mine. I learned more from Jody Stecker maybe than anybody else than I learned from anybody else Anyhow, Jody, you used to take me up to w b A I FM, to Bob Fastest program Radio Unnameable, which started at midnight and ran to God knows, and so I started to bringing you know, later I started bring Jerry Jeff up there. And Bob Fast loved the Bojangles song and we had done it on his show about three times when he made a tape loop out of those
three performances of the same song. And if we weren't coming up, he might play it a few times a night. And now, the only privilege that a songwriter has is deciding who can be the first one to record his song. After that, it's up to anyone. Jerry Jeff didn't have a manager, let alone. He was signed to Vanguard, but his band didn't want to do any of his country tunes. However, that song from Bob Fast playing it spread all over New York. You know, people were looking for it and
asking for it. The piano player at Gillie's, which is where Sidatra used to hang out, was a guy named Bobby Cole, and he was a talented piano player, and he heard it on the radio in the wee hours coming home from his gig and he decided, well, that's a good one. I'll cover that, and so he recorded it for a subsidiary of CBS. I can't get the name of the label, but maybe Date or something. Anyhow, he recorded it and it was sent to disc jockeys and it started to get played and Jerry Jeff said,
wait a minute, that's my song. And I didn't give him permission to record it, so he hurried up, got himself a manager, on himself a label. The first place we had to go was to Vanguard because he was signed there, and Vanguard was the only label in New York City that wasn't trying to find that song. So they booked some time for us in the studio and Gary Gary White playing bass, Jerry Jeff, Me and Norman Smart, who later played drums for Elvis. But he wasn't playing
drums that day he was playing. He was playing on his body.
He also played drums on the first Mountain album.
Yes, that's right. He was a talented guy. And so we did a nice performance of Mister Bojangles and they listened to it and they said, oh, you can record it. Just if we want an album from you later, you have to give us an album. So Jerry Jeff signed with at CO which it was the division of Atlantic, and he was booked to record the song in Memphis at Sam Phillips Studio and I was brought along. I don't know if Jerry Cheff Acid or the man David. I can't get his last name. I feel terrible because
I knew him well. Anyhow, we flew up small plane down to Memphis and we went to the studio and the engineer was Tom Dowd. I don't know if you're familiar with Tom Dowd, but of course, of course he invented faders, and also he was on the Manhattan Project. I mean, this was a skillful guy. And he didn't know me from Adam. He'd never heard Jerry Jeff live.
I was basically Jerry Jeff's orc Struff for years. So I'm sitting in the studio and he's trying to get a a take he likes of mister Bojangles, and the band has it, and there Jerry Jeff performs it for them and so that they're doing it kind of straight from him in Walt's time, because it is in three four times. But I didn't play it that way. Anyhow, I was. It's embarrassing to admit, but I was in tears and Dad was getting very frustrated with the band.
They couldn't get out of this Viennese walls thing. He said, let the kid do something. You know, there was a woman who was playing a twelve string given the twelve string, so I played my part to it, which was not in three four, it was in six's eight and that changed the whole thing, and that's what was put out and we didn't have trouble with it after that.
And did Tom Dowd remember you and ever call you in the future. No? No.
I called him once and he remembered me enough to see him, and I had a little lick I thought might be a basis for an instrumental, but it was two it was. It wasn't very original. He said, No, you know I became better then you.
Play on Tom Rush's first Columbia record. How did that come to happen? Tom asked me, So you knew Tom.
I don't know if I knew him at the time. I mean, our relationship may have started at those sessions, which by the way, were the first sessions recorded with Dolby. Here's there's a bit of trivia for you.
Yeah, right right, yeah, So either you know what that is, don't. I won't die hanging there being it's a theme history because of course Dolby was superseded theoretically by DBX because Dolby only worked on the high end. DBX worked across the complete spectrum, and then Steely Dian got a whole album and the decode was off and that was pretty much the end of DBX. But then you work with Al Cooper, I'm easy, does it? That's another album I
have me and ten other people. How do you end up working with Al Cooper?
I got called I might have known Al a little bit beforehand. Al Cooper is one of the best humans playing music. I mean just as a human being. He's fantastic, and he's also an excellent, excellent, excellent musician. But he's somebody in this business that's easy to love.
Okay, Then how do you end up hooking up with Dylan? Well?
Well, the first time I met Dylan it was at a Jerry jeff A concert at the Bitter End in the village and he was in the audience, and afterwards I was taken to meet him and we shook hands. I said hello, and that was that, and I figured he was there to hear Jerry Jeff because Jerry Jeff's a songwriter and Dylan's a songwriter and songwriters go and listen to each other. But then I got called, and my memory of it was he said he wanted to try out a studio and would I come and do
it with him. Well, it was a studio he actually knew quite well at Columbia, and I ended up recording with him. I actually did. I'm on four albums of his, in different amounts, on different albums. On one of them, the first album is that I played on.
You said, you produce the tracks to you said.
I produced two of the tracks that I played on, which were were They were much later. They were on one of his quote bootleg releases and they were Duncan and Brady and Missed the Mississippi and you.
Okay, you're first working on self portrait? What do you remember about that?
I remember that I was sick as a dog through the whole recording thing, and I would come home and fall on my bed with my clothes on, and wake up in time to get to the studio, take a shower, get to the studio and that was it bed and the studio, so that I remember that very well. Also
on that session, I think on self Portrait. Most of the sessions that I was on were just me and Bob and they were later released like that called another Self Portrait I think, or something like that, and some of them Al Cooper was on and that may be where I met Al.
Okay, So Self Portrait is a double album, you know, Dylan as is so called Motorcycle Action, which is up to debate now comes back out with John Wesley Harding. The National Skyline does double album self Portrait.
National Skyline came first.
I think National Skyline came before Self Portrait.
Yeah, yeah, I think so.
Yeah, definitely. And Self Portrait is a double album, has a certain number of covers, and for the first time ever, Dylan gets bad reviews.
Right.
Did you continue to have contact with him? Did you sense that he was troubled by that?
No? I didn't, But let me remind you, I'm the guy who doesn't know what one and one is, So I didn't. I didn't know, and I didn't have a whole lot of contract contact with him then until he called me for another group of sessions.
Okay. Well, that's the interesting thing, because he does. Self Portrait comes out in the spring of nineteen seventy, and then he comes out with another album within months, New Morning, which you were on, which is one of my favorite albums, Sign on the Window, et cetera by Dylan. Is there any consciousness that he's trying to make statements You're work in faster? What's the difference between recording New Morning and recording Self Portrait?
You know, I sometimes tell reviewers or interviewers don't ask me any overview questions because I can never answer overview questions. I'm too busy looking at the trees to see the forest.
Okay, if I were to mention certain songs on New Morning, would you remember what you played on? Or too much in the forest?
I might remember some of them, there are some that I wouldn't know for sure.
Okay, really, so we have Self Portrait, we have New Morning. What are the other two Dylan albums you play on.
Well, there was another one that came out out not long after one or the other of those two, which was simply called Dylan, which had some more takes from one of those two recordings. And I'm not sure which. And the other one was this bootleg album thing which I told you about, where I had to give you some sessions.
I don't want to focus on this to the exclusion of your own career. But was this sort of one and done or if you maintained any kind of relationship with Dylan.
We have a relationship, but in the music industry, relationships don't necessarily include frequent contact. You can be in a city and meet a player and not see him again for seven years, but you got close to him, and when you get back to that city, you can pick up your last conversation. I mean, that's the way it is in the music business. Bob and I had a little I got mad at him for something at one point, and we didn't have much contact for a few years.
If you are willing to reveal what did you get mad about.
I really don't want to go into it. It wasn't a big deal to anyone in the world.
But me, let's move on from there. How do you get your own record deal with Columbia?
That is interesting. I was accompanying a woman named Rosalie Currell's and Rosalie got booked at the second Isle of Wight Festival, which was the last one for decades, And the reason it was the last one for decades is that the crowds broke down the fences and everybody in free, hundreds of thousands of people. So I was there to accompany Rosalie, and experienced performers know that a crowd that doesn't pay is the hardest one to satisfy. A crowd
that gets in free, they're really hard to satisfy. And a number of very good artists got booed off the stage or came within a whisker of it. And Rosalie was was on Wednesday afternoon. There was no press there at all, and so I was accompanying her, and the crowd started to get restive. Rosalie's thing was very intimate.
In a small club, it would get right to you, and in front of several hundred thousand people, it really wasn't built for that, but it should have gone over anyhow, and they were rude, and she was about to be overcome, and she asked me to do a song of mine, a funny song, a long, funny song called the Bullfrog Blues. She'd never asked me to do a song in one of her sets and never did again. But that afternoon she did, and I did Bullfrog Blues and the crowd
loved it and they let Rosalie finish her set. So when we got off stage a little while after we'd packed up the instruments, the promoters came to me and asked me if i'd come back at dusk and maybe do some more. I didn't realize it at the time, but dusk is the very best time to perform at an outdoor festival because it's getting dark, so the only focus is the stage, but you're hopefully not so burnt out that you can't really hear what's going on. So okay,
you know. I came back and I asked them how many songs I should do, and they said do an hour. And I don't know that I'd ever done an hour before, but I went out there and I did an hour and got a couple encourse.
Wow.
That, yeah, really was something, And there's there's some video of part of the crew talking about it afterwards, which is encouraging. But TiO Massa was there for Columbia recording it because they wanted to release that, and he recommended that they sign me. Unfortunately, I never met him. I wish I had. I would have liked to have thanked him. But so that's that's how I got signed to Colombia.
Now, when you get signed Clive Davis still running the company, then he gets blown out. That affect you in your career? Whatso any to any degree?
I have no idea.
Okay, sorry, okay. So the first album you record it by today's standre it's very difficult by the period before you get to produce it. So to what degree was the company hands on? To what degree were you happy? And to what degree? Then what was your experience after it came out.
Well, I didn't know anything about producing an album, but I knew what I wanted. It never occurred to me that there was money involved, so I just did.
Those were the days.
When some artists spent tens of thousands recording an album. So anyhow, I did the album the way I wanted And there was one of their house producers who'd been assigned to it, and he wasn't happy about it, but they let me do it. And when it came out, I really don't know much about it except that I found myself in La and there was a billboard of the cover of the album. The cover of the album was actually a sketch of me that my sister did, so nobody knew that that person on what's the name
of that boulevard, that huge face. So yeah, that huge sunset boulevard, it was me. I wanted to stand next to it, but it wouldn't have done any good. So yeah, I don't really know what.
Okay, So the album comes out gets a big bush. I have friends who bought it. People are very aware of it. There is a lot of criticism relative to your voice. Did that affect you whatsoever?
No, For one thing, the criticism was quite valid. Back then, my singing was extorable. It was terrible, but I could play the guitar, but the singing really wasn't very good on most of it. There's a track or two where I did sing well, because the point is, a good voice and good singing are not the same thing. So anyhow, years later, after I'd taken my twenty two years sabbatical, I came back. I discovered that I really could sing,
and I enjoyed it. There are physical sensations coming from it that I'd never felt before that I loved so and these days I can still sing. I don't play as well as I used to.
Okay, what was the trick that you could finally or what happened that you could finally sing?
I received a lot of advice. I took some voice lessons in California for a while, but the stuff that really helped most was some advice from Phoebe Snow, who was a good friend of mine, And in particular, the advice she gave me is, when you're about to sing, open your throat like you're yawning and sing through the aw and that was really important and get it right away. But as I said, I did later. She also discussed that your voice doesn't really feel like it's coming from
your mouth. It feels like it's coming from your nose and eyes, your mask in other words, And that stuff was all very helpful to me.
And I'd be remiss if I didn't ask how George Harrison ends up on the album.
Well, I had met George one time. I met him in the Columbia studios and he sang me one of my songs which you could have knocked me over with a feather, and I asked him where I learned it, and he said, Bob taught it to him and I had no idea Bob knew one of my songs, so
that was very nice. And so we'd met at a couple of different places, and my manager at the time was a guy named al Ronowitz who is very close to the Beatles, and my guess is that he asked George if he would, you know, record with me, and actually the Ringo. I don't know if I should tell a story. Well I started, I'll do it. I vowed never to tell it, but Ringo told me that after my first album came out, John said the other three
down made them sit through the entire album. Wow, So I guess we've we've we've unveiled his sadistic nature right there.
Okay to what degree? Because you started before the Beatles, Oh, they are somewhat there contemporary in age.
No, they started before me.
Let me restate that before their breakthrough in America. So you were playing other types of music when the Beatles hit. Were you a Beatles fan?
Oh? Yeah, big time? Yeah. I loved the Beatles. And the reason I know that they were known first was I was the music counselor at the age of fourteen at a summer camp and some of the kids had the Beatles album. So so I'm pretty clear that the Beatles were making some noise long before me. I didn't record until I was maybe nineteen or twenty.
Okay, Aleronowitz was a journalist. How did he end up as being your manager? And was he a good manager?
It was a very complicated relationship and both of us made a lot of mistakes. I met him through Rosalie so else and that's kind of where that came together.
Well, would the story or your career have played out differently if he was Is someone else more experienced? Was the manager?
Oh? I really don't know. He did a lot of you know, in lately I have come to realize that he did a lot of things for me that were really great. But as I say, our relationship was difficult, and I was definitely responsible for some of it, and he was definitely responsible for some of it.
So, and how long before your sabbatical did he remain your manager or to replace him?
I'm very bad with years.
Let me ask you a question. Did you have another manager after al.
Yeah? I think I did, But I'm blanking.
Okay, not important. So you put out this album suddenly, you know, the train leaves the station, you make another record. Well, what's your experience during this period? But you just have your head down and you're working so much you don't know which end is up. Are you worried about sales? You worry about audience aside you're playing? Are you enjoying it? Do you feel it's more like a grind? What's it like? Oh?
I was enjoying it until that one time I told you about New Jersey when I realized I didn't want to play. But I really was enjoying it, and I was working my butt off, and I didn't realize I could say, look, this is too much. Slow down, So I never said it, and then one day I just kind of said I got to stop.
Okay. Drugs and alcohol factor on the road.
They were always there. I don't think they affected performance a great deal, especially not alcohol, because although back in those days I used to sometimes drink Jack Daniels before and during a concert, but I can only remember one concert where it affected me enough to comment on it.
Okay. So if the first album comes out in seventy two, when does the sabbatical begin.
Seventy nine?
Okay, So you make records on Columbia gives you a big push at first, and then you end up switching to Fantasy. How does you know what happens there?
I was signed by Fantasy and my manager and I moved out to the Bay Area, which is where Fantasy is, and my first album was a double album, and Fantasy said that it sold two hundred thousand copies in the first month. I don't believe it did, but I think that was a good press release. It maybe came close to that, but I don't think it did the number that they said. And they were very nice people, and at one point they were very happy to have hired a former Berry Gordy employer, a guy who had worked
on publicity for well, I don't know. I think it was publicity for Barry Gordy's record company in Detroit, and I was passing the office his office one day and he was telling all his people that I was a joke. So that kind of killed my relationship there as far as I was concerned.
And did Columbia not want to make any more records? Is that how you ended up in Fantasy?
What happened with Columbia is the bean Counters took over, and I know It was the bean Counters because I had my contract that if one of my records sold one hundred thousand that I would get a twenty five thousand dollars bonus. And after a certain point one of my records hit that my first records had sold one
hundred thousand, and they paid the bonus. But that made them look into it, and they discovered that my third album in another couple of weeks was going to hit it, and my second album a couple weeks after that, and the fourth album was going gangbusters. So in order to avoid paying out another seventy five thousand dollars, they released me. Then they didn't have to pay that.
Wow, okay, So you know during this period till seventy two seventy nine, how are you doing financially?
I think I'm doing okay. I can take a cab after the gig. It was fine, okay. And how did you meet your wife? Was it during this period? I think it was actually pretty early. It was before or just after I released my first album, and of course it was at a concert.
And how did you meet her?
She was part of a group of kids that were members of the New Jersey Folks Society. And this was an interesting group of kids because almost every one of them became a professional musician. Wow, it was Yeah, it was really impressive. And the gig, the first gig that I played there was the first gig that I played as David Bromberg outside of New York City, So it was a big deal to me.
And how did you sustain a relationship when you were on the road so much?
Well, she was a professional musician. She became a professional musician, and we'd pass each other on the road, and so we'd get together for the time given us and then travel on. And then at a certain point we decided to live together. And I was at this point living in Moren County, and I had a lemon tree in the garden in front of the house. And she drove up for the first time and she saw that, and she thought it was really touching that I'd glued all those lemons to the tree.
And when did you get married?
Seventy nine?
Okay, so you're on stage in New Jersey. Nothing's coming to your brain. You have this bad experience. Literally, what happens right thereafter? And how do you make a left turn into violin?
Well, I had become interested in them, and I started to buy a few and sell a few, and it really interested me how someone could tell when and where and maybe even by whom a violin was made by looking at it. So when I decided that I had to stop performing, I decided to go to violin making school. Not because I wanted to make violins, but because I wanted to understand them enough to learn to identify them. And I did that after a terrible depression that Nancy
barely lived through my wife. It was very rough on her, but because I didn't know what I was doing.
Okay, but viole in making school took years. So is this the only thing you were doing for those years?
For three years, I would do an occasional gig on on on on weekends. And you know, I discovered something very interesting which is true not only for me, but for most people who work at a craft like violin making, which is the longer and farther away you are from your bench, h the harder it is to pick up your tools again. So so these these these forays, which gave us food money took a price on my schoolwork.
How long would you have to be away from your school work for it to have a negative effect.
It wasn't. It didn't matter how long. It mattered at least as much as how far away in distance I went. You know, I'd go for Saturday and Sunday usually, but it might be a Friday night and a Saturday, or a Friday night and a Saturday and a Sunday. But you know, except when the school wasn't in session. But it's kind of interesting the toll it took.
Okay, let's say I wanted to go to violin school. Is it like a regular school? I apply? It starts in September, it runs through June. I mean, they have classes. What's it like?
It's kind of like that you apply and they start in September. My teacher was a brilliant violin maker named Cheu Ho Lee who had graduated from the State School in Germany, which is a very famous school. I think it's in minten Valve, Germany and or near mintvauld And he he would call everyone around and show them the next thing he wanted them to do, and then you would go and try and do it. But there are some interesting aspects to that. I arrived late. I had some gigs to tie up and so I had to
try and catch up, but that was very hard. The first job I was given was to make linings for the inside of the violin, to enlarge the area where the glue would hold the top and the back on. There were small strips that would go around. So the first thing you have to do is plane them to the right thickness. Well, I had a plane, but that's not it. In order to plane them to a given thickness, you had to sharpen the plane, and that's not easy. And to sharpen the plane first you had to grind it.
And then once you had ground it and sharpened the thing enough and getting a real sharp point is really not easy, then you have to you're not ready yet, you have to flatten the soul of the plane. So there was a lot of that in violin making school. In order to take the next step forward, you frequently had to take a few backwards. So anyhow, you know, I learned.
Okay, so you were in school. How many other people were in class with you? And their goal must have really been making a living, you know, making violins. Some of them wanted to make violince and some of them just wanted to repair violins. There must have been approximately twenty five other students in the classroom, and some were really good and some were not. I was amongst the not. Okay, So you graduate, and where along the line do you decide that you want to open up your own violin shop.
When I moved from Chicago to Wilmington, it just seemed like that was the thing I should do. I don't remember deciding it, neither does Nancy. It just was the next thing is opening the shop.
Why do you move to Wilmington?
We couldn't handle another Chicago winter, Okay?
And at what point in this story do you have a child?
Well? I have two children, and they both came when I was living in Chicago.
So you had the pressure of taking care of the children while you're working on the weekends, while you're making violins. And the violin shop, did you buy it or did you start from scratch?
We really started from scratch. We made an arrangement with the city to buy a building, and they didn't give me any money, which some of the people in the town thought they had, which I found out later is usually part of these deals, but it wasn't part of mine. And the repairs cost more than I ever thought I would use to buy a house. But I owned the whole building and opened the shop on the ground floor street level, and it lived upstairs, lived upstairs, Mom and pop.
Okay, so how do you make a business out of a violin store?
Well, you know, that's that's what the city asked me. What's your business plan? I said, to sell violins, and they were very unhappy with that, you know, they told me all the things that one has to do, and I said, I cannot tell you how many violins I will sell in any months. I have no idea, nor do I know for how much they will be sold for, because violins are not all the same price. As a matter of fact, everyone is different.
You know.
It's a strange little business, but we got through it.
Okay, So you open your store. What do you do for inventory?
I bought things from the Chinese importers for the for the trade that we had to begin. In the beginning. People were only interested in getting something cheaply. And the Chinese violin factories are the best factories that have ever existed on the face of the earth. They make unbelievable instruments at a very low price. So that was satisfying to learn about that, and I bought things, and I bought things that were too expensive for our current clientele.
But I figured if I didn't buy them, I would never sell them. And it's much nicer to have beautiful things around. So I would go to auctions. I had been doing that already for years. When I lived in Chicago. I actually made most of my living as a wholesaler of violins. Not that I sold seven at once, I sold one at a time, of different violins. I would go to Europe and I would buy in Europe and bring things back and sell them. And on the way
i'd stop at the auctions. I might sell some at the auctions and buy some at the auctions, and I've learned an awful lot from doing that. I'd go to first to Paris, and sometimes to Belgium, sometimes to Germany, and then to London, where the auctions were, and then and then home. And you know, I didn't recall this when you were asking me about how I performed. You know,
I didn't perform that much. Most of my living was from from buying and selling violins, and the the the violin shops in Chicago appreciated that I would buy from one shop and sell to another, because not everyone likes the same thing, and the head of one shop couldn't spare his time literally to go out and look over somebody else's inventory. So I would come to their shop with something that I found that I thought was good, and I you know, I learned.
Okay, So when you have your shop in Delaware, how much inventory do you have? At one time?
I never counted it, I.
Mean hundreds, forty.
I might have as little as forty really good fiddles and maybe maybe fifty Chinese fiddles, and then the inventory expanded with the nice fiddles. It didn't expand with the Chinese fiddles until I turned the shop over to the guys that worked in it with me. I don't run the shop any longer.
So what would be the upper price range of some of the violins you.
Sold that I actually sold or that I still have that are worth a lot.
Of money that you actually sold?
Well, I sold one for thirty five thousand.
Okay, So at this point you don't own the shop anymore? Correct?
Right?
When did you stop owning the shop?
The first of the of this year?
Oh so just very recently.
Yeah, that's right. I didn't sell it. I turned it over to the guys.
Okay.
They still have a lot of my instruments that they are selling.
Okay. So how much of your business and your particular work went into repair?
None? None of my work. The guys in the back room, they made their living mostly from repairs.
And what's the retail on a Chinese violin.
It depends on the quality. It usually starts around one thousand dollars.
Okay. So the kids who were playing violins in school, where they getting their violins?
I don't know where some of them got there. There were some eight hundred dollars fiddles, the seven hundred, and then some of the fractional violins were cheaper. I didn't like handling the very cheapest things because then you have to repair them. And repairing cheapest things is not like repairing a really fine instrument. It's a trial. And I didn't want to load that on the guys. I could have started a rental business, and I, you know, that's
really meatball repair, I think. But strangely enough, the guys are doing that now for my shop from what used to be my shop.
So what makes a strata varias so good.
Stratavari's instruments his violins, because he made more than violins. He made also bows cello's viola's, guitars, and probably some other instruments. But his violins stood out from others because in a large concert hall, which were just beginning to be used when in Stratavari's day, it could be heard at the back of the of the hall without sounding loud, right in front of it. That's what made them desirable
and placed them above most other instruments. There's some interesting things about the competition between modern violins and the old masters. Every time that there's a competition blindfold competition, the modern violin makers win. And I used to think, Okay, it depends on how they're set up and who's playing them and all that. But there was one recently that really impressed me where the owners of some fine violins even played their own violins, but they were blindfolded and they
might not recognize them as their own. They all picked the modern ones, and it was not a question of set up or anything like that, because they were set up for these players or for one of these players.
And so if you were going to get one of these modern violins, what's the retail price on that?
There's a wide margin. I mean, if you buy a violin that was made in a violin making school, it's going to cost maybe two thousand dollars. If you buy it from Sam Zigmatovitch in Brooklyn, one of his violins, it's going to cost you six figures. And they're wonderful violins, They're worth it.
So he makes them himself.
He makes them himself in Brooklyn.
How many violins can he make in a year?
I don't really know. You know, people run at different speeds, and it was never something that interested me to find out.
Okay, so you're running the violin shop for two decades, to what degree are you personally playing at that you'd lay all your instruments down.
When I started the shop, I hadn't picked up a guitar in quite a while, and my playing had completely collapsed, and I decided I wanted to improve it. So I went to some jam sessions. And I originally went to a jam session with people whose skill was not beyond me, you know, people who are also trying to build their chops from pretty you know, not from an advanced place. And then I, after a year or so I was
able to go to better jams. And I had been asked by the mayor of Wilmington to help bring back live music. And he told me the street that I lived on and my shop is on used to have live music all up and down it. Well, I'm not a club owner or a book or any of that. I figured the only thing I could do is start some jam sessions right on Market Street. And I did, and some really fine musicians would hear about them and come. So I started playing with some really great musicians again,
and I started enjoying it again. So I decided to go back on the road.
So when you decided, you basically say a twenty two year sabbatical. So that's the beginning of this century. How much you're working in the violin shop and how much you're working on your own career.
It was mostly in the violin shop my own career. The violin shop takes place during the day and my career takes place at night. So I was able to do both at once, and sometimes I'd have to travel for a few gigs and the guys could keep the shop going. Wasn't a problem. You see, My function in that shop was to write appraisals and to buy and sell, to know what is what, what's real, what's a forgery? And I was sometimes very very good and sometimes very very bad at it. But that's kind of the way
it goes. Well.
At some point when you get back in your career, you're making albums, you know you're from the next year, you're back into it. Was it really that you were making and buying and selling violins and appraising violins and this was more of a hobby or was it chewing up more of your time?
I think I think I was in the violin shop until I wasn't.
Okay, so tell me more about these. Uh So you're at the Beacon and it's a series of shows.
No, it's one show.
One show, That's what I thought, Okay, my life? Is that? And is that the final show? Or is there a tour thereafter?
There is no tour planned thereafter. I understand that one should never say never, so I'm not saying never, But as it looks now, that's probably the last one I'll do.
Oh okay, And what are your emotions about it.
I'm gonna miss the guys, and I might come to miss performing, but I don't know, you know, those twenty two years that hiatus I took, I never yearned to get back on stage, So you know I can give things up better than most people. I don't think I'm going to have a problem.
Okay, So you take a very large band on stage, which the generation of that.
I used to perform with a band just a little smaller than what I'm going to have on stage. I used to perform with a quintet plus two horns, and these days I've been mostly performing with a quintet, but occasionally I do big band gigs where I hire not two but three horns, three singers. And for this gig, we're going to have a keyboard player who recorded our last record with us. But I mean before that, he'd
show up at gigs and we wouldn't rehearse. He knew all the tunes, he knew him cold, and he's a member of the band. His name is Dan Walker, and he's a brilliant player. Right now, he is out with Ann Wilson of Heart, and he asked her for the night off because he's on tour with her, and she very graciously gave him the night off so to play with her.
If you're playing with this many players, are you making money or you're losing money? Generally speaking?
This is a one off this gig.
I understand, and this is the final gig. But before this you're taking out multiple players, maybe not ten but seven.
The numbers work with seven was in the seventies.
Okay, So in the gigs prior to this one, how many people would go out?
Five including myself and six including the road manager, the tour manager.
And with five people, you're making money?
I made enough?
How many? How big were these gigs? How many? What was the size of the halls you were playing?
I played halls of different sizes in different cities. You know, if I'm going to play in San Francisco, I'm going to play a large room, or New York or New Jersey. But in some parts of the country, I have to settle for a smaller room.
And you're gonna have special guests at this final show.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm very excited about that.
And can you reveal who those are?
I can reveal. One of the two is Jeff Tweety.
And do you know Jeff Tweety? How does he end up being on the show.
It's kind of a funny story. He was one of the first people I thought of. I did some years ago a festival, an indoor festival in Chicago, and I was coming off the stage to my dressing room and Jeff Tweety was doing the same. He was a little bit ahead of me, and I called out ahead and I said Jeff, and he turned around. I said we should play together sometime, and he said yeah, and that
was the end of it. So I was recently on a tour ship, on a cruise ship called Cayamo, and I was backstage having just come off, being about to go on again, and Jeff came off the stage. When he got to where I was, he pointed at me. He said, Bromberg. I said yeah. He said, I got to tell you. When you called to me backstage in Chicago, I was astounded that you knew who I was. I said, I was convinced you you didn't have any idea who
I was. And so we both laughed about that and we decided, yes, we have to play together.
Okay, so he'll be playing at the final gig. Just backing up over your sixty year time in the music business. Are you the type of person who makes and keeps relationships or are you more like for His Gum bumping into things.
I'm probably more like Forrest Gump, but not completely. As I told you in my business, when you bump into somebody after no matter how many years, you can pick up your last conversation.
Well, I mean, let me put it a different way. People who are not stars are not named performers, which you ultimately became when you signed your deal with Columbia, and they're making a living playing with other people. They're heavy networkers, most of them, and they have a group of people they're calling them all the time because they're looking to work. Was that your experience before you had your record deal?
Well, there were there were a couple of instances like that, but it wasn't common. You know. There there was h uh huh a coffeehouse in uh uh in Michigan uh called the Arc and and the people who ran that would call me themselves, and you know, I'd speak to them and I'd go do it. But after after a certain amount of time, I had managers and agents.
And they I'm talking about actually, yeah, I'm talking about more before that.
Yeah, that's a long time ago. Before that is a very long time ago.
I mean, let's put it this way. You're in Wilmington, Okay, people, Well, people come into the store, so you end up having a socialization there. Let me jump ahead. So you sold the store, You're going to have the final gig. What are you going to do with your time?
Well, first of all, I did not sell the store.
You gave the store away.
I turned it over to the guys.
Yes, and I have.
I don't have it all any longer. But I had the largest collection of good violins made in the United States that there's ever been. At one point it was up to two hundred and sixty three instruments. That's a lot of violins. And now I'm selling them mostly to colleagues, to people who have their own stores. And I'm making sure I have photographs before i let one out of the building because I'm going to do a book. So that's going to take a while.
Okay, So just going back to that story, if you have two hundred and sixty three violins, to what degree were people calling you up from across the country or the world saying, hey, you know I want something. It looks like you got something I got, as opposed to people in Wilmington.
I got calls very frequently. I couldn't say how frequently. It wasn't quite once a week most weeks, but you know, every week or two, i'd get a call from a colleague who wanted to know the value of an American violin he had, And they would seldom put it in those terms, but that's what it boiled down to always, and with my collection, I became the world's expert violence
made in the United States. It's very embarrassing to pat myself on the back like that, but if you ask any violin dealer who knows about American violins, you'll hear my name. So I would also get calls from people who had an American violin that they inherited and they wanted to sell them.
What's the most you ever paid for a violin?
Probably around fifteen thousand dollars?
Okay, So let's assume you buy a violin for fifteen What could you then sell it for?
Well, that's the key. I wouldn't buy it for fifteen if I didn't think I could sell it for a good profit. I cannot remember one specifically that I paid that much for, but I think that's about the tops. If not, then it would be ten or twelve, but it would vary from instrument to instrument. These every one of them is different, and every one of them, even by the same maker, is different. He finished this on a good day. He finished this on a bad day. He had a lot of assistance working on this one.
But this one is all as far as I can see his work. You know, this is a really this is a business of one offs, aside from factory violins, and even those are different one to another.
Okay, so if it's like a ten thousand dollars you pay your goal, it would be one hundred percent markup. What would your goal be? I realized every deal was different. But if you're bothering to buy a violin, how much more would you hope to sell it for?
How much do I like it? That's going to determine whether I buy it or not? And I don't have a rule of well I got a leuble of my money. First of all, with really good violins, the better you get, the lower the proportion percentage of profit it is.
So, you know, was the store ever broken into no? And generally speaking, when people came in to buy an expensive violin, did they know what they were looking for, or did you basically have to tell them you want this, this is the one you want.
I never told people this is the one you want. They have to decide for themselves islans or personal things, and so are the bows, which by the way, can get extremely valuable. The way I would work it is the way most shops, to my knowledge work it. You have to find out, give me an idea of your budget, and I'll show you things within your budget. And I would never show anything more expensive to drag them up, although some shops do that. I'd always find things within or below their stated budget.
So you live it in Wilmington. You ever meet Joe Biden?
Yeah, I met him right in front of my store one afternoon.
What were the circumstances, What was your experience?
Well, at the time, he was the vice president and we shook hands and I told him that was my store, and I don't remember if we said it any more than that. You know, it was just well, hello, and I had a store in his hometown.
But would he was just walking down the street or he's doing a campaign and then.
I think there might have been a parade that day and he was out to see it as my guess, But you know, I really don't know.
Okay, if you had to do it all over again, and I can tell you're the type of guy who feels it had to play out the way it did. Would you have gone to violin making school, would you've opened the shop, taken this hiatus? What would you have done?
Depends who I am. I've been different people at different times in my life, you know what I mean? Always absolutely yeah, So it depends who I am when I'm asked to make that decision.
And what are your kids up to?
Well? My daughter lives in Wilmington and she is a very well trained nanny. She she knows all of the concussion protocols and the broken you know, what to do with a child who heards. She's really very skilled at that and at relating to the children. She loves them and that's that's her work. My son is a real anomaly. My son lives in Paris with his wife and two children, and he is the only person I know who gets
paid for poetry, writing poetry. Do you know anybody who gets paid for writing poetry?
No? I don't, Mary Carr. Maybe one who Mary Carr?
Ah? Okay, well, I don't know Mary Carr, but I know Jacob. And but even so, as remarkable as it is, you don't get you don't get paid much for it. He does a lot of translating French to English for museums, and he has worked as for different organizations as the as the organizer of their conventions, so he does a variety of things.
Okay, David, I think we've covered it here, and I want to thank you for taking the time to speak with my audience.
It's been my pleasure and it's nice to talk to an interviewer who's done his research. I'm very happy to have met well.
You know, as I said, I've lived through your whole career from Afar, you know, seeing you in the pages of as I say, when you stop to make violins, that's something you know that was out of deviated from the norm and was very interesting to me. And I'm glad we got the call. In any event, until next time, This is Bob left. Six h