Dave Mason swings into The Plaza Live
Dave Mason is no stranger to the road. “I’ve been touring since I was 18,” said the songwriter. “Traveling is just part of the whole thing. But I like playing.”
The English guitarist’s latest tour, Alone Together Again, incorporates all the songs from “Alone Together,” his 1970 debut solo album. “I’ve played these songs for years, but I’ve never played all of them,” he said. The show pulls into Orlando’s Plaza Live, 425 N. Bumby Ave., on Thursday. (Show starts at 8 p.m. Tickets are $39-$65, available at plazaliveorlando.org.)
Mason, 71, first rose to prominence with the band Traffic in 1967. Landing at the time of the British blues explosion, the band included other luminaries Jim Capaldi on drums and keyboardist Steve Winwood. The band toured with The Grateful Dead and Eric Clapton’s supergroup Blind Faith in the late-’60s. Traffic was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2004.
Mason left his band and recorded with a number of other high-profile musicians, such as George Harrison, Cass Elliott and Jimi Hendrix. Mason plays the acoustic guitar on Hendrix’s famous cover of “All Along the Watchtower.”
The 1977 pop folk ballad “We Just Disagree” was Mason’s biggest hit. “I’ve always been about writing a song,” he said. “I have a pop sensibility. I always have. I try to write timeless songs.”
Despite Mason’s proximity to such major performers and a tour schedule that regularly sees him perform more than 100 shows in a year, his own exposure has been limited. He sees that as an issue with knowing where to put him. “The problems for me in the media and the music business is that there’s no label to put on me,” he said. “I’m not blues, I’m not rock, I’m not ballad, I’m all that. I use it all.”
Similarly, Mason finds it hard to pin himself down as a fan as well as a player. “I’m just into good music,” he said. “I don’t care whether it’s jazz, blues, gospel, country. If it’s good, it’s good.”
As a working musician, Mason is not a fan of online music sources. “I don’t like the fact that people steal out stuff,” he said. “The Internet has destroyed intellectual property. Anything you can turn into zeroes and ones. Everybody seems to think it’s OK.”
His audience has gotten older over the years, but Mason says he still gets young people at his shows occasionally. “Most of the time, if I get young people in there, they’re like, ‘Oh, wow,’ ” he said. “They’re blown away.”
But for crowds young or old, Mason continues to keep getting out on stage. “I’m just out here, doing what I do.”