The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
Well now, this Delaware violin maker sure can play
HARTFORD >> If there’s a better, more consistently captivating and engaging roots music performer out there who has been doing it for longer than David Bromberg, you’d best go see them every chance you get.
In the meantime, Bromberg is back at Infinity Hall on Thursday night – this time, for a little twist, at the new Hartford Infinity Hall, which is closer to Greater New Haven and easier to get to than the original Infinity Hall up in Norfolk.
For a big twist, he’s got Larry Campbell, formerly of Bob Dylan’s band (who has also recorded with and produced Levon Helm and recorded with B.B. King, Willie Nelson, Sheryl Crow, Judy Collins and The Black Crows and produced Bromberg’s most recent album, “Only Slightly Mad,”) playing with him.
Showtime is 8 p.m. Eric Lichter, a fine Connecticut musician who also is a respected recording engineer and proprietor of Dirt Floor Recording Studio in Chester, opens. Tickets are $54-$69, available in advance at www. infinityhall.com.
Be it bluegrass, folk, gospel or blues – or some exquisitely eclectic blend – Bromberg has always known how to turn a phrase with feeling, irony and often humor. He also can pick with the best of them – and even knows how to build his instruments as well as play them.
Bromberg, a native of Philadelphia who was raised in Tarrytown, N.Y., and reared musically on the 1960s Greenwich Village folk scene, has pretty much played with everyone in the music world over the years, including Dylan, George Harrison, the Grateful Dead, Link Wray, Willie Nelson, The Eagles, Carly Simon and many of his bluegrass and blues idols.
One of the most intriguing things about him is how he manages to cross genres and do each with such respect and authority, all while sounding just like David Bromberg.
As a child, “I listened to rock ’n’ roll and whatever else was on the radio,” Bromberg says. “I discovered Pete Seeger and The Weavers and, through them, Reverend Gary Davis. I then discovered Big Bill Broonzy, who led me to Muddy Waters and the Chicago blues. This was more or less the same time I discovered Flatt and Scruggs, which led to Bill Monroe and Doc Watson.”
Bromberg’s performance history stretches back to 1966.
In the Village, Bromberg was able to watch and learn from such icons as Davis, one of his idols, first-hand, while also getting the opportunity to work as a backing musician for the likes of Tom Paxton, Jerry Jeff Walker and Rosalie Sorrels, among others.
Through that, he became a first-call, “hired gun” guitarist for recording sessions, playing over the years on hundreds of recordings by artists ranging from Bob Dylan (“New Morning,” “Self Portrait,” “Dylan”) and Link Wray to The Eagles, Ringo Starr, Willie Nelson, and Carly Simon.
His 1971 debut album spawned the FM radio classic “Suffer to Sing the Blues,” “The Holdup,” a songwriting collaboration with Harrison, and other gems. Members of The Grateful Dead, including the late Jerry Garcia, played on two of Bromberg’s four initial Columbia Records releases.
Bromberg took a break from performing for a number of years beginning in 1980, when he disbanded his band and his wife, Nancy Josephson, and he moved from Northern California to Chicago. There, Bromberg attended the Kenneth Warren School of Violin Making, although he later was lured back into performing by friends.
These days, he is both a performer and the proprietor of David Bromberg Fine Violins, a retail store and repair shop for highquality instruments in Wilmington, Del.