In Fine
Fiddle In the '70s, David Bromberg Had the World for a
Song, Now He Has a Town on a
String. By Paul Schwartzman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, April 6, 2006
Wilmington,
Del.-Past the discount drugstore, the wig shop and the fried
chicken
joint, the scene inside the hole-in-the-wall coffeehouse
appears
like a mirage. Step into the back room, beyond the crabby
cook
flipping burgers, and the place is packed with guitarists,
fiddlers,
stand-up bassists, mandolin and banjo players.
On a Tuesday night, they're what passes for life on this
dead
stretch of downtown.
A bald biologist and his mop-topped teenager are
jamming,
along
with a gray-haired man in a leather cowboy hat and a woman
with
glasses perched on her nose. An unshaven social worker
launches
his
best eyes-shut approximation of Willie Nelson.
"Well it's a good thing that I'm not a star , you don't
know
how
lucky you are. "
He finishes and collects an approving nod from the bear
of a
white-whiskered man who is responsible for this ungainly
weekly
ritual, the one who has lived a life the rest can only
imagine.
"You're on this record, I believe," the social worker
says.
"That's right," David Bromberg answers softly, smiling,
guitar on
his knee.
He doesn't say much more, and he doesn't need to.
Everyone in
the joint knows he played with Bob Dylan and Chubby Checker
and
Ringo Starr and the Grateful Dead and countless others. And
they
know he led his own big band on a never-ending tour of
colleges
in
the 1970s, whipping up a blistering mix of blues and
bluegrass
and
everything in between.
Bromberg was never stretch-limousine famous. But among
musicians
and a devout following, he was a guitar god. Now he's
something
of
an attraction-in-residence in this city many know only as a
passing
blur from the highway.
He didn't come here to perform. He largely retreated
from
that
career years ago to pursue another obsession -- buying and
selling
violins.
But a funny thing happened on the way to obscurity. He
fell
into
a world of small-town, no-name musicians, like the
assistant
principal who makes his harmonica sound like a howling
freight
train, and the stonemason whose piercing riffs on electric
guitar
make him shout "Yeah, George!"
And somehow, where he least expected to find it,
Bromberg
rediscovered his passion for playing guitar.
How David Bromberg found his way to Wilmington is the
story
of a
city desperate to gin up a nightlife and lure people to a
downtown
that largely dies at 5 p.m. Yet it's also about a traveling
minstrel's three-decade metamorphosis, in which he yanked
down
the
curtain on a celebrated act and scripted a new encore.
Tomorrow Bromberg will be at the Library of Congress to
speak on
the historic significance of that ever-under-appreciated
musical
instrument, the American-made violin. He owns nearly 250,
some
dating back more than 100 years. It is the largest such
collection,
and they are displayed in cabinets from one end of his
loftlike
living room to the other.
"My wife calls it the wallpaper," he says.
At 60, Bromberg retains the playful glint that infused
his
music. He loves showing off his museum-like shop, David
Bromberg
Fine Violins, including the metal-lined, fire-resistant
vault
where
he stores more than $1 million in string instruments.
Looking for a $100,000 antique French bow? He's got
two,
along
with 17th- and 18th-century Italian-made violins, and the
80-
year-
old Philadelphia-made cello that just arrived from
Michigan,
care of
UPS. The owner wants five figures for it.
"Great varnish!" Bromberg gushes as he rips open the
package.
He's in the rear workshop, which he shares with two
craftsmen who
make and repair violins, cellos and bows.
If asked, he's happy to delve into the old days: how,
as a
teenager, he asked the Rev. Gary Davis, the legendary blind
bluesman, to give him guitar lessons in exchange for
leading him
around New York; how he traveled in 1969 to Woodstock to
perform
at
the historic concert, and wound up in a tent jamming for
hours
with
the Dead's Jerry Garcia; how he went to a Thanksgiving
dinner in
Jersey and ended up writing a song with fellow guest George
Harrison
before the turkey was served ("The Holdup").
Just don't press Bromberg on dates or places or any
other
minutiae that might lend chronological order to his life.
"I'm sorry," he says, shrugging. "Too many drugs."
There were more than a few smoke-filled nights in those
years
when he and his band zigzagged the country, a traveling
jukebox
spitting out Chicago blues, Texas waltzes, country,
Dixieland,
rock
and folk. Then there were his own tunes, often humorous
meditations
on carnival dancers, gamblers, cruel lovers, betrayal and
revenge.
Music critics liked to describe his appearance: gangly
and
whiskered, with long, thick hair and wire-rimmed glasses.
Some
flayed his often nasal, tremulous, straight-from-New York
vocal
style. "Wretched" was the way one put it.
But no one questioned Bromberg's mastery as a musician.
He
could
play guitar, fiddle, mandolin and dobro. Unlike folkies
penning
sensitive odes to love, Bromberg could perform virtually
any
genre
of traditional American music. "It made him a highly
valuable
sideman, someone who was instant authenticity," says
Anthony
DeCurtis, a Rolling Stone contributing editor. "What set
him
apart
was his skill."
At the same time, DeCurtis says, Bromberg "didn't seem
to
need
the success all that much. He was a player, he enjoyed it.
But I
don't think he needed to be a big star."
Peter Ecklund, who played horns in his band, says
Bromberg
has
always had a pronounced sense of mission, whether choosing
an
eclectic set list or deciding to sell violins: "He always
knows
what's right for him."
On a quiet Wednesday, Bromberg is in his office, a few
feet
away
from that vault with all the violins. He's dressed in a
jacket
and
tie because, as he says, no one spending thousands on a
violin
wants
to buy from a slob.
The conversation turns to his childhood in the New York
suburbs.
While most boys were following Mickey Mantle, he delved
into the
world of magic, riding the train into Manhattan to hang out
at a
Midtown cafeteria where a gaggle of adult magicians tested
their
tricks on each other.
At 13, he caught the measles and spent two weeks on his
back
with nothing to do but play his brother's nylon-string
acoustic
guitar.
It was love at first noodle.
The itch stayed with him at Columbia University, where
he
majored in musicology. His parents did not approve. They
expected
him to become a lawyer, a doctor -- anything but a
musician.
His family was no stranger to accomplishment. A
grandmother
was
a star of the Yiddish theater. His grandfather Baruch
Charney
Vladeck was a union organizer elected to the New York City
Board
of
Aldermen. At his funeral, tens of thousands lined the
streets,
and
the governor spoke.
Mention his father, and Bromberg's otherwise gentle
gaze
hardens. Norbert Bromberg, a psychiatrist who emigrated
from
Vienna,
showed his son neither affection nor interest. Bromberg,
the
second
of three children, describes his late father as cruel.
"Whether
he
felt real love or not, I don't know," he says by phone a
few days
later. "He didn't express it, and he didn't show it."
He became a performer, he says, "so I could enjoy
someone
saying
something nice to me. . . . I craved it."
During his sophomore year at Columbia, he suffered an
emotional
breakdown, took a leave and never returned. He taught
guitar and
hung out at coffeehouses in Greenwich Village, meeting
future
stars
like Richie Havens and Jerry Jeff Walker, with whom he
toured
for a
couple of years. (Jerry Jeff wrote a song called "David and Me", I presume it is Bromberg he is singing about. - Bob)
Then one day he heard a message on his answering
machine (he
says he was an early owner of the device), and the voice
sounded
distinctly like Bob Dylan, saying he'd be in touch.
"I thought it was someone playing a joke," Bromberg
says.
It wasn't. In 1970, Dylan hired him as a session
guitarist
on "Self Portrait" and "New Morning." A year later, Dylan
played
harmonica on a track on Bromberg's debut record.
By the late 1970s, Bromberg had cut more than half a
dozen
albums and kept up a nonstop tour schedule. Soon he tired
of the
grind. At 35, he found himself sinking into a deep
depression. "I
wasn't practicing, I wasn't writing, I wasn't playing," he
says. "As
far as I could see, I wasn't a musician anymore."
So he went back to school -- to learn how to make
violins, a
decision he compares to "jumping off a diving board with a
blindfold
on." He reunited with his band here and there, but he
focused on
studying violins, and buying and selling them wholesale in
Chicago,
where he lived for more than two decades with his wife,
Nancy
Josephson, and their two kids.
Five years ago, after digging out from yet another
snowfall,
the
family planned a return to the East Coast, but New York was
too
expensive so they ended up in Wilmington. It turned out
Bromberg's
road manager, Stephen Bailey, a close friend, lived there.
At the same time, Wilmington officials trying to revive
downtown
learned that Bromberg was interested in relocating, and
offered
the
couple a dilapidated, vacant brick building across from a
Caribbean
eatery and the Delaware College of Art and Design. All
Bromberg
and
his wife had to do was agree to stay there for four years,
and
volunteer some of their spare time playing music and
promoting
the
arts.
Another small matter: They had to make the four-story
building
habitable, a renovation that cost them more than $600,000.
Bromberg
acknowledges that he might have gotten more for his money
elsewhere
("Maybe it was a stupid move, what do I know? I'm not an
expert
in
real estate"), but he wanted to be downtown, where there's
daytime
foot traffic.
When the deal was signed, the mayor celebrated with a
press
release announcing the arrival of a "World Famous
Rock/Musician
and
Classical String Collector."
Although artists haven't quite rushed to relocate
downtown
since
the couple arrived, William Montgomery, chief of staff to
Mayor
James Baker, says developers have shown renewed interest in
the
area
in recent years and that Bromberg has helped generate buzz.
At
the
very least, he added, the weekly jam sessions draw crowds
that
otherwise wouldn't have any reason to go downtown. "It adds
to
the
whole panache," he said.
In a city known for button-down bankers, lawyers and du
Ponts,
Bromberg and Josephson don't exactly blend in. She's an
artist
studying to become a voodoo priestess, and dyes her short
hair a
vibrant purple. A sequined miniature cow, two alligators
and
roses
adorn the hood of their blue Pontiac minivan. On the roof
is a
beaded egg resting on a pair of duck's legs.
"A work in progress," she says of her art car. "As we
all
are."
They're busy. When Bromberg isn't running his shop --
he
answers
the door and the phone -- he travels to auctions and his
own
gigs,
which have picked up in frequency in recent years.
Their commitment to stay in the building for four years
ended
last month, Bromberg says, but they have no interest in
moving. "I
love my life here," he says.
A main reason is the twice-a-week jams he organized --
bluegrass
on Tuesdays, blues on Thursdays. At first he expected that
he
would "endure" the jams, and sometimes, when a player
stumbles
through a mediocre version of a tune he recorded long ago,
he
wonders how he ended up there.
Mostly, though, there's more than enough talent to keep
him
interested. His favorite is John Lippincott, a teenager who
walked
in one night with an electric guitar. Bromberg calls him
the best
electric blues player he's ever played with. He also met a
mother-
daughter singing team. Their voices were so stirring that
Bromberg
and his wife recruited them to form Angel Band, which
occasionally
opens for his own group.
The scene takes him back to the old days in New York,
when
he'd
spend hours playing with friends in his apartment. "It has
given
me
back my chops," he says.
When Bromberg walks into Cafe 4W5, where the jams were
held
for
three years before moving this month to a nearby hotel,
friends
and
strangers alike greet him by his first name. On bluegrass
night,
they know he'll start in the back, then wander up front
where
more
experienced musicians play.
They also know that when 10 p.m. arrives, he will
announce
that
he has to leave and walk the dog. No one complains. They're
just
happy he's around.
"Before he was here, there was nothing," says Joe
Allen, 55,
a
produce man at a supermarket who writes poetry. "It's
turned the
whole scene around. It gives a place for old hippies to
home in
on."
Not just hippies. The bassist is all of 12 years old.
And the
kid
playing mandolin is 13.
When it's Bromberg's turn to lead, his right eye closes
slightly, lips curling as his long fingers prowl the fret
board. "You don't know how happy I am to see you," he tells
the
group when the tune is over.
After two hours of playing, he asks for a slice of
strawberry
cream pie. Then the clock strikes 10, and he disappears out
the
door.
