Journalism
As a journalist, I have written monthly articles for the New Orleans-based music and culture magazine Beat Street.I have also contributed to The Times-Picayune, Offbeat, The Austin Chronicle, Option, the official program of the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, 1998 and 1999, and other publications. The following article appeared in Offbeat in March of 1999.
Dave Easley
With his black hat and full, black beard, he resembles a character from a spaghetti western—except for the glasses. Mysterious looking enough to start, he is seated on stage, at what to many people is an equally mysterious instrument—the pedal steel guitar. No, the sound you hear isn’t the wind about to blow a tumbleweed through the club, it is Dave Easley sliding a heavy steel bar along his strings—feet riding pedals for volume and pitch bending. The sounds he makes range from a whisper to a roar, from the ethereal to the gut bucket.
Offstage, the mystery melts away, and Easley becomes an eager and articulate spokesman for his unusual instrument, his unique style of playing, and a career on the rise.
In the past year, he has recorded and toured with artists as diverse as hoodoo blues man Coco Robicheaux, and acclaimed jazz drummer Brian Blade. Other live gigs, and recording projects, in addition to Robicheaux and Blade’s groups, have included such jazz ground breakers as 3 now 4, with bassist James Singleton and trumpeter Charlie Miller, psychedelic rockers Nine Mile Skid, and his own group, Heartifacts. This month, Dave Easley and Heartifacts are releasing a self-produced CD, Boatmen Waiting On The Wind. A CD release party will be held Saturday, March 27th at Margaritaville.
Though his first instrument was the six-stringed guitar, Easley says he was always attracted to the pedal steel, and one day he saw one in a store and just bought it. For a period of ten or fifteen years, he played the steel exclusively, because a friend borrowed a couple of his guitars and never returned them. "It was really the best thing for my steel playing," he says. "I took my steel to all the gigs, and played guitar parts on it, so it forced me to play the steel in a different way. I was influenced by six-string guitar players and horn players."
Easley’s first regular gig was with a bluegrass band, in which he also played the banjo. But he was always interested in playing a lot of different music styles, rather than the typical country and honky-tonk music usually associated with the instrument. "Psychedelic rock and sixties jazz were a couple of my favorite things to listen to as a kid, and that’s what really stays with you. I liked psychedelic music because it was really an amalgamation of different things—whatever was called for at the time--and it had a lot of life to it."
"During the early eighties was when I really formulated my style, playing a lot of bebop and standards." Although he was living in the small town of Champagne, Illinois, there were a lot of jazz musicians to play with--students at the university, and professional musicians from Chicago who had moved there to try and stay clear of heroin.
Asked why more people don’t play jazz on the pedal steel, Easley believes it is more economics and public expectations than anything about the instrument itself. "A lot of my friends moved to Nashville," he says. "They said, ‘you’re a steel player, that’s where the gigs are,’ but I never wanted to do it. Even the greatest steel players are really typecast. I never let economics rule my life, but I do need to eat, too. I’ve played a lot of country gigs, and I didn’t mind it, but it was something I really learned on the gig—I never practiced it. Sometimes I’d surprise myself that I actually did know those licks."
In 1979, Easley came to the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, where he heard Earl Turbinton, with James Singleton on bass, for the first time, along with many other great musicians. Easley was particularly inspired by Turbinton—his tone and the emotion in his playing. Perhaps then the seed was sown for Easley’s move, in 1988, to Louisiana. He was tired of cold weather, and looking for greener pastures musically. Since he had a girlfriend in Hammond, he settled there.
Dave Easley’s fruitful collaboration with James Singleton began by chance, with a meeting at Pie In The Sky Pizza, on Magazine St. Singleton invited Easley, by now a hard-core fan, to a performance, and Easley declined, saying he had a gig of his own that night. Finding out that he played steel guitar, Singleton told him he had written a song for the instrument, and that they should get together. The contact with Brian Blade was made by another chance meeting, at Singleton’s home.
The release of Boatmen Waiting On The Wind marks another turn in Easley’s career—his recording debut as a singer/songwriter. The CD features thirteen Easley compositions, one of them instrumental, the rest sung in a gently haunting vocal style. His acoustic and electric six string guitar work is prominent on the recording, as well as the pedal steel. A number of notable local musicians are featured: Theresa Anderson and Irene Sage add vocal harmonies, Nancy Buchan performs on violin, James Singleton plays bass on several cuts, and the percussion of Michael Skinkus is evident throughout most of the project.
Dave Easley’s lyrics are of interest, too. Full of allusions to literature, the Bible and classical mythology, they can be dense and difficult at times, but reflect a highly personal view of the metaphysical and natural worlds. Many songs have an environmental or social theme, but make their points through allegory, and avoid sounding "preachy." Other lyrics consist of images intended to evoke feelings, rather than tell a linear story. Besides being a big Bob Dylan fan, Easley admits his lyrics may be influenced by two of his favorite poets, Dylan Thomas and William Butler Yeats.
Easley’s rise to prominence now, near the turn of the millennium, is perhaps aided by an openness, and a willingness to experiment and cross boundaries in serious improvisatory music. This is in sharp contrast to the neo-bop classicism of the eighties, personified by artists like Wynton Marsalis. While that movement did much to revive interest and set standards in jazz, it was essentially conservative. Now, at least in the teeming swamp below commercial pop radar, the musical zeitgeist encourages adventurous cross breeding. Since David Easley has made a habit of gigging across genres his whole career, and doing so brilliantly, his time is at hand.