Biography

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Contact Dave Insley
email lonesome@daveinsley.com
website www.daveinsley.com
phone 480-250-7805

Connect to entire Dave Insley Catalog here:
Dave Insley Music Page

Dave Insley's Careless Smokers perform every Saturday at the White Horse Saloon in Austin Texas, from 8 til 10pm

About Just The Way That I Am:
Dave Insley's effortlessly excellent new album showcases sharp songwriting with a honky tonk beat. This highly anticipated collection features prominently in the Austin-based artist's weekly Saturday night residency at The White Horse

Dave Insley crafts story songs with equal measures heart (“Drinkin' Wine and Staring at the Phone”) and home (“I Don't Know How This Story Ends”). Evidence: Just the Way That I Am. The Austin-based songwriter's new collection spotlights a rapidly rising troubadour in peak form (“Win-Win Situation for Losers,” featuring stunning vocals by Americana sweetheart Kelly Willis). A who's who from Central Texas including Willis, Asleep at the Wheel's Elizabeth McQueen and Dale Watson as well as celebrated guitarists Redd Volkaert (Merle Haggard) and Rick Shea doubling down.

Just the Way That I Am simply spotlights straightforward roadhouse country music in its finest fashion. Imagine Ernest Tubb holding court at an East Austin beer joint and you'll frame the picture well. “I'm super grateful to have a spanking new album after keeping my fans waiting for nearly a decade since West Texas Wine,” Insley says. “I hope folks enjoy listening to it as much as I enjoyed making it.”

Insley's vibrant vignettes and endlessly compelling smoky baritone blueprint the journey while stellar players steer the course. The final result has already turned heads. “God knows Austin has its share of fine musicians,” No Depression recently said in a record review. “Even in that crowd, though, Insley ranks as a standout performer.” “Insley has a great voice,” echoes 3rd Coast Music. “His perfectly understated, never-in-your-face, conversational style makes him so effortlessly engaging.”

Better still: Insley's artistic maturity and clarity shine through with an easy cadence and typically sharp performance. You'll witness on other high watermarks like “Arizona Territory, 1904,” an original narrtaive echoing Marty Robbins, and “We’re All Here Together Because of You,” a tender, upbeat homage to Insley's wife and their family. Each highlights the juxtaposition balancing his modern voice and old-fashion approach, a combination that has earned the songwriter a singular position in Americana's broad field. Accordingly, his thinking man's country grows more satisfying each spin.

Folks at Austin's hugely popular White Horse certainly understand. Insley's dedicated fans have returned every Saturday night for the past four years for more. “We've been playing our gig at The White Horse since June of 2013, and I expect to continue until the walls crumble,” Insley says. “We've found a great audience, and the crowds keep coming. It's literally the best gig I've ever had in my life!”

About Dave Insley:
Insley spent his childhood near the tiny farm town of Chapman, Kansas, until Dave's family relocated to Arizona, when he was twelve.

During his high school and college years, Insley played in country and rock bands, and in 1983 his cowpunk group Chaingang debuted in Tempe, Arizona. Later, he moved to Flagstaff and ran a tongue-in-cheek folk-rock outfit called Politics or Pontiacs.

Insley’s next project was the Nitpickers, a Tempe-based bluegrass band, followed by the Trophy Husbands, who released two country records and toured the US. Insley released his solo debut, Call Me Lonesome in 2005, and was named by the Arizona Republic newspaper as "Arizona’s Best Songwriter." The CD made Third Coast Music's Top 10 Debuts of 2005.

Insley relocated to Austin a decade ago and released Here With You Tonight, debuting at Number One on the FAR chart and garnering praise from former Downbeat editor and Village Voice contributor Nat Hentoff, who wrote that Insley “immediately held my attention not by showboating, but through naturally flowing rhythms, and stories of everyday life and loss, told in a warm, unhurried and sometimes wry voice of experience.” In 2008, Insley released his grittiest album, West Texas Wine, which Good Sound called “Zen Country,” crediting Insley with “leaving melodramatic self-indulgence out of the picture.”

In the eight years since West Texas Wine Insley has done a lot of livin,' and survived to tell his tale; Just The Way That I Am is a chronicle of that journey, told with authority and maturity, but not without whimsy and humor.

Dave has 4 children and still lives in Austin. He performs every Saturday night, from 8 til 10pm, at the White Horse Saloon.