Biography

Contact & Booking: David Massengill
(212) 533-6297
[email]davidwmassengill@gmail.com


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"David Massengill took the dull out of dulcimer." ~ Dave Van Ronk

DAVID MASSENGILL - FOUR SONG SAMPLER

Released: 04/28/1992, 10/31/1995, 11/02/2012

"These songs are a sampling from my first two cds Coming Up For Air (1992) and The Return (1995) both produced by Steve Addabbo for Plump Records. Steve has a great track record of working with acoustic acts like Eric Anderson, Suzanne Vega and Shawn Colvin. We had a variety of my song types to present from topical/political to love ballads to childlike ditties to songs that sounded old as the hills. We had wonderful guest artists like Jane Siberry, the Roches, Willie Nile, and Howard Jones pitch in on certain songs. I play mostly a mountain dulcimer and the majority of my gigs are without other players. I've always told stories too so I take pride that the track that brought me to Airplay Direct 's attention was a live radio performance of Rider On An Orphan Train with just me and the dulcimer with stories before and after the song, one poignant and the other funny.

I appreciate Michael Stock the dj from WLRN Radio 91.3 Miami who floated this performance (2012) out to the public. I have several styles of song: story songs, variation on a theme songs, this will definitely offend you songs, I love and adore you songs, songs that say the same thing over and over, mistaken for traditional songs, talking blues songs, and just plain songs.

Lately I've combined fairy and witch stories with songs to make audio books. I'm so lucky to still be writing and singing and drawing at will and having just enough support to get by. Sometimes I'm flying first class. Sometimes I'm rafting the rapids. These three songs are the story ballad type. Some needed a chorus others didn't. I try to listen to the song as I write and let it tell me which way to go. There's no one way. No one rule. The thing that helps me along the most is I love other artists and their wondrous ways. 10 artists have recorded My Name Joe, 5 artists have recorded On The Road To Fairfax County and 6 artists have recorded Rider On An Orphan Train." David Massengill


1. RIDER ON AN ORPHAN TRAIN (In-Studio Performance) (3:56)

Songwriter: David Massengill
Publishing & PRO: David Massengill Music/Warner/Chappell Music, Inc. (ASCAP)

Release Date: November 2, 2012

Produced By: David Massengill

Musicians:
David Massengill: Mountain dulcimer

"Miami folk DJ Michael Stock of WLRN 91.3 recorded this interview and performance in 2012. It contains stories before and after the song.

A fellow from Missouri heard me singing My Name Joe on the radio and wrote me a letter out of the blue. Don McClanahan wondered if I was his long, lost brother. His original name was Massengill same as mine and he was separated from his brother at a young age when they'd been adopted by different families. My heart went out to him and I thought of my own younger brother Mike and how we enjoyed playing football in the back yard and all the adventures exploring the Tennessee knobs and creeks. I wondered what my life would have been like without him. I wrote Don back and wished him luck in finding his brother and we continued to write letters discussing all sorts of subjects but the separation from his brother was ever present in my mind.

I'd recently read about the orphan trains that ran from east to west across the US from 1855-1929. They carried mostly abandoned children from the big cities. A minister came up with the idea to send them out west and offer them up for adoption. They'd stop at various train platforms and farmers and families were there to pick and choose the children who best suited them. They tried to keep brothers and sisters together but it wasn't always possible. Sometimes the children were used for their labor and sometimes they were given entry into loving homes. One day I decided to tell Don's story as an orphan train child separated from his brother. Don never found his brother but I thought I'd give them a reunion in a dream near the end of the song. I was able to sing the song for Don at a show in Missouri and that was a special moment for me. In real life I am the older brother but I thought it best to write in the first person as the younger child and I used his brother's name James in the song. Don was pleased with that touch. Of all my songs this is my favorite." ~ David Massengill

"I woke up this morning with Orphan Train going through my head again. What a magnificent song! I can't imagine how it isn't being taught in every American History class in the country. Never think that you aren't leaving a legacy. You've written many wonderful songs, David, but this one will really leave a mark." ~ Tom Paxton


2. RIDER ON AN ORPHAN TRAIN (Album Track) (3:56)

Songwriter: David Massengill
Publishing & PRO: David Massengill Music/Warner/Chappell Music, Inc. (ASCAP)

Release Date: October 31, 1995

Produced By: Steve Addabbo

Musicians:
David Massengill: Mountain dulcimer
Howard Jones: Hammond Organ
Steve Addabbo: Acoustic Guitar, Autoharp
Michael Bisceglia: Bass

"A fellow from Missouri heard me singing My Name Joe on the radio and wrote me a letter out of the blue. Don McClanahan wondered if I was his long, lost brother. His original name was Massengill same as mine and he was separated from his brother at a young age when they'd been adopted by different families. My heart went out to him and I thought of my own younger brother Mike and how we enjoyed playing football in the back yard and all the adventures exploring the Tennessee knobs and creeks. I wondered what my life would have been like without him. I wrote Don back and wished him luck in finding his brother and we continued to write letters discussing all sorts of subjects but the separation from his brother was ever present in my mind.

I'd recently read about the orphan trains that ran from east to west across the US from 1855-1929. They carried mostly abandoned children from the big cities. A minister came up with the idea to send them out west and offer them up for adoption. They'd stop at various train platforms and farmers and families were there to pick and choose the children who best suited them. They tried to keep brothers and sisters together but it wasn't always possible. Sometimes the children were used for their labor and sometimes they were given entry into loving homes. One day I decided to tell Don's story as an orphan train child separated from his brother. Don never found his brother but I thought I'd give them a reunion in a dream near the end of the song. I was able to sing the song for Don at a show in Missouri and that was a special moment for me. In real life I am the older brother but I thought it best to write in the first person as the younger child and I used his brother's name James in the song. Don was pleased with that touch. Of all my songs this is my favorite." ~ David Massengill

"I woke up this morning with Orphan Train going through my head again. What a magnificent song! I can't imagine how it isn't being taught in every American History class in the country. Never think that you aren't leaving a legacy. You've written many wonderful songs, David, but this one will really leave a mark." ~ Tom Paxton


3. ON THE ROAD TO FAIRFAX COUNTY (4:44)

Songwriter: David Massengill
Publishing & PRO: David Massengill Music/Warner/Chappell Music, Inc. (ASCAP)

Release Date: April 28, 1992

Produced By: Steve Addabbo

Musicians:
David Massengill: Mountain Dulcimer
Steve Addabbo: 12 String Acoustic Guitar
Larry Campball: Guitar, Cittern, Violin
Chris Bishop: Bass

"Joan Baez, The Roches and Dave Bromberg have recorded “On the Road to Fairfax County,” a tale of an 18th century highwayman and his love, a song that has sometimes been mistaken for a traditional ballad.

While experimenting with a reverse Mixolydian dulcimer tuning I chanced on four descending chords as I went down the scale and they sounded ancient. I kept playing them over and over and then wrote an answering ascending melody line. That one sounded old too. Where shall I go now I thought and just for heck of it I went up one note shy of an octave and came down nice and slow and answered it again like it was old as the hills. I kept trying to write the old lyrics to match the old tune I had chanced upon. While awaiting my lyric muse I wrote an alternating melody but only for the first two lines of the four line melody. I decided no chorus and that maybe the alternating melody which went up instead of down would fool people into listening. I tried many stories and late late one night at 5 AM I thought to myself what's the oldest story there is? Then I wrote O once I loved an outlaw he came and stole my heart. Well maybe that's ok let's see how do I answer? O how I count the years (no) days (no) hours since we were torn apart. I looked at the verse and said Aha! I'm a woman! The whole story was right there so I went to bed right then promising myself not to go soft on a happy ending when I continued writing the next day. The hero must die I promised myself. It was a deep and satisfying sleep and I woke up to write the nine concluding and tragic verses in an afternoon." ~ David Massengill

"Someone asked me what the high point was for me at the Newport Folk Festival. Upon five seconds reflection I told him it was listening to David Massengill sing his songs to us that night. It was just like letting an uncontaminated mountain stream run over me. When you sang Fairfax County I was reminded of the hundreds of times people have said to me 'There's just something so special about those old ballads-'. The special thing about that old ballad is that it was written by you, David M, and you give it life, and you give me the refreshing kind of beauty I'd almost forgotten about." ~ Joan Baez


4. MY NAME JOE (5:51)

Songwriter: David Massengill
Publishing & PRO: David Massengill Music/Warner/Chappell Music, Inc. (ASCAP)

Release Date: August / September 1986

Produced By: David Massengill and the Fast Folk Band

Musicians:
David Massengill: Mountain Dulcimer
Willie Nininger: Acoustic Guitar
Shawn Colvin & Lucy Kaplanski: Vocals
Mark Dann: Electric Guitar
Jeff Hardy: String Bass
Howie Wyeth: Rums Drums


This is not the studio version of "My Name Joe" produced by Steve Addabbo on my 1992 release Coming Up For Air. This is a live version recorded May 10, 1986 at the Bottom Line in New York City. It was released early that fall in the Fast Folk Musical Magazine as a double lp and is currently still available from Smithsonian Folkways (Vol 3, No. 6) in download and cd form. What's most interesting about this version is I sang the first verse out of order. You can hear me stutter a touch as I sang the second verse first. It got my energy up and I tried to insert the first verse but naturally followed with the third verse second. Finally I composed myself and sang the first verse third. From then on I was free as a bird and this is one of my favorite versions. You may note the musicians are excellent and played on in bands with Bob Dylan and staked out formidable careers of their own. Those were magic times.

“My Name Joe” is a song about standing up for your friends. It also explores the conflict between cultures in an urban melting pot based on my experiences as a dishwasher in an Upper West Side restaurant in NYC. One night a waiter drew an x across a photo of the Thai cook that was on the wall. Joe was angry and yelled "My Name Joe!" over and over while hacking the wall with knife. It took quite a while to calm things down. I was off that night but it helped to write the song as I was told the story by all my fellow kitchen workers the next day and relayed much of it into the song. Kind of like Joni Mitchell writing "Woodstock" because she wasn't there but wanted to be from all the stories. We all want to stand up for our friends. After hearing the song Joan Baez asked if she could join me for a dishwashing shift. She was a welcome guest dishwasher and stayed a full shift. It was a slow night in the kitchen and Joan sang folk songs in the languages of her fellow workers of Thai, Mexican and Caribbean descent. The Thai cooks cried at hearing their songs sung native style. When I came in the next day for another dishwashing shift they told me Johnny Cash was there and he wanted to wash dishes with me. I looked up and down the room three times before I realized they were pulling my leg." ~ David Massengill

David Massengill Biography

By birth a Tennessean, David Massengill “emigrated” to the Greenwich Village folk scene in the mid-70’s, walking the same streets and playing the same storied coffee houses as Dylan and Van Ronk.

Thirty years later, he’s still walking those streets—but now he’s being recognized universally for his pivotal role in keeping the American folk music tradition alive. Called “a master of vivid lyrical imagery”(Boston Globe), David continues to create beautiful and poignant “story songs” that are intimate and relevant and tug at your emotions. Songs like "Rider On An Orphan Train“ a narrative ballad ringing with truth and anguish” (Washington Post), "Number One In America", a riveting and ironic civil rights anthem” (Boston Globe) and the biting political statement, "The Gambler", a thing of beauty about all things ugly” (Barry Crimmins).

His songs have been covered and recorded by Joan Baez, The Roches, Lucy Kaplansky, Tom Russell, Nanci Griffith and his mentor, Dave Van Ronk, who said David “took the dull out of dulcimer!” Notes Music Boulevard, “That David made the lap dulcimer his instrument of choice tells us a lot about the soft-spoken native of eastern Tennessee. He accompanies his performance with an instrument indelibly Appalachian, yet conquers even the most urban of musical communities. He does it without losing that remarkable gift for true storytelling.”

David has released six albums, eleven bootlegs and fourteen books to date, including “Partners in Crime”, the debut album of The FolkBrothers, David’s duo project with the late great Jack Hardy.

In 2016 the Southern Folklife Collection at UNC-Chapel Hill offered to archive his works. He accepted and joins his friends and heroes Dave Van Ronk, Bill Morrissey and Mike Seeger as a member. He once chased a bobcat and visa versa.

Quotes...

"David Massengill took the dull out of dulcimer." ~ Dave Van Ronk

"Someone asked me what the high point was for me at the Newport Folk Festival. Upon five seconds reflection I told him it was listening to David Massengill sing his songs to us that night. It was just like letting an uncontaminated mountain stream run over me. When you sang Fairfax County I was reminded of the hundreds of times people have said to me 'There's just something so special about those old ballads-'. The special thing about that old ballad is that it was written by you, David M, and you give it life, and you give me the refreshing kind of beauty I'd almost forgotten about." ~ Joan Baez

"I woke up this morning with Orphan Train going through my head again. What a magnificent song! I can't imagine how it isn't being taught in every American History class in the country. Never think that you aren't leaving a legacy. You've written many wonderful songs, David, but this one will really leave a mark." ~ Tom Paxton

"Rider On An Orphan Train is the saddest song I ever heard and it was written by that son of a **** David Massengill." ~ Tom Russell

"Your music is a rare combination of heart, theatrics, innocence and edge. 'We Will Be Together' is especially beautiful. I love the tributes to Dave Van Ronk. A basket of tunes that would make for a lovely evening of theater. I don't know why but I feel Phil Och's spirit hanging around as I write this. You'd have liked him and he'd have liked you." ~ Paul Williams

I should also include my most recent review from the New York Times:

"The singer and Appalachian dulcimer player David Massengill performed a song he'd written decades ago as part of the Songwriters Exchange; it was a happy jumble of ribald metaphors, tinged with a youthful vulnerability that still seemed to suit him."
~ Giovanni Russonello, NY Times July 6, 2017