- On the Beacon crowd’s reaction to ‘Mr. Bojangles’: ‘That pretty near brought me to tears’
It’s been 60 years since Wilmington’s David Bromberg started his life as a musician, which earned him a devoted army of fans, found him working with the likes of Bob Dylan, George Harrison and Willie Nelson and even nabbing a late-career Grammy Award nomination.
As the fingerpicker with a distinct you-know-its-him voice approaches his 78th birthday later this summer, Bromberg has begun to wind down and slide into retirement.
First he stepped away from his downtown Wilmington violin shop and then capped his life as a touring musician earlier this month with a farewell show, headlining the legendary 2,600-seat Beacon Theatre in New York City, complete with special guests Jeff Tweedy of Wilco and singer/songwriter John Hiatt.
We caught up with Bromberg at his North Market Street home after his Beacon concert to see how it went, chat about his Wilmington future and see what his next project might be.
On his career-closing farewell show at Beacon Theatre…
Even though he took a 22-year break from his music career until he moved to Wilmington from Chicago in 2002, touring has been taking a toll on Bromberg’s 77-year-old body.
As he likes to tell audiences, “We don’t get paid for playing, we get paid for getting here.”
After crisscrossing the county for years, he has decided to pull the plug.
And he wanted to go out with a show not far from Greenwich Village, where he first started playing in coffeehouses back in 1963. He played alongside a rich mix of musicians that included Dylan, Joan Baez, Pete Seeger and Rev. Gary Davis, from whom Bromberg took lessons, helping him develop his distinctive style with the help of the blind blues and gospel singer.
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While Bromberg had performed at the Beacon before, this was his first time headlining the 94-year-old Upper West Side theater best known for hosting extended residencies by acts such as the Allman Brothers Band, Hot Tuna, Steely Dan and others.
On June 10, Bromberg took the stage with his 12-piece Big Band for what would be one of his longest concerts in decades, unfurling a three-hour career retrospective for a crowd of longtime fans, many of whom had followed him ever since his 1972 eponymous debut which featured both Dylan and Harrison.
“It was chock full,” he says of the Beacon that night. “It was incredible. The crowd was beautiful. We sold out of T-shirts before the show even started.”
Bromberg made a setlist this night, something he usually doesn’t do. He had to ensure he played all his hits or as he calls them, “Songs people will bitch to me about if I don’t play.” They included “Sharon,” “The Holdup” and his best-known tune, a cover of Jerry Jeff Walker’s “Mr. Bojangles.”
After a nine-minute version of the latter, the audience thanked Bromberg the only way they knew how: with extended applause.
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“That nearly brought me to tears,” Bromberg says. “They stood and clapped and clapped and clapped. There was a lot of love in the room.”
Sandwiched in between his songs were guest spots by Tweedy ― who he met backstage once at a festival and had never played with before ― and Hiatt, a musical friend who performed at the inaugural Bromberg’s Big Noise music festival in Wilmington in 2010.
Tweedy and Bromberg teamed up for a cover of Dylan’s “Wallflower,” Tweedy’s own “Evergreen” and crowd-pleaser “California Stars,” a Woody Guthrie song resurrected by Billy Bragg and Wilco. Then came Hiatt with a trio of his own tunes alongside Bromberg and his band: “Feels Like Rain,” “Slow Turning” and “Have a Little Faith in Me.”
“Know what surprised me? They sat by the side of the stage and watched every tune in the three-hour set,” Bromberg says. “I’ve never seen that before. It was pretty extraordinary. It may not sound like much to other people, but if you’re in the business, you know that’s not something that happens.”
The night ended with an all-hands encore of Dr. John’s “Such a Night,” in a classy, moving jazz funeral-like ending, with Bromberg leaving the stage first, and each musician taking their time to drift off into the wings and into the New York City night.
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Bromberg says he believes the concert was recorded, but he doesn’t know if it would ever be released. There have been no talks of that, he adds.
So is this really it for Bromberg and the stage?
He dismisses doing solo shows, saying he prefers playing with other musicians, but adds, “Never say never, right? I’ve already learned that one.”
On his violin shop and Wilmington future…
At the beginning of last year, David Bromberg Fine Violins officially morphed into Wintsch Violins.
After years of heading his own violin shop at the corner of North Market Street and West Sixth Street, Bromberg handed the keys over to Teal Wintsch, who was the shop’s head repair person, luthier and rental coordinator.
Wintsch now leads the shop, which is still home to longtime bow-maker and violin repairer Jamie Goldie, as well.
With the switch came the removal of the blue David Bromberg Fine Violins sign that overlooked the intersection for 20 years.
Bromberg turned to buying and selling violins when he took his extended break from his music career in the ’80s and ’90s. And just as he did when he walked away from the stage, he decided to step back from his shop for a simple reason: his age.
“The thing that people may miss because I don’t look it, but I’m pretty old,” he says, flashing his dry sense of humor. “I’ve been working since I was 18. That’s a lot of work and I just felt that maybe I could take it a little easier.”
It was time: the mortgage is paid off for his expansive home in downtown Wilmington and he and wife artist/musician Nancy Josephson now split time between the home and a rented New York City apartment.
The couple plans to keep their Wilmington home and remain Delawareans.
On his next project…
With touring and his shop now in his rear-view, Bromberg is working on selling his violins ― the largest collection of American-made violins in the world.
In 2016, he struck a deal with the Library of Congress to buy his 263-violin collection, all made between 1848 and 1950.
Bromberg, an expert known worldwide for his knowledge of American violins, had planned to donate two-thirds of the appraised value of the violins and take about one-third, $1.5 million, for himself. But in the end, the deal fell through.
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Now that he has more time, Bromberg is going through his extensive contact list of violin buyers from around the world and selling his historic collection piecemeal.
Part of that process is cataloging them, including taking photographs of each instrument.
“I’ll eventually be able to put together a book, but it will take some time,” he says. “But it won’t be a book that you can just go buy at whatever bookstores are left out there. It will be a violin trade book for violin makers and players.”
While he chips away at selling his collection, Bromberg will still play some guitar.
On Thursdays, a group of local musicians get together for a weekly jam at a private home, which he’s attended in the past and plans on continuing.
“It’s a genre that in my old age it has become more difficult to grasp. It’s entirely acoustic and built around fiddle tunes,” he says. “So I make sure to get to that every Thursday. It’s good for me to play and hang out with people.
“We’ll see how long I can keep going, but I really enjoy it.”
So Bromberg isn’t quite retired after all. He’s playing somewhere in Delaware every week. You just can’t buy a ticket to see it.
Setlist: David Bromberg, Beacon Theatre, New York, June 10, 2023
- Sloppy Drunk
- I’ll Take You Back
- The Holdup
- Nobody’s (Gary White cover)
- Dark Hollow (Bill Browning and His Echo Valley Boys cover)
- Standing in the Need of Prayer (traditional)
- Wallflower (Bob Dylan cover with Jeff Tweedy)
- Evergreen (Tweedy cover with Tweedy)
- California Stars (Billy Bragg & Wilco cover with Tweedy)
- Feels Like Rain (John Hiatt cover with Hiatt)
- Slow Turning (Hiatt cover with Hiatt)
- Have a Little Faith in Me (Hiatt cover with Hiatt)
- Delia’s Gone (traditional)
- Summer Wages (Ian Tyson cover)
- Key to the Highway (Charles Segar cover)
- Make Me a Pallet on the Floor (traditional)
- Sharon
- Send Me to the ‘Lectric Chair (Bessie Smith & Her Blue Boys cover)
- Diamond Lil
- Mr. Bojangles (Jerry Jeff Walker cover)
- The New Lee Highway Blues
- Will Not Be Your Fool
- Such a Night (Dr. John cover with Tweedy and Hiatt)
Have a story idea? Contact Ryan Cormier of Delaware Online/The News Journal at rcormier@delawareonline.com or (302) 324-2863. Follow him on Facebook (@ryancormier) and Twitter (@ryancormier).
