David Bromberg - Try Me One More Time

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Free Music Review: Long Time Coming
Hit: 4 Stars

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Roots music fans will rejoice in the release of "Try Me One More Time," the first new CD in 17 years by guitarist/vocalist David Bromberg, a master practitioner of folk, blues, bluegrass and other musical genres. This new recording is undiluted David: one man, one acoustic guitar, and a repertoire of mostly traditional material performed with the intimate, assured touch of a musician who has nothing to prove.

Originally a "must-have" session man for everyone from Bob Dylan to Dion and subsequently a hard-touring bandleader and recording artist with an enthusiastic following, Bromberg gradually phased himself out of the continual record-tour-record cycle starting in 1980. "I got burned out," he reflects. "And I didn't want to be one of those musicians who ends up `phoning it in.' Music was too important to me to treat it that way."

So he switched his focus from performing to studying, moving to Chicago in 1980 to learn violin-making. Based in the Windy City until 2002, when he moved to Delaware to open a violin shop, Bromberg has continued to tour periodically, but has mostly stayed away from recording studios, with 1990's "Sideman Serenade" his last album until now.

On "Try Me One More Time," Bromberg harkens back to the acoustic folk and blues music of his early days on the mid-'60s Greenwich Village folk scene, a period when he guided the blind gospel-blues singer Reverend Gary Davis to concerts and churches in exchange for guitar lessons. Bromberg performs two of "the Rev's" compositions on his new CD - "I Belong to the Band" and "Trying to Get Home" - as well as songs written by Robert Johnson, Elizabeth Cotton, Tommy Johnson, Blind Willie McTell, sometime Bromberg employer Bob Dylan ("It Takes a Lot to Laugh . . ."), and songs from the traditional realm, including two exquisitely rendered instrumentals ("Buck Dancer's Choice," "Hey Bub"). The title track is Bromberg's first recording of a song he wrote more than 30 years ago.

In liner notes as conversational as his distinctive, low-key vocals, Bromberg maintains that this CD is the first record he's made where he "wasn't trying to impress anybody . . . I'm just doing the tunes." Nonetheless, the outcome can't fail to delight listeners who appreciate an understated virtuoso playing and singing the music he loves.

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