Link
The Official Online Store of Author/Musician David Gans
Bio/other credits
David Gans delivers literate, improvisational folk-rock with looping in a “solo electric” setting. A solo Gans show is likely to consist of several elements: country-blues-style fingerpicking; loop-based improvisations created live in the moment; sweetly-sung ballads, original or borrowed; Grateful Dead songs reinterpreted to suit his voice and guitar; wry observations of the music-festival subculture and the larger world; soulful and passionate political commentary; favorites from the folk-rock canon of the last 50 years. Mix and match – it’s never the same show twice, but it’s always worth a listen.
Per song credits
- Electric guitar on “All I Know”
- Acoustic guitar on “Sham Song”
- Vocals on “Saint Lucifer”
- Electric guitar, vocals on “Giving Zoo Wolves Lessons in Music”
- Electric guitar on “Carnegie Hill”
- Electric guitar, vocals on “Dirty Ol’ Sunshine”
- Acoustic guitar, electric guitar, vocals on “The Long Haired Kings”
- Electric guitar on “Moses Took Us to the Water”
- Electric guitar on “Down to the Mountain”
- Acoustic guitar on “The Ghost Door”
Notes
I had a plan for this record. Part of what I call “the personal long now.” I had already discovered that you can do things gradually, persistently, in a sustained way and that efforts can sometimes take years or even decades to bear fruit but what does eventually come is deeply rooted.
So I had a plan. Dan had already produced a single for me, a cover of “Who Loves the Sun?” that I loved. My first idea for a record was to record nine great covers and try to write one original, like the way a lot of new bands’ first records in the early 60s would go.
Then I started writing songs and eventually I had nine of them and I flipped it on its head. Now it was more like the way a lot of first records from the late 60s and early 70s went: a bunch of originals with one cover to latch onto just in case and to nod to influences.
I projected it might take five to ten years to record the record in our spare time. I would lean on The Reuben Kincaid heavily, with Bill on bass and Dan playing guitar and keyboard. We’d figure out drums. We’d get Bob to play some lead and rhythm guitar, maybe add a few solos. Bob even recorded his own amazing version of “Zoo Wolves” in this period.
But this is about David. I first read a book by David when I was still in college and trying to figure out what the Grateful Dead had just done to me one night at Brendan Byrne Arena in New Jersey in 1984. Six or so years later I was engaging in Usenet threads with David and other folks like Steve Silberman, both of whom eventually prevailed upon me to join the Well, where I still host a conference to this day.
David stumbled on a parody lyric I had posted there and asked me if he could play it in one of his daily live shows (always hungry for fresh material, that format!) and we got to talking about songwriting and I mentioned the record project and he asked if I had demos so I sent over what I had and a few days later he surprised me.
He offered to produce my record and to bring me to the studio of his engineer, Jeremy, and to help with finding the right musicians and how best to arrange and “perfect” these songs. He essentially signed me to his label, Perfectible Recordings!
The rest was a series of unfolding wonders as I got a crash course in singing, playing, collaborating, recording, editing, mixing, and so on over the next few years (we worked on this project roughly one day a month, as the session notes show).
On top of that, David played guitar beautifully all over the record. He sang harmonies. He brought his looper and jammed live with me and Bob and Javier on “Zoo Wolves.” He has been, as always, a total mensch.
What a trip. What a friend. I’m eternally grateful.
