| Fredericksburg Songwriters' Showcase | David Morreale |
The touring musician’s fascination for road songs and hard luck stories is almost a cliche, but David Morreale really did leave home at 16 and hit the road, busking on European streets and in the London Underground for ten years of homelessness, hard luck and constant movement. His songs have a world view that is uplifting and inspirational.
He traveled from his home base in England, through France, Germany, Italy, Yugoslavia, Greece, (ah, Greece!) Holland and Austria. David has made a living as a bartender, construction (and destruction) worker, waiter, chef, housepainter, guitar teacher, musician, writer, artist, cabinet-maker, record store clerk, street mime, and lumberjack.
“Living nowhere in particular, and being naturally nocturnal informed my songwriting in big ways; so many adventures when I was young, you know? I mean, I played gigs all over! Wherever they’d pay me and some places they didn’t. Adventures? Well, I was arrested in Berlin once and held for eight hours behind bars. The guard (a fan of the blues and Muddy Waters) let me go when he found out that I was a famous blues DJ from Chicago, and a personal friend of Muddy’s from the U.S. (Both untrue)”
Says David, “During my busking days in the London Underground, I learned a lot about life and how hard it can be, not eating real well, singing ten and twelve hours a day. I once kicked a Scotsman named Tambourine Billy in the head when he tried to steal my money. Finding myself in a diner in Oxford Circus, trying to decide between breakfast and a guitar string also stretched my head pretty good. And in Yugoslavia one August morning, I ate the best damn breakfast I ever had. It consisted entirely of warm mayonnaise and fresh green peppers hand-picked for me by the farmer in whose field I had just camped. Seven Polish students had camped there too and insisted on cooking my head to rubber the night before with homemade potato vodka. I hadn’t eaten in two days and the vodka had taken its toll.”
These experiences and more all informed David’s songwriting. He’s played untold numbers of pubs, clubs, bars, alleyways, streets, sidewalks, closets, basements, colleges, rallys, NASCAR tracks, backseats, doorways, dog-grooming rooms, pit beef BBQ ale houses, pie shops, and other places of ill-repute and bad reputation. He’s played a festival or three and played on the radio a few times. David has opened for, and shared stages with Brooks Williams, Tom Prasada-Rao, Eliot Bronson and others.
David’s lyrics explore common themes, falling in love, falling out of love, crime and punishment. Sometimes his characters die, sometimes they’re only wounded, and sometimes the bills get paid. On From The Dirt David stretches himself, along the way recording a collection of songs in which characters experience all of these, as well as poverty, redemption, joy, and what it means to watch your dreams go up in smoke and try to fill the empty space they leave behind.
“Everywhere I’ve been I’ve discovered and re-discovered that people are the same wherever you go. Strange. Beautiful. Worried. Happy. And I’m so lucky that many of them listen. I want you to listen too so that we can hear together the thing that connects us. Music is just a voice in the wild, leading us to where coffee is still a dime, children are happy, “where they hung the jerk that invented work,” and no one has to dig ditches anymore.”
Check out his Web site usign the URL http://www.mudsongs.com
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