Nat Hentoff writes about Dave Insley

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Nat Hentoff writes about Dave Insley for the Wall Street Journal, Oct 10th 2006

10/11/2006 11:18 am

Years ago, traveling through the South on the Earl Scruggs-Lester Flatt band bus, I was struck -- at an outdoor concert in a small Alabama milltown -- by the intense attentiveness of the working class audience. "Sure," the dobro player said to me, back on the road again. "We know who they are. We tell them about their lives."

This classic conversational sound of country music isn't heard much anymore on the mainstream country radio stations. Exemplifying that commercial culture, the Country Music Association's self-celebrating awards show, which was televised on ABC in July, had no room for Merle Haggard. The often raucous Hank Williams Jr was on hand, but if his legendary father were still here, he would have been venerated during the evening but not have fitted into the clangorous rock-pop-laced commotion of much of the show.

However, coming upon a new self-produced release, "Here With You Tonight" (Amazon.com and Milesofmusic.com) by singer-songwriter Dave Insley, I was again listening to stories one could hear at the tables -- as well as on the bandstands -- of honky-tonks. Indeed, a promotional sheet accompanying the CD suggests: "File under Americana / Honky Tonk."

Mr. Insley, who gives his cellphone number on that sheet, is based in Austin, Texas, but often on the road. His recording immediately held my attention not by showboating, but through naturally flowing rhythms and stories of everyday life and loss told in a warm, unhurried and sometimes wry voice of experience: "Well I cashed in my old life for the one that you see now, it don't mean that I'm a loser, it just means that I know how." Setting a scene that I expect will resonate with many listeners, as it did with me, Mr. Insley sings: "I've seen the look that flickers across your eyes when you tell me things are fine. I can't help but realize, that you and I are living on borrowed time."

Born in Junction City, Kansas in 1961, Mr. Insley was raised on a wheat farm. While his father worked that farm, his mother waited tables at a nearby truck stop. Growing up, he listened to their record collection of Merle Haggard, Buck Owens, Bob Wills and other storytellers; and by the time he was 12, he was playing the guitar, writing and singing songs.

Two years later, the family moved to Arizona, and by the age of 22 Mr. Insley was leading a band, Chaingang -- "Playing traditional country music," he recalls, "for punk rock fans." Puzzling, but critically acclaimed, Chaingang resounded in Phoenixs succeeded by the Flagstaff-based Politics or Pontiacs, which toured Europe for six weeks in 1988. (He still has a European following.)

Back in Phoenix, leading other combos -- in 2000, the Arizona Republic called one of them that city's "Best Roots Band" -- Mr. Insley eventually decided to move on to Austin, "to see how my music holds up to broader audiences. Also, like my spiritual homeland, Arizona, the lifestyle here is very Southwestern, and the cost of living is low."

His two albums so far -- "Call Me Lonesome" and "Here With You Tonight" -- have done well on independent stations that report to the Americana (AMA) and Freeform American Roots (FAR) charts. There's still a U.S. audience for country music without the glitter. And although Mr. Insley hasn't toured Europe since 1988, his sets make the Top 10 on the EuroAmericana chart. With pride, he tells me, "we're on about 50 European radio stations, and I get fan mail and autograph requests from Italy, Germany, England & Spain."

"Roots" country music has long had audiences in various parts of the world, Japan among them; and years ago, listening to tapes a musicologist had collected in remote parts of Africa, I heard a yodeling tribute to Jimmie Rodgers ("the singing brakeman") who infused black blues he'd heard riding the rails with country music.

Mr. Insley plays about 150 shows a year, mostly on the road -- in cities where he's been performing for at least six or seven years (from Sacramento to Nashville, as well as festivals in New Jersey & Pennsylvania). He tells me excitedly that Dave Insley & his Careless Smokers (he used to be a forest fire fighter) will perform Thursday at the Rodeo Bar, 375 Third Avenue in New York. (Show starts at 10 pm -- and, as befits a man who produces his own records, gives out his cellphone number and doesn't have an entourage or publicist, he adds that there is no cover charge.)

I asked Mr. Insley where his songs come from. "Sometimes," he said, "I write to rid myself of my demons, and also because the things I create are sometimes my only companions. And I write because it makes me feel better." As for the song about cashing in his old life, he recalls, "I wrote it in a trance 15 years ago. Never knew how true the words would sound to me at a completely different time in my life."

Of the other songs he wrote for "Here With You Tonight," Mr. Insley told me: "By the time I had recorded them, the words had all taken on new meanings for me." As his life changes, the songs he writes as a form of memoir tello him more about where he's been and what he's learned. "I try," he adds, "to use specific details or examples to convey universally understood themes. That help's the audience understand that the artist's feelings are real. When you hear the pain in Hank Williams voice, you don't even have to speak English to get the drift." (So too with Jimmie Rodgers in Africa.)

From Mr. Insley's "Open Road": "Time sure flies when you know you're leaving, and it moves real slow after you're gone. My heart knows what to hold onto, an open road and an old love song." And on that road, "Here With You Tonight" made it's debut at #1 in July on the Freeform American Roots chart.