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David Massengill: Back on the Track

U.S. 1 Staff

December 9, 1998

Lisi Tribble

Massengill’s Bio

Concert Stories

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This story by Richard Skelly was published in U.S. 1 Newspaper on

David Massengill: Back on the Track

Although some of his contemporaries from the Greenwich

Village folk music scene have quit folk singing and gone back to `the

real world,’ singer, songwriter, and storyteller David Massengill

counts his blessings that he hasn’t had to resort to such drastic

measures. Massengill continues to write songs, perform, and record.

In September New York-based Plump Records released his latest album,

"Twilight to Taj Mahal." What’s more, Plump will reissue

Massengill’s

first album, "Coming Up For Air," in the spring. Back in the

mid-1980s, Massengill made a name for himself on the contemporary

folk scene with his brilliant dulcimer playing and insight-filled

topical songs. "Twilight To Taj Mahal" is a stripped-down

affair, just voice, guitar, and dulcimer.

"I’ve seen so many of my musician and artist friends stop being

artists and go back to the real world," says Massengill from his

New York apartment. "I used to be a `buzz’ musician. Over the

past eight years, I’ve been booked at fewer and fewer folk festival

shows. I began to realize, I’ve got to find a way to survive as an

artist without the folk community."

Despite being raised in an upper-middle class family in his native

Bristol, Tennessee, and then learning the hard realities of the folk

music business after his move to New York in 1976, Massengill, now

47, has no regrets about the path he has chosen.

"Even though I don’t have what I used to have, I never felt like

I lost it," he says. "We have money worries sometimes, but

there’s something about having a comfortable position growing up that

frees you to do what you want to do in your life." Massengill,

who attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, wanted

to become a folk singer. He knew of the dangers: long drives, crazy

hours, little money, and certainly not a lot of widespread recognition

for your songs, unless you were lucky. In fact Massengill was lucky

— Joan Baez recorded his "Road To Fairfax County," and

his songs have been recorded by Nanci Griffith and the Roches, among

others.

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Lisi Tribble

Massengill and his new wife — a longtime companion

— Lisi Tribble, live in New York’s East Village. Like a lot of

the new crop of singer-songwriters who emerged in the 1980s,

Massengill

likes to tour on his own terms, making weekend jaunts to places like

Florida, Texas, and Massachusetts.

"I never have done long tours. What I do is weekend forays. I

just went and played four shows in Texas. The flights are economical

and you can rent a car inexpensively, so you pick up a gig that covers

the costs and then the other three gigs are profit," he explains.

"Usually, the whole month of January I can hit the clubs down

South just on the weekends."

In last few years, Massengill has concentrated on developing his

natural

gift for storytelling. Blessed with a good speaking voice that has

a placating touch of east Tennessee twang, he realized his audiences

often enjoyed his stories as much as they did his songs, for which

he accompanies himself on dulcimer and guitar. So he developed more

stories. Now many of the folk festivals that were once hot for him

have been replaced by storytelling festivals, which have sprung up

all over the country in the 1990s.

"Being booked at a storytelling festival provided the impetus

for me to begin changing my sets," says Massengill. "I saw

the appeal of doing more stories. Now, I’ll do a set that’ll have

five songs and five stories. These stories are not the

singer-songwriter

patter that a lot of musicians use to introduce a song — they’re

things that go on for six or eight minutes."

"Certainly my songs have always tended to be ballad oriented,"

he continues. "I do have some songs that repeat the same lines

over and over again, but I guess the ones I admired most as a child

and as a teenager were the story songs."

Massengill’s gift for storytelling, which he attributes partly to

his father, has turned into a blessing, artistically and commercially.

In the last four years, he says he’s been booked at a lot of

storytelling

festivals. "It’s been a wonderful opening for me," he says,

"like a painter discovering he can also do nice sculptures."

Although he has been touring nationally since the late 1980s,

Massengill

has recorded just three albums: "Coming Up For Air" was

originally

recorded in 1992 for Flying Fish Records, and he released "The

Return" in the mid-1990s with Plump Records.

He freely admits that he had some difficult times in the late 1980s

when his contemporaries like Christine Lavin and Suzanne Vega had

secured record deals and were touring nationally. Record companies

kept turning down Massengill’s demo tapes. He was a heavy drinker

for several years, until he sensed it was interfering with his art.

"Finally, I just said to myself, `Well, I just won’t drink until

I get a record deal,’ and it turned out I liked not drinking a whole

lot," he recalls. He also took up long distance running, replacing

alcohol with a natural high.

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Massengill’s Bio

This past summer, with no folk festivals on his itinerary, Massengill

spent time back home in Bristol, caring for his 76-year-old father,

who has been disabled by diabetes. His dad was a pharmacist with S.E.

Massengill & Co. in Bristol, and his mom was a housewife.

"But really, she was much more than a housewife," Massengill

says of his mother, who passed away in 1984. "She was a very

talented

artist and I have some of her paintings here at the house. Today,

a woman of her talents would have gone on to do something and get

paid, but I had the blessing that she provided for, and her husband

had enough money to support us so she didn’t have to work."

Massengill says spending the summer caring for his father — like

his recent turn toward storytelling — turned out to be another

blessing in disguise.

"Psychologically, caring for him was hard at first, wearing and

tearing. But I was able to hear my dad’s stories, and they began to

take shape as songs in my head," he says. Simple songs, like when

his dad was five years old and wanted a pony ride. As a result,

Massengill

is already working toward releasing a fourth album in 1999, most of

which "will be songs covering my life and his life. Nothing of

political or social significance, only as significant as a first kiss

or a pony ride. And when you think about them, those things are pretty

significant."

"I’ve backed off for a while from some of the bigger-themed songs

I’ve tackled in the past. I’ve scaled down my story vision," he

adds. He says it gives him greater pleasure to write songs about

life’s

simple things.

It is likely that Massengill’s forthcoming album will be like

"Twilight

to Taj Mahal," — raw and stripped down, without a lot of

accompanists

— and he says the time off with his father over the summer was

a creative shot-in-the-arm.

"Twilight to Taj Mahal" includes a lot of songs that

Massengill

wrote in the 1970s and 1980s, performed a few times, and then put

back on the shelf. He says he has another four albums of these songs.

"I’m halfway through writing material for a fourth record, and

all the songs are fresh and new ideas. In a way, this third album

was a big turning point for me. It made me realize that some of my

minor works were worth recording, too," he says.

Massengill’s major works, that is his most requested

songs, include "My Name Joe" and "Number One In

America,"

both short stories with a political statement attached. "One thing

I had been doing in the past 10 years was playing seven or eight of

my bigger songs over and over again. Now, when people come to see

my shows, I only do two or three of those songs. I do all fresh things

now."

Massengill took his cue from longtime folksinger Arlo Guthrie, who

found it difficult to sing "Alice’s Restaurant" at every show,

year-in and year-out. "He said he’ll drop `Alice’s Restaurant’

for a year and then pick it up again a year later, to keep it

fresh."

Massengill adds that he’s sporting a new look in grooming, as well.

Gone is his longtime, trademark pony tail. He’s joined the legions

of short-haired men. "People don’t make those assumptions anymore,

and a man with a pony tail gets assumed a lot," he points out.

Now, he says, people can speak candidly around him, and, after having

his hair cut, he wrote two new songs in a burst of creative energy.

"It’s all part of the new type of writing I’m doing," he

explains.

David Massengill: Back on the Track

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