Local bluesman Dave Keller entering the national arena
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Dave Keller, the Montpelier blues guitarist and singer pictured at home, is the lead singer in two songs on the new Ronnie Earl album, "Living in the Light," scheduled to be released nationally on June 2. STEFAN HARD/TIMES ARGUS |
Toolbox
By ART EDELSTEIN Arts Correspondent - Published: May 22, 2009
Dave Keller takes his role as a blues musician seriously – yet he is anything but what one might consider the typical bluesman. This unassuming, 41-year-old Montpelier resident is a perpetually smiling, humble and almost self-effacing musician, who has followed his dream, done the grunt work, and come out as a very talented and respected – if still somewhat unknown – performer.
That is about to change. Keller's star is in ascendancy and after June 2, he hopes others in the blues universe will begin to take notice of his talents. On that Tuesday blues guitarist Ronnie Earl's latest CD "Living in The Light" will be released with Keller as the lead singer on two tracks.
"Who knows?" offered Keller as we talked about his career and this new turn of events. "I would love to get on a blues festival circuit or get signed by a big record label."
Keller is extolling Earl's virtues, the blues as a musical form, and life as a local musician from his music room at his Pleasantview Street home. The small space is packed with instruments, electric guitars, an old Emerson upright piano, an old garage sale Farfisa organ, several small guitar amps, a ukulele and lots of LPs and cassettes, all with a blues or gospel theme. Here, LPs by the Staple Singers, Jimmy Smith, Mother Smith and her Children, and Bill Withers, among others, smile down upon Keller and his many guitar students like angels on high from a mythical "Church of Blues Gods."
Keller said the opportunity to perform on a recording with Earl came from a serendipitous meeting the two had last summer at a Stevie Wonder concert in Connecticut. Earl has been Keller's musical idol since the 1980s when he was a starting-out blues musician and Earl was the guitar energy behind Roomful of Blues, a then-popular New England blues band. At this particular concert Keller saw his idol standing in the hall, approached him – and the two started a conversation.
A bond of friendship was formed and after Keller sent Earl his albums (he has three) and several e-mails and phone calls later, Earl asked Keller to sing on two cuts in his latest album. Keller's voice opens the CD on "Love, Love, Love," and later, on track five, Bob Dylan's "What Can I Do for You?" we hear Keller again with a 12-voice chorus. Keller does a stalwart job in his brief appearance.
All of this is heady stuff for a local performer who makes his living – what he calls "enough to get by" – by teaching 35 guitar students a week and playing perhaps 10 gigs a month solo and with his Dave Keller Band.
Keller is a stay-at-home dad, married with two young daughters. About the only external suggestion that this is a blues household is the orange painted house he lives in and the music room.
Keller said his background belies his interest in the blues. He was raised in Worcester, Mass., in a middle-class Jewish household. His father would listen to classical music on the stereo. His was a neighborhood where he met few African-Americans.
Keller was drawn to the blues during the early 1980s as a teen. "It seemed honest music at a time when Madonna was the pop star," he explained. "The blues is honest and real and it moved me."
According to Keller, the blues style of song has the feeling that is "raw, heavy with emotions and not pretty but beautiful."
He attended Wesleyan University and learned to play the blues through the music of Jimi Hendrix whose music has many blues overtones.
What first drew Keller to Ronnie Earl was "the real intensity about him," and the fact that he is "a feel player."
"I'm a feel player," says Keller, who admits to not being a guitar "technician."
Another connection may be that both are Jewish, and Earl's parents are Holocaust survivors. Pain and suffering are two emotions African-Americans and Jews can share, Keller says.
Vermont, while never a hotbed of the blues, has attracted several musicians like Keller. While moving here might have "been a career killer for a blues guy in terms of recognition," Keller is happy with his decision. In the early 1990s he played solo gigs, then formed a band in 1996 and now gets many referrals for jobs.
Vermont, he contends, "is easy in that when you get your name out there people will hear about you." A small population has its benefits, he notes.
What makes him successful at what he does, says Keller, is all about attitude. "I put my best out and try to be a nice guy." With that attitude, "word of mouth is powerful."
Some of his best gigs, he said, have been playing for a handful of people at venues like Charlie O's in Montpelier.
While the state is small, he said he'll "never get bored playing here."
Keller has three albums to his credit and in quiet moments a dream emerges where part of him longs for greater recognition than Vermont can give. "Part of me would love to tour Europe or the South but I have two girls," he said.
While that may or may not come to fruition, Keller takes comfort from the fellowship of blues musicians in the state. "You know what the others go through with not a lot of money, but a big smile on your face," he explained.
One of his biggest thrills as a musician of late was playing at the Montpelier inauguration ball for President Obama in January.
Keller is also looking forward to his June 5 performance at the Discover Jazz Festival in Burlington on Church Street.
As June 2, and the release of "Living in the Light" looms, outwardly little will change in this musician's demeanor. Even if bigger things come his way there is little chance he'll become a strutting bombast. Keller seems very content playing the blues in the Green Mountains and being a dad. Any other recognition will just be icing on an already satisfying career.
"Living in the Light" by Ronnie Earl and the Broadcasters featuring Dave Keller will be available in local music stores on June 2.
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