Bromberg promises bluegrass, roots rock and the kitchen sink

Singer-songwriter/guitarist David Bromberg won’t make up a setlist before he performs at the Rialto Theatre on Friday, Oct. 16.

He likes to wing it, playing “whatever comes to mind.”

“We decide before we go on stage what we’re going to start with and sometimes the second tune, as well,” the 70-year-old singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist said. “And as soon as the tune is over, I have an idea of the energy I want to use and that kind of threads itself along. I know it’s strange but it’s always worked for me.”

There’s a method to his madness. No two David Bromberg shows are the same, which means that the show you see Friday will have little resemblance to his last Tucson gig at the 2013 Tucson Folk Festival.

Bromberg returns to Tucson with a new album, “Only Slightly Mad,” which he thinks “is the best one I’ve done.” It returns him to vintage Bromberg, stirring up a musical stew rich. You’ll find some folkly melodies alongside roots rock and just when you think you’ve got Bromberg pegged, he introduces an old English drinking song. Only “The Strongest Man Alive” is not really that old; Bromberg wrote it. He can’t really tell you the inspiration beyond perhaps “channeling an old English drunk” as far as he can recall.

“Strongest Man” is one of several Bromberg originals on the record. It also has a few obscure cover songs “that I like and that we’ve enjoyed playing.” The record follows his tried-and-true philosophy of music. He’s not an artist you can toss in one specific genre bin. He criss-crosses from rock and folk to blues and bluegrass.

In the early days of his career, “record stores didn’t know where to put our records. Record companies didn’t know how to advertise us. … We were an anomaly,” he said during a phone call from his Delaware home in late September.

Back to homepage

Subscriber Login

Keep reading with a digital access subscription.

Subscribe now

These days he’s largely regarded as one of the pioneers of the modern-day Americana or roots rock genre.

Bromberg’s show is his third or fourth in Tucson since he returned to full-time performing after a 20-year hiatus that started in the 1990s. That’s when he decided that while his career was humming along, he was working too darn hard for it.

So he and his wife left their longtime home in Chicago and returned to the East Coast, settling into a quiet life in Wilmington, Delaware. The couple opened a shop selling and restoring high-quality instruments and Bromberg took classes in violin making so that he could work as a high-end violin appraiser, the guy who comes across the rare Stradivarius or a knock-off posing as the real deal.

A decade or so ago, Bromberg struck up a friendship with the then mayor of Wilmington, who invited him to perform at jam sessions downtown. Those sessions helped rekindle Bromberg’s love of live performances.

“I was able to do quite a bit with my singing, and that makes me feel good,” he said. “I enjoy the feeling of it physically, Singing used to be something I did in between guitar solos. But these days I do it just because it feels so great to do … I think I get the same pleasure out of it that a runner gets.”

Bromberg will share the stage with his quintet — guitarist and mandolinist Mark Cosgrove, bass player Robert “Butch” Amoit, drummer Josh Kanusky and Nate Grower on fiddle, guitar and mandolin.

Tucson blues guitar prodigy Roman Barten-Sherman joins Mighty Joel Ford on drums and washboard to open the show.