Monday March 8th, Show 8:15pm, Tickets $25.00
The cool breezes of Maine’s northlands have flowed through the songs of David Mallett for more than four decades. In addition to being featured on his eleven solo albums, Mallett’s pen has provided material for an eclectic list of artists that includes Arlo Guthrie, Pete Seeger, Emmylou Harris, Kathy Mattea, John Denver and the Muppets. His tune, “The Garden Song”, has been recorded more than one hundred and fifty times.
After eleven albums of original tunes, Mallett, 57, has taken a different approach with his latest effort, “The Fable True”. Based on a book by naturalist/author Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862), “The Maine Woods”, the album features Thoreau’s words set to new melodies composed by Mallett. “I picked out twenty-two stories”, said Mallett, “and surrounded each with a separate piece of music. It’s a nice little package, actually.”
Inspiration for the album was sparked by the celebration of the 150th anniversary of Thoreau’s trip to Maine in 1857. “Thoreau spoke of Maine so well,” said Mallett. “the people deserved to hear about how he felt about their state.” Mallett relied heavily on Thoreau’s words to guide his compositions. “I took his descriptions,” he explained, “read them over and over and came up with melodies that would enhance the moment. It was a lot of fun but one of the most challenging things I’ve ever done.”
Accompanied mostly on acoustic guitar, Mallett’s readings are enhanced by a variety of additional instruments. “I kept it very simple,” he said. “The guitar was where I started because that’s my main instrument. But, I added banjo. The banjo is an instrument that would have been heard in Maine around that time. It was a minstrel show instrument. I added a little bit of mandolin, a bass player and a little bit of fiddle.”
The album marks the apex of a musical career that began when Mallet was ten years old, playing in a country and folk duo with his five-year older brother, Neil. “We played everything from old songs like ‘Carry Me Back To Old Virginny’, which is the only song that my father ever sang,” recalled Mallett, “to stuff that was on the radio. We were around when Elvis Presley came out and when Johnny Cash recorded ‘I Walk The Line’. We did the whole folk thing, too – the Kingston Trio, Peter, Paul and Mary. We had a real mixed bag.”
Discovering the music of singer-songwriters like Gordon Lightfoot and Bob Dylan, as an acting student at the University of Maine, Mallett began writing his own songs. “Up until that point, I thought of myself as a singer,” he said. “In college, everybody that was singing also wrote. I realized that that was what I wanted to do. I was a theater major. I felt short-changed that I had to speak someone else’s words. I felt that, if I became a singer-songwriter, I could sing my own words.”
Honing his craft as a soloist, Mallett increasingly expanded his repertoire with original tunes. “When I was in my twenties, playing in bars,” he remembered, “I would sprinkle in a few of my own songs. They blended in pretty well. By the time that I was twenty-six or twenty-seven, I was singing all my own songs.”
A turning point in Mallett’s career came, in 1975, after he discovered that Noel Paul Stookey, of Peter, Paul and Mary, had moved to Blue Hill, Maine and was opening a recording studio. “That was back in the days when a recording studio was sort of like Oz,” he said. “It was a foreign land. I wanted to see his studio, so, I called him up and said, ‘Can I come visit?’”
Within six months of their initial meeting, Mallett found a true mentor in Stookey. In addition to producing Mallett’s first three albums, Stookey helped to bring his tune, “The Garden Song”, to the attention of influential folksinger Pete Seeger who included it on his 1979 album, “Circles And Seasons”. The song has gone on to find its place amidst the lexicon of American folk song. “It was never that big a hit,” said Mallett, “never blared at you, ten times an hour, on the radio. It’s gotten around but in a very human way, through the mouths of children, Universalist ministers and wedding ceremonies. I’m so proud to be associated with such a simple thing.”
Moving to Nashville, in the early-1990s, Mallett continued to record and write new songs, including several written with country music songwriter Hal Ketchum. “I did a little bit of everything,” he said, “played with some wonderful musicians like Roy Huskey, probably the most revered acoustic bass player in America, and drummer Kenny Malone. Stuart Duncan was my fiddle player on every gig that I did in Nashville.”
Since returning to Maine in 1997, Mallett has continued to rediscover the roots of his music. “My music is a combination of European and New England maritime music,” he said. “The New England maritime thing is Scotch and Irish. It’s more European in the tempos, time signatures and chords. I think it’s very northern.”
With the completion of “The Fable True”, Mallet is already envisioning his next recording. “I haven’t written any songs for a few years,” he said, “but I have a lot of instrumental stuff that I’m going to pull from. I’d like to do an album of different stuff like longer pieces or medleys of some old stuff.”
— Craig Harris, 2007
