David Hamburger grew up outside Boston, Massachusetts, picking up the guitar at the age of twelve. His first teacher played bluegrass, while his father and grandfather, both lifelong amateur pianists, exposed him to the Tin Pan Alley repertoire; all this was further supplemented by after-school expeditions to Harvard Square in search of blues and jazz LPs. Arriving at Wesleyan University at 17, David met bottleneck guitarist Steadman Hinckley, who taught him to play slide over the course of many late-night jams in the University music building. "He was supposed to be the building monitor," laughs David. "But we would go hang out in these three-story-high concrete stairwells to get the maximum natural reverb for our guitars."
Hamburger next took a stab at grad school in New York City, but dropped out Manhattan School of Music's Jazz Composition program to play with a then-unknown songwriter he had met on a temp job, Freedy Johnston. After doing much of the guitar work on Johnston's first record, The Trouble Tree, David began working in an R&B band and doing his first solo gigs around town. Eventually, encouraged by both his band experiences and the response to his solo shows, Hamburger formed his own band with a few of his favorite fellow sidemen. "I was really fortunate, in that I had met so many great players on other people's gigs. And by the time we made my first record, I had a group of guys who already really knew my stuff." The resulting CD, King of the Brooklyn Delta, struck an elegant balance of songcraft and musicianship, proving Hamburger to be as articulate a lyricist as a guitarist.
Songs and recording in hand, Hamburger began making the circuit as a solo performer, appearing at festivals and in listening rooms along the East coast. Around the same time, as an essentially self-taught pedal steel and dobro player, he found himself increasingly in demand for session and sideman work. Hamburger reformed his band as a stripped-down trio, doing both acoustic and electric shows around New York and hitting the road for gigs in upstate New York and New England. Once again, having a working band proved advantageous in the studio: Hamburger's second CD, Indigo Rose, was made in just nine days, including mixing. Songs from the CD have already been covered by both the progressive bluegrass band Salamander Crossing and NYC guitar chopsmeister Matt Smith, and have found their way into the live repertoires of other performers around the country.
In June of 2000 David relocated to Austin. "It was always on my short list of cool music towns, and I really wanted to live someplace a little less intense and spend a some time really concentrating on my approach to songwriting and the guitar." Hamburger has been doing just that, and has been performing solo again while working on material for his next CD and putting a new band together. While there are a lot of good songwriters out there, and a lot of great guitar pickers, it's rare to find a songwriter who can really play, or a guitar player who can really write. Hamburger can do both with depth and passion, and his records and live performances bear that out.
4/2/99: David Hamburger
