R, as in ready
John Wooley World Entertainment Writer
06/23/2000
Singer-songwriter David R was on his way to California when Tulsa got in the way "I really had this well thought-out," he said.

About 20 years ago, something funny happened on David R's way to California. And that's why he's here in Tulsa, debuting a new disc called "Spark."

Originally from Cleveland, Ohio, the singer-songwriter spent three of his teen years in Australia, initially living with his father and, during one summer, working as a street musician.

"Melbourne had a kind of downtown mall area -- like Tulsa's, only bigger, and a lot of street musicians played there," he recalled. "You'd just open your guitar case and start playing. I did that for a whole summer and usually made about 25 or 30 bucks a day -- enough to eat and have a place to stay."

He returned to Cleveland a year or so later to finish high school, and then decided to head west to seek his musical fortune.

"We had a huge rock show called the World Series of Rock up there, and I picked up a hitchhiker who was AWOL from the Navy who was coming up to see it," he said. "We kind of both decided to set out hitchhiking for California, where I'd do music and he'd be my manager."

He laughed. "I really had this well thought-out. We spent about three weeks out on the road, and then wound up in Tulsa broke and hungry. I was going to do some day labor for a few days and get enough money to go on, and I ended up staying here for 20 years. My friend went back to the Navy and I never heard from him again."

For almost two decades, David R's music career was the only thing in his life that was AWOL. He got married, got a real job, had children, and "put the idea of performing for a living away," although he would have regular musical get-togethers with friends.

Then, a couple of years ago, he found himself single again. And the notion of making music for audiences re-entered his mind.

"I thought, `I'm divorced now and my kids are almost grown. I think it's time to pick up the dream again,' " he remembered. "I knew I could get some gigs and play places, and I wanted to see if it could still excite me. It did."

He's done well enough locally over the past couple of years to feel that a CD of his material would be a good idea. So along comes "Spark," on which he is joined by the likes of George Barton on guitar, Tom Skinner on bass, Liz Masters on backup vocals, Jimmy Karstein on congas, Wes Gasaway on fiddle and David Blue on percussion.

"Eleven of the 12 songs are original, and most of them are fairly recent, although one's about 20 years old," he said. "I cover George Barton's `Scenery,' but it's a radically different version than they do on the Barton & Sweeney record or in concert. We call it the singer-songwriter version."

And while we're on the subject of singer-songwriters, it's interesting to note that David R is one of the few of that local breed who doesn't claim any ties to the Red Dirt movement. Instead, he calls his stuff "folk-ternative."

"Contemporary folk is probably another way of saying it," he explained. "It's acoustic music, but it's not traditional folksinger stuff. It's more pop, more contemporary-oriented. It's not roots music at all.

"I know a lot of the Red Dirt guys and I play a lot with them, but I wouldn't consider my stuff Red Dirt," he added with a chuckle. "And I don't think they would, either."