I didn’t know David Mallett well — but enough to feel gutted when I heard of his passing yesterday. It was like hearing a mountain had unexpectedly crumbled into the sea. Nobody had a musical soul more rooted in this state. He sounded like Maine. He looked like a Mainer.
I shared a bill with him once, about 10 years ago. After soundcheck, he came up to me and said he had a jumbo Guild guitar like mine, except his had rosewood sides while mine were made from maple.
We spent a couple minutes talking about the differences in sound between the two tone woods. Then, Mallett said he was going out to find some decaf coffee before the show.
He didn’t return until it was nearly time for him to close the first half. He left again during intermission and didn’t return.
I didn’t care. Mallett was kind, professional and sang a mesmerizing set. Backstage was empty while he played because we were all standing at the back of the house listening to him.
After that night, he and I became acquainted on Facebook. We’d occasionally exchange private messages about current events. He had lots of strong opinions.
This past summer, Mallett expressed support for my union as we tried to win our first contract with Bangor Daily News management. Part of our strategy was to get Maine celebrity endorsement. Mallett graciously gave us his and he and I collaborated on a meme the union could use in the campaign.
The union ended up not needing to deploy the meme but I’ll be forever grateful for his support.
My thin personal relationship with Mallett is more than eclipsed by the deep connection I feel to his music. Here are five of his songs you should listen to, right now.
The Garden Song
His original, back-to-the-land hit sung by everyone from Pete Seeger to John Denver to Kermit the Frog. I heard Mr. Mallett sing this a couple years back at a Bernie Sanders rally. It still rang good and real and true.
“Grain for grain, sun and rain
Find my way in nature’s chain
Tune my body and my brain
To the music of the land”
Hope for One and All
From an album he released decades after “The Garden Song,” in the 1990s, proving that his talents were only getting richer and more vital. This is the first song I played after learning he was gone. I needed to hear a little hope.
“If a man still does the best he can, though no one cares
If mother’s still rock their babes to sleep, and say a little prayer
If the old car starts when the wind blows cold, way down in the fall
If there’s one good spark in the falling dark
there’s hope for one and all”
Fire
This one gives me chills, every single time I hear it. It was my first favorite Dave Mallett song. The lyrics are powerful and his matter-of-fact, not overly dramatized delivery somehow give it even more gravitational pull.
“And there’s fire, fire out in the barn, Father
Fire in the chicken house, too
And the flames run so high that they’re scorchin’ the sky
And there’s not a damn thing we can do”
The Ballad of St. Anne’s Reel
I used to play this one every night alongside Fiddlin’ Phil from Munjoy Hill. I learned it from the oral, folk tradition from Portland folksinger Sean Sheerins. I stopped playing it when Phil died because it doesn’t make much sense without a fiddle. To be honest, does anything?
“He said there’s magic in the fiddler and there’s magic in this town
There’s magic in the dancers’ feet and the way they put them down
People smiling everywhere, boots and ribbons, locks of hair
Laughter, old blue suits and Easter gowns”
Phil Brown
The songwriters I admire most, and try my hardest to emulate, are the one’s who sing about other people, rather than themselves. The older I get, the more I think songs with the word “I” in them are boring. David Mallett knew how to tell other people’s stories, thank goodness.
“But he could paint a picture, and he could capture life
And no one ever felt things more than he
He was never much for roses, he’d sooner paint the thorns
‘Cause he found a keener beauty there
That no one else could see”