After 38 Years, David Roth Is Still Listening

There was one question I especially wanted to ask David Roth before his return to Wesley’s Place.

David has been a full-time musician for 38 years. He has performed on enormous stages and in tiny listening rooms. He has written songs that have traveled around the world and even beyond it. He has taught generations of songwriters.

What does he know now that he didn’t know when he was starting out?

His answer wasn’t about technique.

By now, David told me, he can tell fairly quickly whether someone he is watching is being honest and authentic.

“I’ll take that any day over fancy licks or verbal tricks.”

I thought about that answer because it seems to connect so many parts of David’s life.

When he was younger, David admits that he cared too much about what listeners thought of his songs. Eventually he learned to write in the first person, speak for himself and stop trying to hide behind his guitar. The more personal the songs became, the more listeners recognized themselves in them.

Teaching became another part of that journey.

In 1999, his friend and mentor Penny Nichols invited him to teach at the first SummerSongs songwriting camp. David hadn’t done much teaching, but he accepted and figured he would learn as he went.

He has been there ever since.

Before Penny died, she asked David to continue her vision for a songwriting community built on what he describes as a level playing field. The idea is that everyone is encouraged toward their highest creative potential and that the traditional division between teacher and student disappears. Everyone brings something to the conversation.

David now serves as Executive Director of SummerSongs, but he doesn’t talk about teaching as though wisdom flows in one direction.

“I learn as much in my classes from my fellow songwriters as they might learn from me. Probably more.”

His years of teaching have changed his own writing as well. David says his early process was fairly free-wheeling. Helping other writers made him think more deliberately about structure and about the questions that can help a song get off the ground.

There is another place where David has spent years giving other musicians an opportunity to be heard.

For more than two decades, he has hosted the Full Moon Open Mic on Cape Cod. The idea reaches all the way back to his years in New York, when Monday-night open mics became his training ground.

What stayed with him was the remarkable simplicity of it. For five or eight minutes, anyone could have an audience’s undivided attention.

“The world is quick to give all the attention to those with the loudest microphones,” David told me. “I love to provide an opportunity for everyone else to claim their voice.”

I think that explains something about David’s affection for listening rooms too.

I asked him specifically about Wesley’s Place, where there are no televisions or bar conversations competing with the music and very little distance between performer and audience.

“There’s nothing like people getting together in a room in person,” he said.

David described the physical sensation of holding a guitar and singing, feeling the instrument vibrate against him while something passes between performer and audience. Technology can reproduce sound and pictures remarkably well. It cannot reproduce that exchange.

“It feels good, and it feels like it’s why I’m here.”

That is one of the reasons I wanted David back at Wesley’s Place.

We have heard him here before, both on his own and with Anne Hills. I already know how well his music works in this setting. There is something different about hearing a songwriter when there is nothing else demanding our attention and nowhere for either performer or listener to hide.

At the end of our interview, I asked David what he hoped people would carry with them when they left his concert.

After all the thoughtful answers he had given me about authenticity, songwriting, human connection and 38 years spent making music, I was prepared for something profound.

His answer was two words.

“My merchandise.”

I laughed when I read it, and I suspect that’s part of what 38 years have taught David Roth too. There is a place for meaning, honesty and songs that say something about being alive.

There is also a place for a good laugh at yourself.

But maybe we should just lock the doors until the last CD is sold!

I’m looking forward to having David back at Wesley’s Place. Friday at 7, at 100 W Cossitt in La Grange. Tickets are available on this website or at the door.