David HB Drake

by Tammy Peacy

Click the arrow to listen to David HB Drake

Don’t tell him that folk music is dead. Saying folk music is dead “is like saying people are dead. Nowadays if you’re washing dishes or mowing the lawn you might listen to and iPod, but when I was a kid we didn’t have that stuff. We had radio; we didn’t have television. We would sing while we were doing that stuff. In African culture everybody sings whatever work they’re doing. The work is lighter when you sing,” says David.

DHBD comes from a strong family tradition of music. His grandmother was a part of the Florentine Opera in Milwaukee. On Friday nights he would go with his brother and parents to a local bar for a fish fry. The boys would sit in a corner and watch as their parents danced. Their father sometimes played the accordion. Brought up during the John Wayne-era of real men don’t sing and dance, DHBD was raised to believe “Music is okay. Poetry is okay. Dancing is okay.” His family used to sing together at night. He remembers the first record they got was Harry Belafonte’s Christmas album.

DHBD spent a lot of time in Kenosha as a child. His parents sent him to spent summers on a farm where he learned an appreciation for nature and hard work. “A couple of my songs are written because of that farm.” One song in particular, Dried Out/If the Rain Don’t Come, was written specifically from his memories of the farm. “For a hundred years this farm has fed/ Has born our young and held our dead/ A hundred years our roots run deep/ To work the land and earn our keep.”

“An artist is very much like a single family farm,” he says. “You’re living on your skills. You are totally dependent on the “climate” of funding. You are your own businessman. You are working in your home and then going into the field to produce something beautiful and natural. We [artists] do it for the mind, farmers do it for the body.”

DHBD has played every nursing home, school, and library in the area. “Nobody hears about it. The paper isn’t going to cover somebody playing in a nursing home or in a school.”

He has plans to call Kenosha home within the next ten years. “My reasons for staying in Milwaukee are rapidly falling away,” he says. “I’m sixty. In ten years I’ll be seventy and I’m not going to want to drive to Chicago. But I’m certainly going to want access to the arts.” He would like to see a community within Kenosha where artist retirees can live and make their art. “I don’t want to be in a nursing home with a bunch of people who were accountants their entire lives,” he says. “Nothing against accountants, but we’re not going to have anything to talk about. I’m going to want to be in a place where, using public transportation, I can get to the lake. I’m going to want to be in a place where I can get to the arts. A place where it’s going to be safe and I can afford.”

He sees Kenosha as the place for this to happen. “The reason that I’m really excited about Kenosha is that you’ve just started AHA!. They’re working to bring the arts to Kenosha. Wouldn’t it be incredible to have, not just a performing or visual arts center, but a resident performing and visual arts community center where elders could come and interact with elder artists for workshops, for performances? Kids after school could come and learn from these mentors? If my hands can no longer play guitar, I can still teach someone else to do it.”

David HB Drake, you have been “exposed”

You can contact David at www.davidhbdrake.com
David HB Drake upcoming performances:

Tuesday December 11, 2007 at 1-4pm
Program: Let There be Light
At: Foresthill Highlands 8930 W Highland Park Av, Franklin , WI
Event Information Contact: 414-425-6611 / fhadmin@bizwi.rr.com

Wednesday December 12, 2007 at 2 pm
Program: Sing a Song of Christmas
At: New Berlin Regency 13750 W National Ave, New Berlin, WI
Event Information Contact: 262-789-1699 / aprilbassler@thci.org

Wednesday December 12th, 2007 at 7:00-8:30pm
Program: Blowing in the Wind
At: Appleton Public Library 225 N. Oneida St, Appleton, WI
Event Information Contact: 920-832-6392 / eeisen@apl.org

Friday December 13th, 2008 at 2pm
Program: Let there be Light
At: Capri Communities 3223 North St, East Troy, WI
Event Information Contact: 262-642-4800 / mglowinski@capricommunities.com

Thursday December 13, 2007 at 6:30pm
Program: Sing Along with Santa
At: East Troy Lions Library 3094 Graydon Ave, East Troy, WI
Event Information Contact: 262-642-6262 / Oconnell@easttroy.lib.wi.us

Tammy Peacy writes and lives in Kenosha