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One of the most respected instrumentalists in rock music, David Lindley is best known for his long association with Jackson Browne. Other artists he’s worked with include Bob Dylan, Rod Stewart, Bruce Springsteen, James Taylor, Ziggy Marley and our own Pahinui Brothers.
Adept at an array of stringed instruments, he most recently joined guitar legend Eric Clapton on the tribute album “The Breeze: An Appreciation of JJ Cale,” which included guests such as Tom Petty, Mark Knopfler and Willie Nelson.
Performing in the Maui Arts & Cultural Center’s McCoy Studio Theater on Oct. 23, Lindley draws from a rich pool of music, which can embrace rock, folk, African, Hawaiian, Middle Eastern, reggae, bluegrass, Turkish and blues styles.
Santa Barbara Noozhawk concert review recently noted that “Lindley played a mind-boggling collection of stringed instruments, including the saz baglama, bouzouki, Weissenborn lap slide guitar and a flat-back Turkish oud. Each has a distinctive sound, and in Lindley’s hands, each was the medium for an amazing musical journey.”
Among the instruments this virtuoso loves, Lindley is a devotee of the vintage Weissenborn slide guitar, which was popularized by Hawaiian music legend Sol Ho’opi’i in the 1920s.
“They’re really wonderful, “Lindley explains. “I mostly use it for playing blues, but I can play it in any context, even Middle Eastern stuff.”
Born in 1944, Lindley says that his first instrument was a Kamaka baritone ukulele, and by the time he was 18, he had won the Topanga Canyon Bluegrass Banjo and Fiddle Contest.
In the late ’60s, he helped form the innovative, psychedelic world-music group Kaleidoscope, which Led Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page once proclaimed as his favorite band of all time.
Into the 1970s, he became an in-demand session player and was heard on many hits including Carole King’s “It’s Too Late,” Warren Zevon’s “Werewolves of London, and Joni Mitchell’s “Carey.” A key element in the success of Browne’s popularity is Lindley’s steel guitar soloing, which ignited Browne’s classic hit single, “Running on Empty.”
“It was fun not being the center of attention,” he says about his time with Browne. “I could just sit back there and twang. It was wonderful.”
In 2010, the two musicians released the Grammy-nominated, live album “Love is Strange: En Vivo Con Tino,” recorded in Spain, which reframed Browne’s music in an acoustic context.
“I really liked doing that,” he continues. “It was great for Jackson because he went into different forms of music.”
On his own albums, Lindley first expressed affection for reggae in his debut “El Rayo-X,” which included a reggae-infused version of the Everly Brothers’ hit “Bye Bye Love.”
He had discovered reggae in the early ’70s while living in London. “The first day I was in England driving into the city I heard Desmond Dekker and the Aces. It was a big revelation, a huge thing. I went looking for records and bought The Pioneers and The Melodians, stuff from that era. I heard a version of ‘Bye Bye Love’ and filed that away. It sounded like bluegrass with the three-part harmonies. I could hear the influence and it was natural for me because I had been playing bluegrass for a long time.”
His latest recordings include “Big Twang,” which features humorous songs like “Tuna Fish Blues,” where he muses about having “mercury oozing all around my brain,” and bizarre goings on “Down in the Vatican Library,” along with an extraordinary version of Blind Willie Johnson’s blues song, “Soul of a Man,” which was featured on an episode of the TV show “Hell on Wheels.”
One of his most well-known songs, “Cat Food Sandwiches,” laments the dire nature of backstage food, “made by a woman who looks like Jimmy Page.”
He’s got a great story about playing it one night.
“I was opening for Jackson in San Diego playing that song, and Ravi Shankar was in the audience. He came backstage at the intermission and he’s laughing and saying, ‘I know exactly what you mean, you can’t be rude to people who prepare food for you, and sometimes it is like cat food.’ He’s one of my musical heroes from my childhood and the thing he’s talking about is cat food sandwiches.”
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Grammy Award-winning musician Peter Rowan is best known as a leading exponent of bluegrass music. With a career spanning more than five decades, including time with Bill Munroe’s seminal band, the Bluegrass Boys; and Jerry Garcia in the band Old & In the Way, Rowan was recently celebrated in the documentary “The Tao of Bluegrass,” which chronicled his professional musical career and spiritual path.
Performing solo at the MACC on Friday, Rowan is also known for touring with the rock band The Free Mexican Airforce: Big Twang Theory, playing bluegrass and rockabilly; and Peter Rowan & Crucial Reggae, featuring reggae legends Tony Chin and Fully Fullwood.
Rowan began his career in 1963 as the singer, rhythm guitarist and songwriter for the Bluegrass Boys, led by Munroe, the “founding father of bluegrass.” In the late 1960s and early ’70s, Rowan was involved in a number of rock, folk and bluegrass projects, including the Earth Opera (which frequently opened for The Doors); Sea Train; Muleskinner; and the country rock group The Rowans, in which he played alongside brothers Chris and Lorin Rowan.
After the brothers disbanded, Rowan teamed with Garcia, David Grisman and Vassar Clements to form the bluegrass supergroup Old & In the Way. Their debut album, released in 1975, became one of the best-selling bluegrass albums of all time. It was during this incarnation that Rowan composed “Panama Red,” a subsequent hit for New Riders of the Purple Sage, and a classic ever since.
Rowan subsequently embarked on a well-received solo career in the late ’70s, releasing critically acclaimed records such as “Dustbowl Children” (a Woody-Guthrie style song about the Great Depression); “Yonder” (a record of old-time country music in collaboration with ace dobro player Jerry Douglas); and two exceptional bluegrass albums, “The First Whippoorwill” and “Bluegrass Boy.”
An interest in reggae led to the 2005 release of “Reggabilly,” partly recorded in Kingston, Jamaica, with backing by Bob Marley guitarist Chinna Smith and Jimmy Cliff’s drummer Squidley Cole.
His newest album, “Dharma Blues,” largely comprises spiritually influenced songs he wrote while traveling in India and Japan in the 1990s. Melding folk, bluegrass, blues, country and Indian music, it includes singer Gillian Welch and former Jefferson Airplane bassist Jack Casady.
“I’ve always wished that my music would be something that’ll inspire people to be bold in their own search,” he told Arizona Public Radio. “The Dharma Blues is the process of searching for enlightenment and writing songs about it. You keep on the search and even the search is dark sometimes, but you never let your light be dimmed. I would say that’s the message of the record.”
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The fifth annual OktoberFEST benefit for Pacific Cancer Foundation will be held from 4 to 8 p.m. on Saturday at the Ocean Vodka Farm in Kula. This cool festival of Hawaiian, jazz and blues features John Cruz, Benny Uyetake, John Zangrando, Fulton Tashombe and guitarist Joe Cano, plus 2014 Hoku nominee Andrew Molina, the Zeshin Daiko Drummers and some winners from the 2014 Maui Youth Ukulele Contest. Advance tickets are $35 and $40 at the door. Folks are encouraged to bring lawn chairs and beach blankets. It’s a 21-and- older event. For further details and tickets, visit www.pacificcancerfoundation.org.