DAVID MORREALE
A Bio
"Writing songs is honest work, like digging ditches, or laying bricks. It's just not as hard,"
So says performing singer/songwriter David Morreale. Fans have described David as "the James Dean of the folk scene" and while his music is too broadly based to encompass only one style or genre, a beautifully-played acoustic guitar and soaring baritone are at the center of his sound.
When David hits the microphone, the intimacy and personal connection that he establishes with the audience is as apparent as his sense of humour and love for the stories he tells between songs. He is as likely to launch into a story as he is to sing one of the songs from his new CD, "From The Dirt."
David left home at 16 and hit the road for ten years of hitchhiking and busking on European streets and in the London Underground. Homelessness, hard luck and constant movement were ever-present for David. Through this, his songs have a worldview that is uplifting, inspiring, hard-bitten and hard earned.
He traveled from his home in England, through France, Belgium, Holland, Germany, Italy, Yugoslavia, Greece, ("ah, Greece!") Holland and Austria. He made a living as a bartender, construction (and destruction) worker, waiter, chef, housepainter, guitar teacher, musician, writer, artist, cabinet-maker, record store clerk, street mime, and lumberjack. Really.
Says David, "I learned a lot about life and how hard it can be, not eating real well, singing ten and twelve hours a day, making it as best I could. Finding myself in a London diner one morning at the age of 17, with only enough money for breakfast or a guitar string stretched my head pretty good."
On his new CD, "From The Dirt," David has recorded a collection of songs in which he and his cast of characters experience poverty, redemption, joy, and what it means to watch ones dreams go up in smoke and try to fill the empty space they've left behind. The songs tell these stories with a warm sense of joy and love for the characters that is palpable. His lyrics explore common themes in uncommon ways: falling in and out of love (with, and without a net), crime and punishment, faith, love, hope, birth, death, joy, and felony.
David has played in some of the country's most prestigious venues including Nashville's Bluebird Cafe, The Point in Philadelphia, and Arlene Grocery, NYC among many others. *
David's played a festival or three and in 2002 took second place honours at The Susquehanna Music and Arts Festival songwriting contest. He was also a Recognized Finalist in The Plowshares Songwriting contest in 2004. Also in 2005, David won a Maryland State Arts Council grant in Composition.
David has shared stages with Brooks Williams, Tom Prasada-Rao, Eliot Bronson, Cliff Eberhardt and others, though none more famous than these guys.
"Everywhere I've been I've discovered and re-discovered that people are the same wherever I go. Strange. Beautiful. Worried. Happy. And I'm so lucky that many of them listen. I want you to listen too so that we can hear together the thing that connects us. Music is just a voice in the wild, leading us to where coffee is still a dime, children are happy, "where they hung the jerk that invented work," and no one has to dig ditches anymore."
- David Morreale, 2005
* David has also played untold numbers of pubs, clubs, bars, alleyways, streets, sidewalks, closets, basements, colleges, rallies, NASCAR tracks, backseats, doorways, dog-grooming rooms, pit beef BBQ ale houses, pie shops, and other places of ill-repute and bad reputation.
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