Dave Tamkin is Keeping It Real

Dave Tamkin

Live @ eTown

★★★★

Dave Tamkin is a Boulder-based (by way of Chicago) acoustic musician armed with a strong tenor voice and some fine guitar skills. He has shared the stage with luminaries such as Donovan, Guster, Peter Mulvey, and The Violent Femmes. His new live-performance EP is a very good reason to get to know him up close and personal. It is both energetic and has something to say—much like a few of his personal influences: Martin Sexton, Keb 'Mo, and Wilco.

Tamkin often travels with a band, but this solo performance is as stripped down to the basics. "Bleeding Orange" comes at you with a riff that sounds like an acoustic intro to a Who song, but it frames a song on a classic theme: being on the road, wondering if it's worth it—"Building dreams with wire strings and napkins"—and hoping "just to find my way back home." He's aware there's nothing new about any of this—"Generations sing my story"—but he lays it out with earnest longing. One of the things I particularly like about Tamkin is that what you hear is what you get. You can sample what he calls his "rhythmic acoustic" sound on "Fly Me." He's putting it all out there, even though we can hear in the background that not all audience members are tuned in. Another stringed percussive example can be heard on a song titled "Tuesday," with vocal phrasings and lyric snippets that hint at Paul Simon. The instrumentation can only be described as robust. If you think any of this stuff is easy, listen to how Tamkin builds "Drift" to what sounds as if it will be a big crescendo at 2:30, but then pops a few notes that take down the tempo as prelude to a flying spray of runs and ringing strings that take us to another level.

This is unapologetic folk music—the kind where a guy with great guitar licks stands in front of an audience and sings his guts out in the hope someone is listening carefully. He got my attention. He deserves yours. Check out the entire EP at NoiseTrade. If you don't know this site, it allows you to give a donation directly to the musician instead of the .006 cents per song an artist earns on Spotify.

Rob Weir