Singer/ songwriter/ multi-instrumentalist/ "Looping Artist" David Bruce is based out of Chicago. On stage, he plays all the instruments a band would, by himself, LIVE, one at a time through "Looping pedals" that record the music he plays and then "loops" the music back to the beginning of the phrase then repeats itself. He usually will loop an acoustic guitar, electric guitar, bass, percussion, keys, and multiple vocal parts, all live. Oftentimes, his own music is spontaneous as he spills his heart out on the stage.
He has played at various venues across the country, as well as in numerous Chicago-area clubs. His latest album, SOAK, is a collection of raw, intimate, spontaneous, "soaking" songs designed to carry the listener into an atmosphere of peace and rest. His next CD, SOAK ll, is due out in April, 2011. He stopped selling hard copies of his CDs and started making his music available online to hear and purchase and SOAK has now been purchased by people in 11 different countries.
He started playing the bar scene in the Chicago area in 1997 part time and then started the rigorous task of booking himself 16 to 20 gigs a month under the name, "G'tarman Dave" playing cover tunes and to his surprise became a well known name playing sing-along tunes that often times became entirely crazy and out of hand", as he puts it. "I knew how to play anything I heard, and I loved playing hard to play songs on my acoustic, but what seemed to get people's attention is when I'd do sing-along stuff that everyone knew."
"I had a list of 250 or so songs I'd xerox on colorful paper & put it on all the tables with the name 'G'TARMAN DAVE' at the top and my old website, GtarmanDave.com. I'd make up funny lyrics to songs sometimes and started just coming up with all this comedic banter that would fly out of my mouth before I knew what I was saying. I'd have people pay me $5 or $10 to sing about their friends, and man-I could make up lyrics off the top of my head fast! I was often surprised with what I was coming up with and wished I could remember the words later."
"Next thing you know, I was getting so much in tips, along with what the bars were paying me, I left my job! I couldn't believe I was averaging over $100 a night in tips, and it was all because I'd get the crowd involved. I bought an old Boomerang pedal that enables you to record your guitar on it live and I'd throw down 2 guitar parts, then tap on the guitar to make drum sounds, and then I'd play lead guitar parts over it and people went nuts! I came up with some amazing ways to keep people in the bar, or get them off the street into the bar and the owners saw it and would let me play their place twice a month. Net thing I knew, I was sending out post cards to 600 people on my mailing list with my schedule for the next 3 months on it! It was a lot of work, but I found it worked better than email because I'd literally write on the post card, "STICK ME ON YOUR FRIDGE!!" and people would! LOL!"
But after 5 years of playing nothing but cover tunes, David was getting tired of the same tunes 150 shows a year. Dave didn't know he could write anything worthy of much praise, but he got the songwriting bug and came out with his first CD, HELLO, ITS ME..." in 2002 and played all original tunes for the next 10 months, with the occasional Dave Matthews song, which he loved to play because of all the guitar soloing he could do. "The crowd always liked when I did one of his songs. So I'd do another and next thing you know, there'd be more $10s and $20s in the tip jar! PLUS people would buy my CD!" He began selling CDs at all his shows at $10 bucks a pop and started taking pictures of everyone that bought a CD and posted them on his website and it became quite the in thing. Fans would take pictures of 10 and 15 people at a time on stage with him holding the CD they just bought which brought more attention to him so more people would take a look at the CDs and buy one too. He started getting requests for HIS songs and people would even sing along to his words. "That used to blow my mind. I'd have to fight getting teary eyed, sometimes, because those songs were deep for me because of what I was writing about.
Songs like, Could I Be In Love With You?, One More Chance, The Real Thing, and The Kinda Guy became crowd favorites. "But I got the most emails from people because of a song I wrote called Rosie. It was the only song I'd ever written that was about a fictitious character. Its about an older man talking to his wife, Rosie, and what it was like in the spring of '51 when his father let him borrow the Buick to take her out when they first started dating. But as the song progresses, you realize all his kids are grown and he's an old man and she's passed on already. I'd get people writing me about how they were in tears when they'd listen to that song and how it helped them cope with their grandmother's passing. Very intense stuff."
Since then, David has come out with a few independent CDs that he sold at bars and colleges he played. And then he started diggin' even deeper and started writing songs from a more spiritual perspective. "My songs have always been spiritual anyways. Many would ask who it was I was singing about in some of my songs. "God', I'd tell them. I was always worried I'd get laughed at, but surprisingly it made sense to a lot of people." Could I Be In Love With You was a song written to David's wife, although he hasn't met her yet." Yea, that's a funny one... The lyrics are all about the woman I haven't met yet!
I've been so - lonely here
Without you - these past 5 days
I just called - you to say...
I miss the way - your hair dances gently on your shoulders
Would you like to - come over?
Tell me that you will
Your side of - the bed is clean & neat
The sheets you gave me - Egyptian cotton, that was sweet
I'm goin' crazy - here without your love...
My mouth is - parched & oh so dry
Without your kisses, they're always on my mind
My skin is - hungry for your touch
Could I be in love with you?
You make me crazy with the little things you do
Do you feel the same way about me?
"Problem is, I haven't even met the girl I'm singing about! LOL! But the point I'm making is that I sleep on one side of the bed and the other side is for her whenever I meet her. And that's actually true! I'm still like that today! I sleep on one side of the bed! LOL! I've fallen in love three times in my life and thought I found her, but I guess I'm still waiting. And I don't date, so it is a little weird, I guess. I don't believe in dating. If I find a girl I like, that's it. She's the one and I just am with her. So for now, its just me and my cat, Lucy, and unfortunately-she doesn't like being held much. LOL!"
That's where David comes up with a lot of his latest tunes over the last few years. He stopped playing the clubs and is usually involved in trying to finish a song from any of the three albums he's working on at the time. "A.D.D. and depression are a booger! LOL! But that's where I seem to draw from the well springs that affect the most people. I get emails from all over the world now and have people thanking me for helping them through a lonely time or helping them hear the voice of God more clearly." David's music just seems to convey a longing and a looking. Looking and longing for something that always seems just beyond his grasp. Love.
Most wouldn't know that's his heart's desire, to find love and be able to show people love, because he's ALWAYS smiling. In fact David teaches people how to smile, forgive, love unconditionally and learn about life through relationships with one another and with God, in the best way he can understand God. "I'm not here to push anything on anyone, but I am here to help people who've had things pushed on THEM. And, unfortunately, many people I meet have had one form or another of religion or a list of religious do's and don'ts pushed on them. God isn't like that at all. He's actually not as mad as a lot of "churches" make Him out to be. That's what the last two CDs, SOAK and SOAK ll are about. Soaking in God's love." Some call it 'soaking in the Presence of God'. I want it to be more than that. I want people to rest. I want people to slow down. I want people to know that they are loved and that they can love and forgive those who've hurt them. When they get to that point, which can sometimes take years, that's when people are able to be happy with themselves and love completely."
That's one of the reasons the 2 hour long album,SOAK ll, took so long to finish. I can't just put out a "product". Its gotta be inside me. Its got to be real. SOAK was an hour long album. Some of these songs on SOAK ll are 15 minutes long or more, and the whole CD is 2 hours long. One song, God's Bathtub, is 27 minutes long. I had that on one of my 4 myspace sites, as well as on this site for a while, but I finally took it down because everyone was thanking me for putting it on the site to hear for free and they were going to bed to it every night! LOL! That's awesome! But I gotta eat, too! So I took it down from this site until I could put it on the album download."
David's journey has been an interesting one. He has been through much hurt as well as many good times, and is learning to trust that all things work together for good to those who love, and that is something he truly tries to walk in constantly. He has already started on songs for his next album, Atmospheres, which will be an ambient guitar album all done live using his looping pedals, as well as the music he's working on for the new EP with Chicago band David Goliath. Keep your eye on his work. This is going to be an interesting decade.
He has played at various venues across the country, as well as in numerous Chicago-area clubs. His latest album, SOAK, is a collection of raw, intimate, spontaneous, "soaking" songs designed to carry the listener into an atmosphere of peace and rest. His next CD, SOAK ll, is due out in April, 2011. He stopped selling hard copies of his CDs and started making his music available online to hear and purchase and SOAK has now been purchased by people in 11 different countries.
He started playing the bar scene in the Chicago area in 1997 part time and then started the rigorous task of booking himself 16 to 20 gigs a month under the name, "G'tarman Dave" playing cover tunes and to his surprise became a well known name playing sing-along tunes that often times became entirely crazy and out of hand", as he puts it. "I knew how to play anything I heard, and I loved playing hard to play songs on my acoustic, but what seemed to get people's attention is when I'd do sing-along stuff that everyone knew."
"I had a list of 250 or so songs I'd xerox on colorful paper & put it on all the tables with the name 'G'TARMAN DAVE' at the top and my old website, GtarmanDave.com. I'd make up funny lyrics to songs sometimes and started just coming up with all this comedic banter that would fly out of my mouth before I knew what I was saying. I'd have people pay me $5 or $10 to sing about their friends, and man-I could make up lyrics off the top of my head fast! I was often surprised with what I was coming up with and wished I could remember the words later."
"Next thing you know, I was getting so much in tips, along with what the bars were paying me, I left my job! I couldn't believe I was averaging over $100 a night in tips, and it was all because I'd get the crowd involved. I bought an old Boomerang pedal that enables you to record your guitar on it live and I'd throw down 2 guitar parts, then tap on the guitar to make drum sounds, and then I'd play lead guitar parts over it and people went nuts! I came up with some amazing ways to keep people in the bar, or get them off the street into the bar and the owners saw it and would let me play their place twice a month. Net thing I knew, I was sending out post cards to 600 people on my mailing list with my schedule for the next 3 months on it! It was a lot of work, but I found it worked better than email because I'd literally write on the post card, "STICK ME ON YOUR FRIDGE!!" and people would! LOL!"
But after 5 years of playing nothing but cover tunes, David was getting tired of the same tunes 150 shows a year. Dave didn't know he could write anything worthy of much praise, but he got the songwriting bug and came out with his first CD, HELLO, ITS ME..." in 2002 and played all original tunes for the next 10 months, with the occasional Dave Matthews song, which he loved to play because of all the guitar soloing he could do. "The crowd always liked when I did one of his songs. So I'd do another and next thing you know, there'd be more $10s and $20s in the tip jar! PLUS people would buy my CD!" He began selling CDs at all his shows at $10 bucks a pop and started taking pictures of everyone that bought a CD and posted them on his website and it became quite the in thing. Fans would take pictures of 10 and 15 people at a time on stage with him holding the CD they just bought which brought more attention to him so more people would take a look at the CDs and buy one too. He started getting requests for HIS songs and people would even sing along to his words. "That used to blow my mind. I'd have to fight getting teary eyed, sometimes, because those songs were deep for me because of what I was writing about.
Songs like, Could I Be In Love With You?, One More Chance, The Real Thing, and The Kinda Guy became crowd favorites. "But I got the most emails from people because of a song I wrote called Rosie. It was the only song I'd ever written that was about a fictitious character. Its about an older man talking to his wife, Rosie, and what it was like in the spring of '51 when his father let him borrow the Buick to take her out when they first started dating. But as the song progresses, you realize all his kids are grown and he's an old man and she's passed on already. I'd get people writing me about how they were in tears when they'd listen to that song and how it helped them cope with their grandmother's passing. Very intense stuff."
Since then, David has come out with a few independent CDs that he sold at bars and colleges he played. And then he started diggin' even deeper and started writing songs from a more spiritual perspective. "My songs have always been spiritual anyways. Many would ask who it was I was singing about in some of my songs. "God', I'd tell them. I was always worried I'd get laughed at, but surprisingly it made sense to a lot of people." Could I Be In Love With You was a song written to David's wife, although he hasn't met her yet." Yea, that's a funny one... The lyrics are all about the woman I haven't met yet!
I've been so - lonely here
Without you - these past 5 days
I just called - you to say...
I miss the way - your hair dances gently on your shoulders
Would you like to - come over?
Tell me that you will
Your side of - the bed is clean & neat
The sheets you gave me - Egyptian cotton, that was sweet
I'm goin' crazy - here without your love...
My mouth is - parched & oh so dry
Without your kisses, they're always on my mind
My skin is - hungry for your touch
Could I be in love with you?
You make me crazy with the little things you do
Do you feel the same way about me?
"Problem is, I haven't even met the girl I'm singing about! LOL! But the point I'm making is that I sleep on one side of the bed and the other side is for her whenever I meet her. And that's actually true! I'm still like that today! I sleep on one side of the bed! LOL! I've fallen in love three times in my life and thought I found her, but I guess I'm still waiting. And I don't date, so it is a little weird, I guess. I don't believe in dating. If I find a girl I like, that's it. She's the one and I just am with her. So for now, its just me and my cat, Lucy, and unfortunately-she doesn't like being held much. LOL!"
That's where David comes up with a lot of his latest tunes over the last few years. He stopped playing the clubs and is usually involved in trying to finish a song from any of the three albums he's working on at the time. "A.D.D. and depression are a booger! LOL! But that's where I seem to draw from the well springs that affect the most people. I get emails from all over the world now and have people thanking me for helping them through a lonely time or helping them hear the voice of God more clearly." David's music just seems to convey a longing and a looking. Looking and longing for something that always seems just beyond his grasp. Love.
Most wouldn't know that's his heart's desire, to find love and be able to show people love, because he's ALWAYS smiling. In fact David teaches people how to smile, forgive, love unconditionally and learn about life through relationships with one another and with God, in the best way he can understand God. "I'm not here to push anything on anyone, but I am here to help people who've had things pushed on THEM. And, unfortunately, many people I meet have had one form or another of religion or a list of religious do's and don'ts pushed on them. God isn't like that at all. He's actually not as mad as a lot of "churches" make Him out to be. That's what the last two CDs, SOAK and SOAK ll are about. Soaking in God's love." Some call it 'soaking in the Presence of God'. I want it to be more than that. I want people to rest. I want people to slow down. I want people to know that they are loved and that they can love and forgive those who've hurt them. When they get to that point, which can sometimes take years, that's when people are able to be happy with themselves and love completely."
That's one of the reasons the 2 hour long album,SOAK ll, took so long to finish. I can't just put out a "product". Its gotta be inside me. Its got to be real. SOAK was an hour long album. Some of these songs on SOAK ll are 15 minutes long or more, and the whole CD is 2 hours long. One song, God's Bathtub, is 27 minutes long. I had that on one of my 4 myspace sites, as well as on this site for a while, but I finally took it down because everyone was thanking me for putting it on the site to hear for free and they were going to bed to it every night! LOL! That's awesome! But I gotta eat, too! So I took it down from this site until I could put it on the album download."
David's journey has been an interesting one. He has been through much hurt as well as many good times, and is learning to trust that all things work together for good to those who love, and that is something he truly tries to walk in constantly. He has already started on songs for his next album, Atmospheres, which will be an ambient guitar album all done live using his looping pedals, as well as the music he's working on for the new EP with Chicago band David Goliath. Keep your eye on his work. This is going to be an interesting decade.
