2008 Grammy Award nominee David Bromberg is a multi-instrumentalist (fiddle, many styles of acoustic and electric guitar, pedal steel guitar and Dobro), singer and songwriter. His musical style ranges from bluegrass, blues, folk, jazz, country to rock. He’s studied guitar with Reverend Gary and has played with Jerry Jeff Walker, Willie Nelson, Jorma Kaukonen, Jerry Garcia, Bob Dylan, George Harrison and Rusty Evans/The Deep.

On this night David Bromberg and his Big Band visited Red Bank, New Jersey’s Count Basie Theatre, an elegant little venue named after Red Bank native William “Count” Basie that accommodates a little over 1500 people. The opening act, Angel Band, whose lead singer and principal songwriter is David Bromberg’s wife, Nancy Josephson, came on stage and spent about an hour with us along with Bromberg for a couple of tunes.

Shortly thereafter, David Bromberg’s Big Band wasted very little time hitting the stage and spent another hour and half or so with us. I have to say that David Bromberg puts on a show like no one else. A few of the songs played this evening were “Sloppy Drunk,” “As the Years Go Passing By,” “Girl for Every Day of the Week,” and a medley of fiddle tunes: “Whiskey Before Breakfast,” “Bill Cheatem” and “Turkey in the Straw.” Bromberg refuses to take requests and he will go so far as to not even pefrorm any songs that he’s heard called out from the audience. At one point during the show he told people that if they keep it up they won’t have anything left to play and then stated that he was about to play something that no one would ever expect, and he launched into a smoking instrumental version of “Somewhere Over The Rainbow.”

Shortly thereafter the rest of the band left the stage and armed with an acoustic guitar, Mr. Bromberg, stepped to the end of the stage to play “Drown in My Own Tears,” written by Henry Glover, recorded & made famous by Ray Charles. Midway through the song, seemingly a member of the audience standing off to the side in an aisle started responding to his questions. This turned out to be Nancy Josephson along with the two other women from Angel Band: Aly Paige and Kathleen Weber. As always, it was an interesting evening that felt like being with old friends, friends whom this reviewer wishes to see again soon.