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I think I was about ten or eleven years old when I first heard Brother Dave. In my dad's record collection was (and still is) "Rejoice Dear Hearts." It looked kinda like it had preaching or white gospel music on it. Was I in for a shock . . . Even after the first few times I heard it, I really didn't understand it. Growing up in southern suburbia as I did, I didn't 'get' a lot of the references. With a then-atrophied jazz gland, the comedy & music he performed seemed to me somehow hokey, mysterious and wild at the same time. Now, of course, I'm wiser and cooler. Brother Dave's musical talents inescapably inform the monologues. He was a jazz drummer and scat singer before he was a comedian. His rubbery voice, capable of quickly rising from bubba growls to aunt-josephine falsettos, is used with a jazzy sense of timing. But it's in his mind, you know, how he stands apart from countless nightclub and television acts. It's not just the jokes, man, it's the ideas. Concepts, even. Half beatnik, half good-old-boy, he offers an eccentric, a little jaded, and definitely southern perspective on the Modern Predicament (whatever that means to you). I definitely ain't talking about no Jeff Foxworthy, cousin. Dave Gardner doesn't stoop to tell us "how to spot a redneck" -or anybody else . . . He tells you how to spot YOURSELF, without leering vaudevillian thrills. He exemplifies a southern tradition, of the story-telling 'wise fool:' a person you're sure is just as slow and ignorant as can be, but whose native cynicism, cunning and wit are thus camouflaged. You're taken in, and if you're lucky, not made into a sucker. "What did he say" one asks, then realizes: "He just said SOMETHING!" It might be something pro-found, something important, but I bet it was something funny- something about our lives, our patterns of thinking. His manifestation of this archetype is reminiscent of Mark Twain, inventor of American popular culture. If you've ever read "The Innocents Abroad," or almost any of Twain's stuff, and you're also hip to the Gospel of Brother Dave, then you probably know what I mean. And if you don't, why, you should educate yourself.

LETTERS When we first posted the site there was nothing about Brother Dave on the web. Somebody had to do it! MAILBAGS After it had run for a year the mail started to pour in. No more frustration from not finding the Brother online . . . [ home ] [ audio ] [ discography ] [ opeds ] [ congregation ] [ obituaries ] [ email us ]