David Lightbourne, in tie and hat, at the 2008 Upland Breakdown.
Photo by Elliott Johnston.
David Lightbourne, a Laramie -based musician, writer, and polymath, died last Friday. Lightbourne grew up in Chicago, went to college in Iowa, and spent some time with legendary weirdo folkies the Holy Modal Rounders in Portland. His gargantuan obsession with American folk music led him to start his own Portland-based group, the Metropolitan Jug Band in the late ’70s. He relocated to Laramie in the ‘90s and started David Lightbourne’s Stop and Listen Boys.
Lightbourne and his friend Joe Carducci, a former A&R man for seminal American independent rock label SST, have spent some quality time in Fort Collins over the years. Lightbourne has been on KRFC several times, both playing old folk and blues songs and offering up his vast knowledge of old and obscure American music. Most recently, Lightbourne has frequented Beth’s “SuperMondayBuffett,” which airs from 3-5pm on Mondays. Lightbourne has also played at several local venues including the Swing Station (now the Bar SS), as well as recorded at the Blasting Room (the Stop and Listen Boys’ album Monkey Junk).
I first met Lightbourne and Carducci in 2007, when covering their annual mini roots fest the Upland Breakdown for the Rocky Mountain Chronicle. The Breakdown, which had historically been held in one location (Centennial, Wyoming), was making an extroverted leap to Fort Collins. In the end, the Breakdown hardly made a splash in Fort Collins. One possibility for the sparse turnout was that Lightboune and Carducci spent most of the article talking trash on perennial Colorado obsessions like contemporary bluegrass music and the Grateful Dead.
It was Lightbourne’s iconoclasm, his humor, his mind, and his militant dedication to music that hooked me in. I might not have agreed with everything he said, but I could sure listen for hours. In fall 2008, I drove up to his apartment in Laramie and spent an afternoon interviewing him before his weekly open jam at The Buckhorn Bar. It turned out to be one of the last interviews he gave.
You can read excerpts from that interview and find out more about David Lightbourne at Joe Carducci’s blog, The New Vulgate.
I’m gonna miss you, David.
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