Traveling Man.

[NNadir]

[OAITW r.2.0]

1. I did not know you were a Dave Bromberg fan.

[NNadir]

3. Pretty much all of my adult life. I first saw him - before he was famous - on a small stage at a University.

He played his famous "Mr. Bojangles" accompanied by a bass player, who he introduced as "his band." I was hooked and went out and bought that first album, which I wore out over the years. I think I was 18 at the time.

I ripped off some of his guitar riffs for my version of "Delia" that I used to play in clubs when I was playing, although I was never able to do that bass and treble at the same time; I tried to make up for it with my voice.

At family parties when I was in my early 20's my Aunts used to always ask for me to play "Suffer if you want to sing the blues."

(I played both in different open tunings.)

He and Dave Van Ronk were huge influences in my musical life. I was a cheap imitation of both those guys.

I probably saw Bromberg perform more than 30 times; maybe more than 40, over the years. When he was playing in the New York area, I seldom missed seeing him at least once, including the period during which he would pretty much make his guitar talk while playing "Sharon" with a big band behind him.

He did a lot of shows at a club on Long Island in Roslyn, "My Father's Place." I'd check the Village Voice for the line up. He also did shows at the Bottom Line as I recall.

I also saw him at straight up solo performances, pure acoustic.

He was always unbelievable, his magnificent sense of humor hardly distracting from his transcendent playing and singing. The expressions he'd make were part of the act. Particularly funny were the faces he'd make when he'd play "Statesboro Blues." One would come away from one of his shows feeling incredibly high.

He probably should have been more famous than he actually was.

One had the sense that he was not merely a great musician, but a great human being as well.

[LuckyCharms]

4. I saw him in 1975 at my Alma Mater...

Harpur College, now called Binghamton University...

https://tunabase.com/setlists/1975/19750502.html

Bromberg and his band his band blew me away.

He opened for Hot Tuna.

One of my favorite regional bands, The Zen Tricksters, used to play at My Father's Place a lot back in the day.

I have family on Long Island.

[OAITW r.2.0]

6. Oh, you are just boasting now.

Binghamton was kinda of a nexus for great bands....like the Dead. I forget the route but the drive from MA was totally downhill from Albany.

[LuckyCharms]

7. You probably took Route 88 down from Albany...

which is a supremely boring drive

The Dead played 4 shows in Binghamton.

Their 1970 Harpur college show is legendary, rated in the top 5 of their performances. I was a bit too young to see that one.

I saw them in Binghamton in 1977, 1979 and 1983.

The '77 show was especially great, and was released as an album.

They pretty much played well in all of their upstate NY shows. Upstate was like the East Coast mecca for the Dead from some strange reason.

[OAITW r.2.0]

9. Worcester (when I saw the Dard play at Clark University with the New Riders in 71)_ was pretty awesome.

then Hartford, Binghamton. Was a fun time on my life.

[LuckyCharms]

11. Oh I hear you...

I've had more fun in my life than any human should be allowed to have.

I met so many people going to Dead shows. Became "pen pals" with many of them. Those were the days before the internet...exchanging names and addresses and landline numbers lol.

Nice to look back on those memories, isn't it OAITW?

Makes me wonder where the hell the time went...

[OAITW r.2.0]

12. Didn't the Dead explain this in Uncle John's Band?

[NNadir]

8. I've been to Binghamton University. My son applied there and was accepted into an honors program, but...

...he got a free ride (pretty much) elsewhere at a private school, where he thrived, although Binghamton made a decent offer, unlike Rutgers. At Rutgers, engineering is nowhere near as important as football. (They pissed me off with that stuff; it wasn't really my call, but I was offended by the offer.)

I didn't know that SUNY Binghamton had another name before it went into the SUNY system.

To be perfectly honest, I was never a huge Hot Tuna fan, and if I'd bought tickets for that show, it would have been to see Bromberg.

I grew up on Long Island, but left, pretty much for good about 40 years ago. I had a huge family there, so many cousins that I can't say I'd know all their names or faces, but most of them are gone from Long Island now; many of them are dead.

My stepmother's family is there, but I don't get out to see them that much anymore. She's a centenarian now, I should go one last time.

I have a fairly wealthy cousin who has a summer home in Nissequogue, to which he sometimes invites us. I haven't heard from him for a few years though.

My wife is from Staten Island; it's rather amazing that someone quite so beautiful as she could have emerged from a place that was mostly known for being a garbage dump, but that actually happened.

We left for California to get married, and lived there for a number of years before discovering that New Jersey is actually nirvana, the suckiness of Rutgers notwithstanding.

[LuckyCharms]

10. These are the name progressions...

Harpur College...SUNY Binghamton...Binghamton University.

I was in the School of Management.

My family is in East Islip...I've been down there a million times. George Washington Bridge to Cross Bronx Expressway to the Throgs Neck Bridge to Long island Expressway to the Southern State Parkway I think?

From what I know, Binghamton has a good engineering school, but it is relatively new in the scheme of things. It didn't exist when I was there.

Bromberg was better and much more memorable than Hot Tuna...gee...50 years ago and I still remember that show!

You did good by your son. It sounds like he is prospering and on a great path.

[NNadir]

13. I think at the time, Binghampton didn't have a formal Materials Science Engineering program...

...and he would have had to major in Physics.

I'm not sure why my son applied there to be honest. We did go to a SUNY open house event held in New Jersey where all the SUNY Universities had a table. Maybe someone talked him into applying there.

If I recall I think he applied to seven or eight schools and was accepted at all of them, but I knew which one he really wanted, which I didn't think I could afford, until they forked over big bucks.

They took him under their wings there.

I was telling him that I expected him to get a job over the summers, thinking along the lines of working at an ice cream shop, a pizza joint or something like that.

He did get summer jobs but not at an ice cream shop or a pizza joint.

After his Freshman year they sent him to France on an NSF grant to study specialized types of ceramics; for his Sophomore year, he interned at Oak Ridge National Lab working in the neutron spallation facility; his Junior year summer, Covid time he was supposed to go to the UK on an NSF grant for some data analysis work, but instead worked remotely in his childhood bedroom on the project. When he graduated his University offered him a one year scholarship for a Masters in which he ended up getting a stipend. He went right to graduate school for his nuclear engineering Ph.D where they gave him a generous stipend with no requirements for being a TA, although they kicked him extra money to grade exams.

His mother and I were very annoyed by all of this, because we thought the little brat should know something about about disappointment and suffering and struggle. He doesn't, but he visited us at Christmas and we were very pleased with what a fine young man he has become. He's a smart little bastard as well, and we're very proud of him as we are of his brother, who knows all about suffering, more than I would have liked, but triumphed anyway.

[OAITW r.2.0]

5. I loved "Midnight on the Water"...1975? I was living in Farmington, ME....so I could ski at Sugarloaf.

Alone and really enjoying my life experience. Skiing under the gondola was pretty awesome for me.

[LuckyCharms]

2. LOVE David Bromberg.