Introspective Americana
“… folk songs from a whole different direction … it’s as if you’re
sitting around in his living room on homemade furniture and Dave’s
trying out his fully formed, way-out ideas on you... The thoughts and
images flit around and land right in the place where you do your thinking.
Dersham doesn’t sound like Andrew Bird or Richard Thompson, but he sure
sounds like they hang out together. ”
– Marilyn Rea Beyer, The Midnight Special, WMFT, Chicago.
Over the past 25 years, Dave has played his own songs across 2 dozen states, sharing the stage with Buck Meek, Kris Delmhorst, Vance Gilbert, Mary Gauthier, Clif Eberhardt, Darlingside, Heather Maloney, and Adrianne Lenker. His music has been described as exquisite, distinctive, melancholy, off-beat, and marine. Dave completed his first CD in 2003. The Burn of Summer was played consistenty on Folk Radio, WUMB (UMASS/Boston), WERS (Emerson College), and earned distinction as a New Artist finalist for Mountain Stage, a nationally syndicated, live-radio production.
“Dersham is with unique vision, musically focused but
thematically broad. It's well worth rolling out your blanket
for seaward sounds and thought provoking words”
–Northeast Performer
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It's the final autumn of the 1980s, and Dave's enjoying the Stone Environmental School’s Friday night potluck at the director’s uber-cabin. This week was particularly compressed with activities such as the illumination of the small but mighty copepod, listening for the nocturnal, and interpretive tree-hugging with 10-year olds — and someone places Greg Brown’s In the Dark with You on the turn table.
He’s really good,” says Dale.
Dave whole-heartedly agrees, particularly while hearing Brown’s impish, deliberate mispronunciation of a particular vowel within the title track. Fast-forward to mid-January, a new decade, and Dave’s with his usual cohorts at the New Moon Coffee House, witnessing Greg in the flesh, singing of vulnerable women walking alone, men walking solo without familiar fears, and an impeccable recitation of the 18 opening lines of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. Such tour-de-force illuminated a flame that Dave slowly crystalized, venturing into the Boston folk circuit by the mid-90s.
Dave continues to carve his own path while remaining true to the wry wit, percussive groove, and lyricism of the Iowa troubadour. Similar themes of domesticity, melancholia, and occasional eco-tragedy abound. Currently, Dave plays solo, with sideplayers, or as a trio — often appearing as “Daphne Nasturtium.”
His 4th CD, Farce, will drop in 2027.