Jimmy Martin Calls Him “Little Sweets”: Veteran Sunny Mountain Boy David Nance
By Art Menius
In June of 1987 seemingly everyone in bluegrass came to Darrel Adkins’ Frontier Ranch festival east of Columbus, Ohio. The crowds filled the large covered seating area, then spread up the hillside behind and to the south and the roadway to the north. On either side of the venerable stage big screens simulcasting the performances permitted everyone a good view. The people kept coming, and no one hung at the camper as the powerful line-up reached its apogee with a reunion of Jimmy Martin with Paul Williams and J.D. Crowe after twenty-five years apart.
The Seldom Scene preceded the Sunny Mountain Boys on stage. David Nance, hired just a couple of weeks before as Martin’s first regular road resophonic guitar player, waited as nervously as would befit a new band member about to perform before the biggest bluegrass festival crowd he had ever seen. The Scene finished their encore and headed off stage, while the Sunny Mountain Boys headed on. Mike Auldridge spotted a fellow Dobrophile he had shown licks at previous festivals.
“The Dobro player I listened to the most when I first started was Mike Auldridge, as far as records,” Nance recalled. “When they came off stage, he said, ‘Man, how long have you been playing with Martin?’ I said, ‘Three weeks.’ He said, ‘I’m glad to see that you finally made it.’ That made me feel like I was actually a professional that someone of his caliber would make a statement like that. Mike had always been the one who helped me. He had always taken the time to show me stuff.”
Having recently reached a milestone ten years as a Sunny Mountain Boy, David Nance no doubt feels secure in his status as a professional. Secure enough that almost at the same time he has completed his first solo project for MidKnight Records. He cut it at Eastwood Studios with Wesley Easter engineering.
“It’s something I’ve been wanting to do for about five years and just now have the confidence to feel comfortable doing it. I finally got some material together that hasn’t been recorded to death. I wanted it to be different as far as material. I used Jim Mills playing banjo, Tim Smith playing fiddle, Rick Allred’s playing mandolin, a guy named Scott Hancock from Asheboro’s playing guitar, Darrin Moore, Jason’s brother, is playing stand up bass, and then I used John Mashburn on two cuts where we needed electric bass.
“Jimmy’s going to cut two songs with me. I’m excited about the album. I had been waiting until I really felt comfortable going into the studio and doing it and was able to find the musicians I wanted. Jim, Tim, and Rick have all played together in the past, so it was like a reunion. We cut it at Eastwood Studios in Cana, Virginia with Wesley Easter.”
Long time friend Lynwood Lunsford, an alumnus of the Sunny Mountain Boys and the Lost & Found, now playing banjo with Alabama’s Sand Mountain Boys, provided David with five strong original songs for the project. Otherwise, David explains, “We went back and got a lot of 1960s country stuff from Merle Haggard and Buck Owens. Stuff that’s really not bluegrass songs, but when you put them to acoustic music actually work out really well. We cut, for example, an old Porter Wagoner song, ‘Break Out the Bottle,’ but we did it to the timing of ‘Drink Up and Go Home’ with Jimmy Martin-style singing and all.”
Were it not for Lynwood and his drive to play the five with Martin, David probably never would have ended up a mainstay of Jimmy Martin’s band. That excellent story, however, demands some prefactory information.
David Nance grew up in Oak Ridge, North Carolina, just north and west of Greensboro, in a bluegrass family. His father Clyde, a gentleman in both senses of the word, played guitar in a number of local bands, filled in on area shows with the likes of Jim Eanes and Alan Shelton, and occasionally entertained the celebrated Greensboro fiddler Bobby Hicks for jam sessions. Born in 1964, by the time he was five David demonstrated a precocious interest in music. From his dad he quickly learned the G, C, and D chords on the guitar. Yet he already had an interest in the resophonic guitar, which he always calls a Dobro, as a small child, so Clyde soon placed a 1928 National Stainless Steel in the boy’s hands. “I liked the sounds you could make with it. That’s what fascinated me.” Nowadays, David plays two custom built instruments, an R.E. Lee and a Gibson Dobro which he received in December 1996 as an official endorser.
Music helped David and Clyde enjoy an enviably close relationship until the senior Nance passed away in May 1990. The gig with Martin developed into a wonderful experience for Clyde. “At first, he didn’t believe it,” David confesses. “After my first three or four shows my dad got really exciting and before he died he actually went on the road with me just about every weekend for three or four years. He and Jimmy got along really well. My dad’s one of the few guys I’ve seen sit in the van and talk with Jimmy for four or five hours straight, and neither one of them get tired of talking to the other. My dad had never been out of North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia, and Tennessee. I got to take him to twenty-five or twenty-six states. That makes me feel good that he got to travel with me before he passed away. It gave me the opportunity to spend a lot of time with him, and it gave him the opportunity to do a lot of things he never would have otherwise. For about three years he went to 75% of the shows. I’d do the driving, and he’d do the talking. I really appreciate that.”
Always a show-off, hungry for the attention of his peers, by fifth grade at Summerfield Elementary David was teaching basic chords to his students. That year he made his first solo appearance, sliding his way through “Jingle Bells” at the school Christmas program. He was also playing Dobro and singing gospel music in church with his family. In high school he took band to learn to read music and pick up some music theory, thus adding saxophone to his repertoire.
By this time David had joined his father in the Southland Playboys. He gained invaluable stage experience playing with them each Friday and Saturday night at the Carolina Circle Mall in Greensboro and appearing on the early morning show on the local CBS affiliate TV station, WFMY. By 1982 Clyde and David were performing on occasion with the veteran banjoman Bobby Atkins, who had played three separate stints with Bill Monroe, and his long standing band the Countrymen. David played Dobro on the group’s 1983 Cattle Records release, Back in the Good Ole Days (Cattle LP 52). Around this time Clyde, David, and Sandy Chrisco entered a number of contests as the Happy Hollow Band. The Nances joined the McPherson Brothers, a venerable local bluegrass band from Richard Petty’s hometown of Randleman, North Carolina, in 1983. They performed on the McPherson Brothers’ album Leaving Just For Fun (Lark LRLP 5013). An otherwise tepid notice in the Carolina Bluegrass Review praised David’s playing. Booked by the colorful Greensboro bluegrass character Bill Hill, the McPhersons played several festivals in the Carolinas and Virginias, with David, who also sang lead and tenor with the ensemble, making his festival debut at Bass Mountain. Clyde would remain with the McPerson Brothers until his death.
David’s personal life also experienced change in ’83. One day that summer a drop dead gorgeous young lady from Burlington, North Carolina named Gail Dodson accompanied her step-mother to bring her car to dealer repair shop where the outgoing David worked. He still knew how to get attention, and soon the two good looking young folks were engaged in such conversation that his boss suggested that he entertain the two customers to lunch while the mechanics finished with the car. Two months later they brought the car back in for more work and lunch. In November David accepted a dinner invitation from Gail, and their wedding followed but ten months later, shortly after David’s twentieth birthday.
Their union has produced issue. Jordan, born in 1987, has played on stage at Bass Mountain with the Sunny Mountain Boys. “Jordan plays a little with the drums and has learned the forward roll on the Dobro and maybe three chords. But he’s not jumped into being really gung-ho about it, and I haven’t pushed it on him,” says his father. Their daughter Chandler Dae, born in 1993, “is starting to sing a lot since we’ve been practicing for this record. She knows just about all the words for the cuts that are going to be on my album.”
Although Jimmy Martin can’t help but comment about Gail from the stage and tells audiences that the musician he calls “Little Sweets” is married, but not in this state, he has continued his family friendly policy for Gail and the kids, just as he did for Clyde. “It’s almost like a big vacation because my family gets to go with me a lot now that Gail has a job with a flexible schedule. Jordan probably travels with us seven or eight shows a year. Jimmy’s really took him in. Jimmy kinda buddies around with him. It’s really neat that Jimmy’s allowed me to do that. We’ve got him a bike that we leave on the bus. When we get to the festival, he’ll take his bike and go.”
A significant musical partnership began in 1985 when David met Lunsford at a fiddlers convention. David gave his notice to the McPherson Brothers and hosted a early 1986 meeting at his Reidsville home at which Big Sandy Bluegrass, named by agent/manager Harold Robinson, was formed. Big Sandy proved no ordinary local bluegrass band as all four members eventually joined major groups. In addition to David and Lynwood the ensemble included Tim Ashley, later bass player with Charlie Waller & the Country Gentlemen, and Adam Poindexter, who would become a stalwart of the James King Band.
Big Sandy cut a quite enjoyable album length tape produced by Josh Graves with Kenny Baker as guest fiddler called Delta Queen. David enjoyed the opportunity to spend some time with Graves . “Josh helped me a lot as far as notes and licks. He’s a big influence as far as trying to copy.”
Gene Wooten provides the third major influence on David’s approach to his instrument. “Jimmy always felt that Gene’s Dobro playing fit his style of music, so I always listened to stuff Gene did and tried to copy it. Jerry Douglas is just amazing. I love his playing and Rob Ickes’ playing, but the older style of Dobro playing fits Jimmy’s music better.”
Big Sandy enter the SPBGMA International Band Championship in Nashville, but saw their hopes dashed when disqualified due to their banjo-guitar-bass-Dobro line-up. David has noted the explosion of strong young resophonic guitar players since then. “The first year I went to SPBGMA, there were probably five Dobro players. This year [1997], there were probably thirty five. It’s amazing how many there are now and even younger than when I was starting. When I started it was not a cool instrument to be playing. That’s what I liked about it.”
Delta Queen included two original songs by David, but he has since let that talent lie fallow. “The stuff Lynwood writes I feel like I can sing really well. The stuff he writes matches my voice and my feelings, so I haven’t really tried to write. Lynwood and I worked up the songs on my album originally [to record together], and it just turns out that we’re not playing together right now, but he did give me permission to go ahead and cut those songs.”
After an acrimonious 1987 split with Robinson, who controlled the name Big Sandy, Nance and Lunsford began performing as the Southern Drifters. A much bigger change loomed, however, close by.
The year before Big Sandy had appeared at the Stuart, Virginia festival, where Martin was headlining. As a big a Jimmy Martin fan as ever walked on two feet, Lynwood yearned to capture the king’s attention and 5-string seat. After the show that night, Lynwood devised to jam outside Martin’s bus. Soon Jimmy emerged, but showed more interest in the Dobro player than the banjoman. He asked David to play “Great Speckled Bird,” informed him that he wasn’t rendering it right, and showed him note for note how he wanted it done. After about a quarter hour, Nance was playing it to Jimmy’s satisfaction. He then asked David to sing a few songs as well.
Little did Nance know that he had embarked on the first step of a long term mentoring adventure with the man Raymond Fairchild calls “the teacher.” “When he first tells you stuff, it kinds of upsets you ‘cause you think he’s just trying to tell you what to do,” explains David, “but when you get out on your own, all that stuff comes back to you. He’s really a genius. You go back and look at what he’s told you over the years as far as running a band. It’s amazing what he knows. When he tells you, you kind of look at him like he’s crazy, but when you actually apply it to what you’re doing, it makes a lot of sense. It’s amazing what you’ll learn if you listen to him.
“It’s one of the best learning experiences, I ever could have had. There’s probably no better person as far as learning timing as stuff like that from, as far as singing, how to phrase your words, and stuff like that. The way to act on stage and dress. Ten years is hard to put on words; It’s what I’ve learned being around him.”
During that first lesson, Gail had begun a conversation with Martin’s fiancée, Theresa. Lynwood and David joined them eventually. Both gave Theresa their business cards, and Lunsford inquired whether Jimmy needed a banjo player. David said to give him a call if Martin ever decided to add a Dobro to the Sunny Mountain Boys.
In May of 1987, famed fiddler and bus driver Charlie (”Why Ray, Ralph?”) Cline gave Martin his notice. Theresa suggested that Jimmy try “that Dobro player from North Carolina” instead of auditioning fiddlers. The next morning David awoke to tell Gail about a dream he had of Martin calling in the middle of the night inviting him to play with him that weekend. He said he had dreamt that he wrote Jimmy’s phone number on a scrap of paper and laid it on the coffee table. They had a good laugh until David saw Jimmy’s phone number on the coffee table. One phone call confirmed that Jimmy expected David to meet him at 2:00 AM Friday in Wytheville, Virginia in order to play with the band at a festival in Northeast, Maryland.
David quickly moved through the first stage of being offered a new gig – excitement – into the second stage – panic, as in “Am I good enough?” and “Do I know enough of his songs.” He reached out to the biggest Martin fan he knew, and the next day Lynwood showed up with a stack of Jimmy Martin albums for two days of almost non-stop listening and woodsheding.
For one thing, David didn’t have much to work with as far as Dobro role models with Martin. Josh had done the odd show with him, and Wooten had appeared on a couple of albums. Secondly, Nance was expected to substitute his resophonic guitar for the fiddle. “I had actually to learn the fiddle breaks off of all the albums. That’s what I had to play, all the past fiddlers’ breaks.” Even after working through fifteen albums with Lynwood, David acquired two tapes of two Martin projects so that he could soak up more music on the three hour drive to the rendezvous with his future.
Other than Jimmy, whose band then included Audie Blaylock, Earl Yager, Ray Martin, and Chris Warner, being six hours late getting to Wytheville, the weekend went very well. After the second set, the boss let David know he had the job. “I thought I was going to have to quit my day job, and my dad was kind of unsure about that. When I went off to that first show in Maryland, my boss asked me to get a schedule so they could work around my schedule.” Theresa gladly provided that document, so David arranged things with his day job and was set to begin an entirely new phase of his life in bluegrass. He remains, also after ten years, an assistant manager at Greensboro Tire. He deeply appreciates that his employers at Greensboro Tire have stayed willing to work around his performing schedule.
At the start of his eleventh year as a Sunny Mountain Boys, David Nance has not one regret. “He’s never given me any reason to leave. We have never had a cross word about anything when it comes to music. He knows what he wants, and as long as you play it right, play timing and do the vocals, there’s nothing else he asks of you. We’ve always got along, and I enjoy playing with him and traveling with him. He’s said, ‘If you keep getting all this applause, next year you’ll leave me and get you a band and a bus.’ It’s just getting now to where if I had to go out on my own I’d feel comfortable. He’s got me ready to be on my own as far as training.”
David, like so many Sunny Mountain Boys, has become addicted to Martin’s timing. “His timing, when it gets to clicking, there’s no way you can play anything but that. When you finally get it – it took me about 3 and one half years to finally understand what he was talking about by timing. It’ll come to you, but you have to work at it. – you can’t stand to hear it any other way.”
Over the decade the good memories have built up for David. He especially notes Frontier Ranch, singing at the on stage marriage of Jimmy and Theresa at Doyle Lawson & Quicksilver’s Family Style Bluegrass Festival in Denton, North Carolina, and performing on the Grand Ole Opry the first time on January 30, 1993. “Little things too, like spending the day with him at his house which is interesting with all the wide variety of animals he has at his house, which is not too far from downtown Nashville.”
Martin plays no more than three dozen dates a year these days, generally from mid-March through November. “I would love to play more than what I’m doing,” David admits, “but the thing with Jimmy is that it’s always fun because you never play enough to get tired of it. It always leaves you wanting to play more. You get to work and be with your family.”
That desire to play more led Lynwood and David to explore putting the Southern Drifters back together in 1996 as a side project. They worked up a number of original pieces, recorded a demo tape, and even won the Greensboro semi-final of the Pizza Hut International Bluegrass Showdown. After the first serious disagreement of their long friendship, however, both lost interest in the Southern Drifters. Lynwood accepted the gig with the Sand Mountain Boys, and David applied the material they had developed to his solo album.
In addition to playing resophonic guitar with the Sunny Mountain Boys, David helps run the record table and sings. “With Jimmy I sing tenor as far as the quartet singing goes. He lets me do a couple of lead singing things – one song on each set usually. He’ll come in and sing on the choruses. He’ll let me do an instrumental or two on each show.”
The role suits David so well, you have to think he’ll keep adding to his record tenure with Martin. “I like the sound of a Dobro with Jimmy’s music. In the past ten years there’s been a sound that there wasn’t before. Now folks get to see Jimmy with a Dobro live, not just on album. It’s a neat things that I’ve got to do something that nobody before had gotten to do with Jimmy.”
One of the hottest duos in the Piedmont Triad area, A CUP OF BLUES generates energy and excitement everywhere they perform.