Cover Lay Down

Repost originally featured July 19, 2010. Dave, we miss you still.



Each year as schooldays fade into memory and the summer festival season grows close, my thoughts turn to Dave Carter. An up-and-coming singer-songwriter already well respected by critics and peers, Carter was on the road with his partner Tracy Grammer in the summer of 2002 when he was stricken down with a heart attack during an early morning run in the New England heat.

Their scheduled set at that day’s Green River Festival was taken over by Signature Sounds labelmate Mark Erelli with little fanfare. And the following weekend, at the Falcon Ridge Folk Festival, Tracy took to the stage with determination, cementing Carter’s legacy with a mainstage tribute set performed with friends and folkfamily that, surely, would have made Dave smile.

I’d like to say that I was there, as so many friends were. But this series of events comes to me secondhand, eclipsed by the miracle of parenthood, and the uncertain, overwhelming future of its sudden and everpermanent arrival. For on the day of Dave Carter’s death, in a hospital just a few blocks from where he had planned to perform on that fateful day, my wife and I were walking into the same hot summer, our newly-born child cradled carefully in our arms.

It was the one and only year we’ve missed Falcon Ridge in fifteen years of continuous attendance – the field being no place for a week-old infant – but though I have no regrets in choosing personal joy over shared wake under the circumstances, I have long wished I could have been there for the celebration of Carter’s life which took place that summer on the ridge. Instead, I am left with faint memory and eternal song, his recorded catalog of Zen mysticism and gentle cowboy poetics a permanent fixture on my playlists, his warm voice and sublime vision a constant echo of what was and could have been.

Far be it from me to claim some special bond between Carter and myself, despite the proximity of life and death which we shared; I was only privileged enough to see Dave and Tracy once in concert, and now it is too late.

But Dave Carter lives in my heart, and in the hearts of those folk musicians I love. And why not? It’s not just that Dave Carter and Tracy Grammer spent the last two years of his life atop the american folk charts, thanks to top honors at Kerrville, Napa Valley, and other festivals following their kitchen-recorded, independently released debut When I Go (1998), and the subsequent success of Tanglewood Tree (2000) and Drum Hat Buddha (2001); it’s that they earned that recognition, through unparalleled songcraft, dedicated performance, and a grateful approach to the universe that lives on in his songs, and in her life.

Perhaps Joan Baez said it best, describing Carter’s songs as folkways-ready: “There is a special gift for writing songs that are available to other people, and Dave’s songs are very available to me. It’s a kind of genius, you know, and Dylan has the biggest case of it. But I hear it in Dave’s songs, too.” Listen, and you’ll hear it too.

• Diane Ziegler: Gentle Soldier Of My Soul
  (from Paintbrush, 2002)

• The Strangelings: Tanglewood Tree
  (from Season Of The Witch, 2007)

• Chris & Meredith Thompson: Tanglewood Tree
  (from Clearwater, 2002)

• Joan Baez: The Mountain
  (fan-only, from the KBOO Tribute to Dave Carter, 2002)

• Richard Shindell: The Mountain
  (from Not Far Now, 2009)

• Lucy Kaplansky: Cowboy Singer
  (from The Red Thread, 2004)

• Darryl Purpose: The River, Where She Sleeps
  (from A Crooked Line, 2001)

• Erik Balkey: Winter When She Goes
  (from Sanctuary Road, 2005)

• Priscilla Herdman: Gentle Arms of Eden
  (from The Road Home, 2003)

• Ellis Paul & Vance Gilbert: Gentle Arms Of Eden
  (from Side Of The Road, 2003)

• Pat Wictor: Gentle Arms of Eden
  (from Temporary Stay, 2003)

• Pat Wictor: When I Go
  (from Heaven Is So High…, 2006)

• The Kennedys: When I Go
  (from Stand, 2003)

• Jim Henry: Quickdraw Southpaw’s Last Hurrah
  (from One-Horse Town, 2005)

• Chris Smither: Crocodile Man
  (from Train Home, 2003)

• Full Frontal Folk: Cat Eyed Willie Claims His Lover
  (from Sweet Mystery Of Life, 2004)

• Mission Street Project: Gun Metal Eyes
  (from Liberty Tree, 2006)

• Rani Arbo & Daisy Mayhem: Farewell To Saint Delores
  (from Gambling Eden, 2003)

Tracy Grammer continues to perform the Dave Carter songbook, most often with local hero and master instrumentalist Jim Henry by her side. In 2005, she released Flower of Avalon, which included nine previously unrecorded songs written by Carter, and a single traditional tune that fits perfectly within the set.

Since then, Tracy has continued to perform and record, making a name for herself beyond that of Dave Carter’s partner and muse. But in many ways, her life continues to be as much a part of his legacy as his songs. Pick up her work, and theirs, at tracygrammer.com.