Rocks on the CD cover. Aren't they lovely?

   VOYAGER: That's an amazing position to be in, to write Robert Hunter and say, "I want to change these lyrics." I would just say (meekly), "Thank you." But I guess you know him better than I do (which is not at all).

A lot of the songs on Solo Acoustic, like "American Family," are character sketches. Where do you get the ideas for your characters?
     
  GANS: I had a specific person in mind that I was thinking about when I started "American Family," but it took on a life of its own and wound up being about three people instead. Any decent fiction writer will tell you you have to let the characters create themselves. So instead of trying to hammer it into what I set out to do I let the characters create themeselves. And there they were, and I was very satisfied with the results.

VOYAGER: So these things come to you by osmosis?

GANS: I have a lot of things happening in my life so I don't spend a lot of time sitting there waiting for a song to happen. I carry them around through the course of my life, and a lot of times they are informed by real experineces and real people. I'm a very slow writer. I don't bat out 100 songs and see what sticks, I incubate them for a really long time inside my head and I think them through a lot before I try to play or sing them.

  
     
 
VOYAGER: Have you thought of doing a radio show geared towards the singer-songwriter genre?

GANS: I got into radio because of the Grateful Dead and I don't really want to continue being a radio guy. (Music) is what I set out to do 30 years ago and I just wound up making some detours into other careers. This is what I set out to do when I was an adult and now is the time for me to do it. If I need to get a day job again it will be writing. I've written several books and I think I could easily do some non-fiction writing, if that's what I needed to do to pay the mortgage. But I'm not really interested in staying in radio just to have a job doing it.

  


Is that a parrot on your shoulder, or are you just happy to see us?
 
     
  VOYAGER: Anything you would want to say to the people who will read this that I haven't asked?

GANS: Basically my message here is that these are songs with depth and some range to them, and if you think you know what I sound like after listening to the Grateful Dead, there's a lot more to me than that. Go to DGans.com and listen to me, and at Amazon.com, also. I hope they'll give my CD a try and my live concerts, as well.

This has been Voyager Magazine interview #25, recorded on April 23rd, 2001. I hope you'll join me again next month.

As well as pumping out a radio show every week, Gans maintains an incredibly busy touring schedule. See when he'll be playing live in your town at DGans.com, check out The Grateful Dead Hour site at GDHour.com, and learn more about David Gans at TruFun.com.

  
     
 

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