American folk, jazz, blues and hillbilly traditions, on an axis between Ireland and Brasil.
I've been influenced by the Beatles, Antonio Carlos Jobim and Vinicius de Moraes, Jimi Hendrix, Stevie Wonder, James Taylor, Bob Dylan, Niki Leeman, Al Jarreau, Toots Thieleman, Joni Mitchell, Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel, the Bothy Band, Planxty, Paul Brady, Andy Irvine, Davy Spillane, John Renbourn, Robin Williamson, Sandy Denny, Earth, Wind and Fire, Sly and the Family Stone, Willis Alan Ramsey, Lars Holtan, Belle Mickelson, Steve Bodnar, Pat Metheny, John McLaughlin, Brian Toland, Kenny Loggins, Michael McDonald, Rhiannon, Rickie Lee Jones, Laura Nyro, Walter Becker and Donald Fagen, Robby Robertson and the Band, Terry Haggerty, Keith Greeninger, Dayan Kai and Steve Ucello, Steve Robertson, Sting and the Police, Jeff Beck, Jimmy Page, Robin Ford, Larry Carlton, Lee Ritenour, Turlough O'Carolan, Steve Bodnar, Justin Mayer, James Lewis, Paul Carlsen, Leib Ostrow, Sudhananda, Steve Gardner, Bob Dyer, Lee Ruth, Kenny Shepherd and Michael Cochran and the Sound Farm, Don Cooper, Full Moon, Bruce Cockburn, Laura Nyro, Pat Fitzgerald and Robin Dale Ford and Richard "Ride the Rails" Fineberg, Greg Brown, Karen Savoca and Pete Heitzman, Lora Colten, Eva Saulitis, Sally Wills, Barry Philips, Doug Robinson, Martin Simpson, Jessica Radcliffe, June Tabor and Maddy Prior, Sandy Denny, Robin Williamson, Lisa Ekstrom, Barry Phillips, Melissa Crabtree, Katrina Dreamina Blair, Sand Sheff, Erika Luckett, Ani DiFranco and oh so many other bright souls.
Sounds Like
fresh, eccentric, delightful hillbilly folk, with celtic gospel boogie jazz samba. Music to make your ears smile. Influenced by water, earth, sky and love. Turns sacrifice into resurrection.
DAVID LYNN GRIMES
Greetings friends and fellow pilgrims in the dream of life—I'm an Alaskan bard, musician, songwriter, storyteller, mariner, environmental activist, wilderness guide, former commercial fisherman and wandering fool. I have howled with wolves, run from bears and co-habitated with killer whales. Following the 1989 Good Friday Exxon Valdez oil spill (epicentered in my home waters of Prince William Sound at the northern end of America's coastal temperate rainforest), I have been one of the artist/activists working and playing to help protect and restore wild ecosystems such as the Sound and the Copper River and Delta–which seem to me to be beautiful earth organs that are fundamental to our health.
I've spent a lot of time living on rivers, and on boats in the ocean, and a lot of time around rain. Water and I go way back.
My songs are on a musical axis between Ireland and Brasil, with American folk, jazz, hillbilly and blues influences. Frequent themes are those of sacrifice and resurrection, and the pervading presence of the Trickster Fool--who appears in many cultures in the guise of Raven, Coyote, Br'er Rabbit, Reynard the Fox, Tanuki the Raccoon Dog, or High John de Conquer, and is able, in the words of Zora Neale Hurston, to "make a way out of no way and hit a straight lick with a crooked stick." Or as Coyote Caroline Casey says, "Against all odds is the odds the Trickster likes." Leaping out of winter into spring, the Trickster Fool bridges the sacred and profane, making art out of drama and humor out of adversity. This is the powerful magic that shows up in dangerous times, the secret of our song and laughter, the blossoming of egalitarian culture.
My dear rascal friend Marie Smith Jones—honorary chief of Alaska's Eyak Indian tribe, and last speaker of the Eyak language—died January 21, 2008 at the age of 89. Marie believed her language wouldn't truly go extinct when she passed away since "the language comes from the land, and as long as the land and water and creatures are alive, the people will learn the language of the land." In 1994 I was adopted into the Eyak tribe's Eagle moiety, but I'm pretty sure I'm actually a Raven disguised as an Eagle. Chief Marie gave me my Eyak name, YaxadiliSayaxinh--which means "The Thinker", or more literally, "He who causes his mind to involuntarily roam in an indeterminate direction." Whew.
Now and again I write, and my essays have appeared in a number of anthologies including Ascent, Prarie Schooner, and From the Island's Edge. In the realm of film, I co-produced the 1989 citizen's oil spill video, Voices of the Sound, and as a wildlife film guide I've worked with National Geographic, Survival Anglia, the BBC, the Sierra Club and the Cousteau Society on films concerning killer whales, sea otters, wild habitat protection, and the oil spill. I've participated in projects in Alaska, Spain and Israel with the wonderful Artists for Nature Foundation--a group home-based in the Netherlands that organizes wildlife and nature artists from around the world to visit threatened natural ecosystems—and by using art as a universal language, help remind and empower local decision makers with the importance of beauty and natural diversity in the health of our world.
For many years I have spent much of the summer living on the Copper River or out in Prince William Sound, guiding wilderness trips to renew spirit and rekindle tribal shenanigans, often in collaboration with the Eyak Preservation Council. And I get out yearly to assist the North Gulf Oceanic Society in whale research in Prince Wm Sound and the Kenai Fjords. The two favorite boats I've been partnered with on the briny deep are the Orca II and Senang Hati (the Happy Heart), both cedar over oak with well-found souls of good adventurous karma. Beautiful boats prove Mae West's statement that the most beautiful distance between two points is a curved line.
My escapades, larks, adventures and foibles have been reported in a number of books including John Keeble's Out of the Channel, Art Davidson's In the Wake of the Exxon Valdez and Grant Sim's Leaving Alaska, as well as in Rolling Stone, the New York Times, Audubon, Outside, the Amicus Journal, and Sierra. I currently have two CD's of music--Raven River and Raised on Rabbit. And I'm writing a book tentatively entitled Escapades, Larks and Adventures: being Tales of Human Redemption through Synchronistic Reconnection with the Rest of the Creation. Many blessings to you all, and may your compassionate dreams bloom and dance into being!
