An Evening With David Bryan

I found one woman's account (her name is Karen) of the Seattle gathering with David Bryan. The full posting is on her blog, here, but I wanted to excerpt some of it for you:

About 10 mins before the event starts, David comes in to do a sound check with the piano. I was floored! He played a little bit of Memphis Lives in Me, sang/played a bit of Wanted and then went into In These Arms.

As he was playing, people were coming in to the theatre, and he was joking around with us. The he said that he felt funny doing this sound check in front of us all. When he finished, he got up and said, “OK, that was embarrassing.”

David talked about everything from his dad being a trumpet player to how he got started a 7 years old with Piano, and it just went from there. It really was a chronological story of his life. He talked about writing his first songs at 7 years old, how he met Jon, how Bon Jovi started, and on up to why SWW was the do or die album to the break in the 1990s and on up to Lost Highway. He was telling stories I have never heard or read in interviews. How the collaboration between Jon, Richie David and Tico works. What happens in the studio when they put together a CD. He was asked if when they pare down the demos to the final 10-12 songs for the CD if it is a democracy. I loved his answer. He said it was a “Communistic Democracy”. But then he went on to say that Jon really has a vision for each record, and as the lead singer, he has to believe in each song otherwise it really doesn’t work for him on stage. It totally made sense.

He talked about how he writes music. Sometimes it is a title that he starts with then puts the emotion he wants in it with riffs of music, then the words start to come and he fleshes it out. Other times it starts with a riff in his head. He was at the piano at this point demonstrating with some of the Bon Jovi songs, and talked about all the riffs and songs he has in his head and in his studio he has written over the years. He used “April” from Lunar Eclipse as an example of how he started with a riff he wrote as a child and then it became the song on his CD. He played the riff and then showed us how he went on to the song. It was WAY COOL! He showed how Jon and Richie started with Wanted and then Richie’s Riff at the beginning started to flesh it out then how he came in and gave it the more western feel… Same thing with the emotion of Livin’ On a Prayer.

David posed for a picture with Karen's kids, and encouraged them (both of them are budding musicians) to keep with it and practice daily.

Karen also got to meet David when Memphis was playing in Seattle, and there's an accounting of that as well on her site.

It sounds like it was a great time, and that he was friendly and approachable, and very, very sweet. I hope that when his shows come to Boston, he does the same sort of thing.

~ Hath