David Essig

Event Details

Event type: All Ages / Licensed

David Essig may have started out over fifty years ago as a hired-gun blues guitarist and mandolin player from rural Ontario, but today he’s best known as one of Canada’s most enduring and literate musical storytellers - a roots songwriter with a difference.  With his authentic voice that bridges the blues and country traditions, David performs his original, guitar-driven songs with the narrative precision of a fiction author - which, in fact, he is. David’s recent live album comes from a solo concert in 2018 at the historic Queens Hotel in Dunnville, Ontario. The album contains 14 songs, including 12 of David's originals - from classics like High Ground, to recent songs like Motel as Metaphor.

In addition to his 23 albums of original music, David has published a novel, Dancing Hand, (2013) and a collection of short stories, Fair Days (2022) - a unique project, consisting of 13 stories, all based on narratives in songs he has written. The book comes with an album of new studio recordings of all 13 of the songs that inspired the stories. David is currently working on a second collection of new short stories based on his songs. Last Stop on the Train is slated for release in late 2025.

For concert and festival performances in 2025, David is focusing on his role as a musical storyteller while channeling some serious inner Elmore (James) with his Delta-style slide guitar.

While many members of David’s audience are listeners who’ve followed his narrative trajectory for decades, others are young guitar fans who sit in the front rows, taking notes. To these kids, David smiles and says, “Come for the guitar but stay for the stories.” And the kids do listen. As one 12-year-old commented recently as he watched David’s soundcheck, “The dude can shred.”

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