David Whitaker is the Dobro player as well as a lead and occasionally a tenor vocalist for Waiting for Lester. David is a co-founder of the Resophonic Guitar Workshop at Common Ground on the Hill in Westminster, Maryland  http://www.commongroundonthehill.com/

 

    David is a native son of Chattanooga, TN, a child of the baby boom born in 1954. His early years were spent both in the Washington, DC area and in and around Chattanooga. “See Rock City” signs were a familiar part of his youth as his family traveled back and forth travel between Tennessee and Arlington, VA. The sound of Hank Williams, Flatt & Scruggs, the Louvin Brothers, Hank Snow, Ernest Tubb and others were a favorite on the radio of their 1954 Chevy when his father was at the wheel. In contrast, the classical music of Mozart, Beethoven and Chopin were frequently heard when his mother, a classically trained string bassist and cellist, was at the wheel. That is, when the vocal strains of Bing Crosby or Perry Como were not  heard. David’s older brother Ken taught him about the music of Elvis Presley, Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee Lewis, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Smokey Robinson, Mary Wells and the Temptations. Ken also played 5-string banjo before the Marine Corps sent him to the Pacific and Southeast Asia in the mid-1960’s. These were the set of musical influences that shaped David’s early years.

 

    David recalls the black and white TV with rabbit ears and music shows that caught his ear as a youth. Everything from the Ed Sullivan Show to the Flatt & Scruggs or Porter Waggoner shows were influences including the folk music that was televised in the DC area. Music abounded at the time and  through these shows David first experienced the music of Flatt & Scruggs, the Country Gentlemen, Buzz Busby and the Bayou Boys, and the incomparable Don Reno and the Tennessee Cutups. No one yet realized that Washington, DC had become a mecca for a hillbilly music form that we now know as “Bluegrass Music.”

 

    David spent his high school years away from the DC area in Council Bluffs, Iowa. It was in Iowa that David gained vigorous appreciation for acoustic music and Bluegrass. He came back to the Washington, DC area with a strong desire to fully learn and play the Bluegrass Music. That was easy since Bluegrass was almost ubiquitous throughout the DC area in the early and mid-1970’s. David began to attend the annual fiddle contests and festivals at Union Grove, NC and Galax, VA and also the nearby Bluegrass festivals in Berryville, VA, Indian Springs, MD and in Southern Maryland. David first attended festivals with an acoustic guitar and later a mandolin. One night at the Red Fox Inn in Bethesda while watching the Seldom Scene perform, David recognized that his true calling was the Dobro or as Lester used to say “the Hounddog Guitar.” The great Mike Auldridge held court every Thursday at the Red Fox Inn in Bethesda, MD and later at the Birchmere in Arlington, VA. David attended countless Seldom Scene shows staring in amazement as the band set new boundaries for harmony and use of the Dobro guitar.

 

    After one Seldom Scene show in early 1975, David headed to the Union Grove fiddle festival in North Carolina where a fine Northern Virginia banjo player named John Gower convinced David to pick up Dobro. David promptly returned and purchased his first Dobro 60DS from Veneman Music in Silver Spring, MD a few days later.

 

    David began his “Resophonic Odyssey” at that point. Long hours of “woodshedding” took over as David wore grooves through most of my the LP’s available at the time. He then began to ask Mike Auldridge, Josh Graves, Russ Hooper, Stacy Phillips and other great Dobro players that he saw for tips as to how to play the instrument. Seeing Jerry Douglas play with the Country Gentlemen in Columbia, MD was what can be described a “life changing experience” for David. The band was banjoless that day and Jerry was playing many of the banjo parts. This sent David back to the woodshed with an electric metronome and Scruggs and Reno LP's this time. Soon thereafter, Boone Creek became one of his favorite bands along with the Seldom Scene as he studied the evolving music on the old hubcapped guitar.

 

    For the next 15 to 20 years, David played in and sat in with many DC area bands. Most notably, he played in the early 1980’s with the DC area band “No Strings Attached” (not to be confused with the highly acclaimed acoustic group from Roanoke, VA) featuring Dan Mazer, Don Walters, Bob Hummer, Dave Bernhardt and Steve George. During this period, David worked to complete undergraduate and later graduate degrees in Urban/Regional and Transportation Planner at the University of Maryland. He began working as a planner in DC and in Frederick, MD. Like many other Bluegrass musicians in the DC area at the time, David faithfully followed Country Gazette’s maxim “Don't Give Up Your Day Job.”

 

    Fast forward to the late 1980’s/early 1990’s, David began road cycling and mountain biking for fitness using the local Catoctin mountain ridges for exploration by bicycle. Forays into bicycle racing, both mountain and road racing, had David often training in those “hills of Old Virginia” (Maryland, North Carolina, Tennessee..) David remains an active road cyclist logging in between 6,000 and 7,000 cycling miles a year. See David’s 2005 ride report of the 3 State/3 Mountain Challenge out of Chattanooga, TN: http://www.chattbike.com/events/3_state/2005/Uphillanddown.htm.

 

    David's current musical goals are to faithfully reinterpret many of the classic and lesser known tunes of Flatt & Scruggs, the Country Gentlemen, the Seldom Scene, the Osborne Brothers and other classic bands that have featured Dobro (tm) guitar. Well arranged vocal harmony is the primary motivation for David these days. It is the key for Waiting For Lester. Diversity of musical sources is also a priority. David would also like to reinterpret songs by as artists as diverse as Smokey Robinson, Bo Diddley, Jerry Garcia, Tom Petty and Sol Hoopii. The songs and styles of many of the Master Dobro players, such as the late Burkett “Uncle Josh” Graves, comes naturally to David. Lester would expect nothing less.