Singer-songwriter David Mallett will perform May 10 at Old South First Congregational Church in Farmington. (Courtesy of David Mallett)
FARMINGTON — One of Maine’s musical treasures, David Mallett, comes to Farmington as part of the Old South Church Concert Series on Friday, May 10. The doors will open at 7 p.m. and the concert will begin at 7:30 p.m.
Admission is $20; students $10/$5. College students’ ID will be required. Refreshments will be available by donation during the intermission. Ticket reservations are highly recommended; call 491-5919. The Old South First Congregational Church, 235 Main St. in Farmington, is accessible.
Mallett has been named one of the most memorable “Mainers” in the millennium edition of the Bangor Daily News, along with Marshall Dodge, Andrew Wyeth, E.B. White, Stephen King, Edna St. Vincent Millay, and others.
The cool breezes of Maine’s northlands have flowed through his songs for more than four decades. As a young adult, while a student at the University of Maine where he was a theater major, Mallett discovered the music of singer-songwriters like Gordon Lightfoot and Bob Dylan and soon began writing his own songs.
He explains, “I felt that, if I became a singer-songwriter, I could sing my own words.”
Mallett’s songs are filled with passion, evocative imagery, and a sense of inevitable passage of time. The struggle of the common man and the loss of American towns and landscapes are the subject of many of his songs.
Mallett’s rich influences come from “having grown up around country people and farmers, rural life has always been the wellspring for a lot of my best work.”
A turning point in his career came in 1975, after he discovered that Noel Paul Stookey, of Peter, Paul and Mary, had moved to Blue Hill and was opening a recording studio. Within six months of visiting Stookey’s studio, Mallett found a true mentor.
Stookey produced Mallett’s first three albums and helped bring his tune, “The Garden Song,” to the attention of influential folksinger Pete Seeger. Then John Denver recorded the song in the late 1970s, taking it to the Top 10 in adult contemporary charts.
When Mallett is not touring, the place where he makes his songs is in his writing room in an old farmhouse with a view across the field with a tintype of his great-grandfather on the wall.
“I like to keep reaching out to touch the past … to connect it with what’s going on now. To me, music is one of the few things that is timeless … human emotion is one continual chain.”
To learn more about David Mallett, visit http://davidmallett.com/.
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