Before the big stages, TV shows and movie soundtracks, there was an elementary school lunchroom.
Back when David Anderson was 10, for Christmas his parents Dennis and Judy Anderson gave him his first electric guitar. It was a budget, Korean-made, “Global”-brand copy of an SG, the horn-shaped red Gibson guitar used by rock bands like AC/DC and The Who.
“It’s one of the most thrilling things I’ve ever received,” Anderson recalls now. “I mean, I was in the fifth-grade, and an electric guitar? Are you kidding me?” He’d started on guitar a couple years earlier with a used-acoustic. And Anderson’s dad, an Elvis Presley and Creedence Clearwater Revival fan, first put him behind a drum-kit at age 4.
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For a kid who loves rock music, electricity changes everything. A few months later at his school’s talent show, Anderson and some friends played a version of “Smoke on the Water.” They just did the main riff of Deep Purple’s proto-metal classic over and over, building up to a drum solo.
“When we stopped,” Anderson says, “it was just a huge eruption of applause from the kids in the lunchroom.” There are countless stories about a musician’s first live performance them for life. And for Anderson, “This was definitely that. It was like nuclear bomb or a quasar.”
Anderson’s parents were at that talent show. They’d attend many of his gigs throughout the following decades, during Anderson’s music career that’s included world tours, major-label albums, joining a favorite band and befriending heroes.
For Anderson, music is family and family’s music. It was his parents’ idea to get him that electric guitar for Christmas. Next Christmas, it was a Fender Deluxe amplifier. Christmas after that, a little P.A. system. When sister Denise Anderson was in high-school, she’d have David’s middle-school rock-band play at her parties. When he was downstairs in the family rec-room practicing guitar, instead of yelling for him to turn it down, Dennis and Judy would just turn their TV up.
“It was total support,” Anderson says. “It wasn’t like I brought noise into the house, because my dad played drums, so we always had the noise. But they (my parents) were really happy I took music up. The more typical rebellion rock story, I just didn’t have that. It was love of music. And maybe took a little of the edge off of my music.”
Or maybe that positive start is the root of Anderson’s melodic gifts, a big part of what makes him special as a guitarist, songwriter, singer and multi-instrumentalist. When both talent and accomplishments are considered, he’s Huntsville’s greatest rock musician ever. Hands down.
Although Anderson would never make that claim himself. During extensive interviews for this story, time and time again, he goes out of his way to mention past and recent bandmates and collaborators. For me to include them all would turn this into the phone book. “It sounds corny,” Anderson says, “but I’m a direct result of all the musicians I’ve played with.”
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As a member of ‘90s rock hit-makers Brother Cane, Anderson toured with Van Halen, jammed with Slash, scored radio hits and had tracks in a “Halloween” horror film. With Brother Cane, Anderson appeared as musical guest on an episode of “Late Night with Conan O’Brien” also featuring crime novelist Mickey Spillane and sex-symbol Pia Zadora.
Prior to Brother Cane, playing guitar for gospel duo BeBe and CeCe Winans, Anderson did “The Tonight Show” and “Arsenio Hall Show” and toured the world with soul-legend Mavis Staples. After Brother Cane, Anderson sang and played guitar with Dragmatic, a late ‘90s Huntsville alternative-rock group whose song “If” was featured on hit TV teen drama “Dawson’s Creek.”
Since 2006, Anderson has been a member of Atlanta Rhythm Section, the band known for silky ‘70s hits like “So Into You” and “Imaginary Lover.” Back in middle school, he’d seen an ARS concert at Huntsville’s Von Braun Civic Center arena. Decades later, it’s been surreal but sweet for Anderson to become a part of the group.
“ARS is the band I’ve been in longer than any other band,” Anderson says, “so it’s a very special thing and dear to me. I’m tight with all the members, including the original members that I’ve had the pleasure to play with. The way a band laughs together – which most of the best bands I’ve been in have done - is such a huge thing. And this is a band that laughs together.” Dean Daughtry, the now retired Atlanta Rhythm Section keyboardist and songwriter, says before Anderson joined the band had, “been hearing about him for years. He’s a talented musician and great guitar player. One of the best.”
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Anderson’s earliest bands included local rock groups with most excellent names like Haze, Rox and Nightwing. Haze included bassist Glenn Maxey, who’d go on to become Brother Cane’s original bassist, leaving the group before Anderson joined for 1995 sophomore album “Seeds.” Back then, Maxey, who already looked like a rock star, says Anderson, “had a Gibson Marauder (guitar), wore glasses and a button-down shirt and he came in and just ripped it, man.”
A 1985 Grissom High School graduate, Anderson was part of a marching band drumline stuffed with talent. Other members of that drumline included Carla Azar, who’d go on to drum for White Stripes rocker Jack White, Michael Kilpatrick, a future touring musician with punk icons X, Charlie Sanderson, who later became road manager for Stevie Wonder and then Hank Williams Jr. “Grissom High School, that era,” Anderson recalls, “was a pretty damn fertile hotbed of musicians.” Years later in L.A., Anderson and Azar crossed paths again, jamming with Jeff Buckley, the late great singer/guitarist known for the now-classic album “Grace.”
Like many guitarists from his era, Anderson grew up idolizing Eddie Van Halen, whose inspired and innovative playing completely changed rock music forever. Learning “Eruption,” Eddie’s supersonic extended solo on Van Halen’s 1978 debut album, had been critical leap in Anderson’s early playing.
In 10th grade, Anderson performed “Eruption,” know for its subatomic fretboard-tapping, at a Grissom pep rally. A decade later, during Brother Cane opening sets for that 1995 Van Halen tour, Anderson would sometimes look over and see Eddie Van Halen watching from the side of stage, nodding along to the music and smiling. On the final show of that Van Halen/Brother Cane tour, when Eddie visited Brother Cane’s dressing room that night, Anderson finally told him the story. Once again, Van Halen put his arms around Anderson, flashed his “Jump” music-video smile, and said, “Man, that’s the greatest story ever.”
Two years out of high school, Anderson, joined a Huntsville quartet of jazzers called Jungle. Not on guitar or vocals but bass. He actually borrowed a bass to make the group’s album, the vinyl version of which still turns up in local record stores. Jungle guitarist Jim Cavender recalls that Anderson, even not on his primary instrument, “was pretty deadly.” The group, which played knotty fusion, gave Anderson an early taste of touring, including runs up the East Coast, doing shows in places like Greenwich Village, New York and Pittsburg.
At one point, Anderson attended University of North Alabama in Florence, part of the state’s famed Muscle Shoals area. At UNA, he played in a rock group called Atlantis, gigging at local clubs and frat houses, and studied commercial music. Eventually though, he dropped out of college to pursue music full time. “I realized a college degree wasn’t gonna get me a record deal or a great gig,” Anderson says. “My college was playing with a bunch of other musicians. That’s always been my education, playing with musicians, preferably better than me.”
Three weeks later, he landed a full-time gig playing guitar at Disney World. OK, it wasn’t the most rock gig ever. Anderson was required to wear a silver suit and he played an “Eruption” type guitar solo during a stage act in which Mickey the Mouse performed card tricks. Still it was music full-time, and Anderson says, “I got to meet musicians from everywhere around the country.” The Disney gig was also critical because it showed Anderson’s parents, who’d remained supportive but were understandably apprehensive about him dropping out of college, he could make a living with his music.
In Huntsville, other rock bands Anderson played in back in the day included groups like The Young Churchills, Driver and Then Again. A Sunday night weekly gig with an R&B/jazz collective called Riapsedon, “no despair” spelled backwards. Riapsedon saxophonist Kelley O’Neal helped Anderson get the BeBe and CeCe Winans job.
“That was my first taste of real touring,” Anderson recalls of the Winans gig, which took him to Europe and places like Amsterdam and Paris. During a Winans soundcheck at the Wiltern Theatre in Los Angeles, Anderson was focused on his guitar when he heard a beautiful voice in the mix that sounded different. “I looked over at the mic and it was Whitney Houston,” Anderson says. Of meeting late great superstar Houston, he says, “She just shined. She was just one of those people.”
As rock guitar got more and more shred-oriented, Anderson’s musical inspirations veered more towards atmospheric players like Prince, U2′s The Edge and Andy Summers of The Police. With Brother Cane, his playing was more textural. Brother Cane singer/guitarist Damon Johnson says, “He came in, charged us with some additional higher-level musicianship. David really held down a lot of the heavy lifting over there, so sometimes I could take my hands off the guitar and just grab the microphone and maybe sing the verse of a song and just be a better entertainer.” Brother Cane released their final studio album, “Wishpool,” in 1998 and the disc was their most contemporary yet, with Anderson adding evocative guitar shades to songs like “Lead My Follow.”
Brother Cane dissolved amid label shake ups and the band’s inability to turn rock-radio hits and regional fanbases into something bigger. Next, Anderson got into artist development and music for film and TV, often working out of local studio Sound Cell. As a music producer, he drew inspiration from the likes of George Martin, Roy Thomas Baker and Bob Ezrin. In addition to Dragmatic’s sweet “Dawson’s Creek” synch, Anderson co-wrote “Style,” a nifty pop song featured on the soundtrack of Lindsay Lohan film “Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen.” New Orleans’ TV and film industry was starting to bloom at the time and Anderson made music for USA Network’s series “The Big Easy.” On demand, he’d write a Smashing Pumpkins style track or something that sounded like The Wallflowers.
In Huntsville, Anderson became a big draw at local bars as a solo acoustic performer. It was a stripped-down spotlight for his elite vocals, guitar-playing and arrangement skills. He was an early adopter of looping, an effect pedal which allows musicians to record repeating patterns onstage and then play additional music to that. Around this time, he became known as Dave Anderson, which “was easier to say” than David Anderson.
Later, in the 2010s, Anderson played with classic-album recreationalists Black Jacket Symphony. He was an ace card in BJS performances of Pink Floyd’s landmark LP “Dark Side Of The Moon.” (Floyd singer/guitarist David Gilmour remains a pivotal influence of Anderson.) Anderson co-produced an album by Rob Aldridge at Muscle Shoals legendary FAME Studios. He later started a classic-rock jam night, at local venues A.M. Booth’s Lumberyard and later SideTracks Music Hall.
Anchored by a band comprised of Anderson’s friends that dubbed themselves Straight To Video, these were jam-nights a compelling twist on local blues jam formats prevalent in many cities. But instead of Muddy Waters or Stevie Ray Vaughan tunes, the group played rock songs ranging from “Jet” by Wings to “Cherub Rock” by Smashing Pumpkins to “Barracuda” by Heart. He also played a few gigs with his originals-based Dave Anderson Project, including a memorable, storm-truncated set with arena-level production at The Camp, a vibey new outdoor venue at MidCity, the development now also home to Huntsville’s new world-class Orion Amphitheater. Anderson also released a strong ELO and Queen influenced solo track “Welcome.”
Anderson’s music also circled back to family. Members of Straight To Video and Dave Anderson Project included Stone Anderson, Dave’s son and a gifted bassist, singer and guitarist. All Anderson’s children, including son Gage and daughters Autumn and Skye, Stone always showed musical talent. Stone followed that talent, becoming Huntsville’s best young musician. “It was fun to watch him grow musically,” Anderson recalls. “And he was self-taught, much like I was. I would give him pointers here and there very rarely. But I just watched him do his thing.” Stone had studied Dave’s old CDs of ‘90s acts like Radiohead.
As Stone got a little older, he began occasionally sitting-in on Dave’s solo gigs. But the first time they actually played together with a full band wasn’t until at the Kaffeeklatsch Bar, shortly before that funky downtown nightspot shuttered in early 2015. There on the Klatsch stage, father and son jammed on Prince ‘s “Purple Rain” and Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Going.” They instinctually hit vocal harmonies like they’d been touring together for decades. “It was magic,” Dave says.
In 2012, when Dave opened for classic-rock power trio ZZ Top at Huntsville’s Von Braun Center arena by himself on solo vocals and guitar, Stone beamed with pride. In a 2017 article about he and his dad, Stone told me the biggest thing he learned from watching his dad onstage was, “don’t half ass anything sonic or musical about being onstage. And I’m not super good at it, but when you’re playing, take it serious.”
But Stone was super good at it, standing out in local groups like Rob Aldridge & The Proponents and Silver Fern. Outside of music, Stone had the rare combination of old-soul meets youth-energy that allows a person to be friends with people ages 18 to 78.
In a deep blow to the entire Huntsville music, Stone died of an accidental overdose in 2021. And of course it hit much deeper for the Anderson family. Anderson and an all-star lineup of North Alabama musicians held a tribute concert for Stone at Mars Music Hall. A big crowd turned out to celebrate a talented, smart and loving friend we all still miss. A highlight among many that night was a version of Neil Young’s song “Old Man,” which meshed footage of Stone performing the song solo acoustic with onstage accompaniment from Dave, Rob Aldridge and singer/guitarist Antony Sharpe.
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“As excruciatingly difficult as it was it was also very hopeful,” Anderson says. “There are probably way better words, but that it’s not all for nothing, that he was really being honored. And I was honored to be part of it. That there were so many people that loved him. And I felt honored to be to be part of his life.”
Dave’s mom and dad also passed away in 2021. On top of that, he later broke his hand, threatening his very livelihood amid an already tough pandemic climate for musicians.
All that was enough to downward spiral the strongest of people. Most impressively but not surprisingly, Dave’s shown uncommon resilience and strength through it all, with the help of his sister, children, wife Lana Lackey Anderson and friends. “I am on a constant look for silver linings because they’re all around,” Anderson says. He puts one foot in front of the other by “focusing on the family I still have.”
Recently, Anderson’s hand has healed enough he’s started doing gigs with Atlanta Rhythm Section again. He’s even been filling in on lead vocals as frontman Rodney Justo recovers from COVID. And Anderson’s stoked to complete his long-gestating and first ever solo album, including the excellent tune “Chasing Vistas.” He’s also been collaborating with musicians like Candlebox guitarist and The Firm bassist Tony Franklin.
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During Orion Amphitheater’s buzzed-about opening weekend concerts early this month, Anderson was part of the band of local aces backing alternative-pop singer and R&B keyboardist Kelvin Wooten. Wooten was excited to have Anderson in the mix. “Outside of being a great musician, Dave’s a great friend,” Wooten says. “It was important for us to have him onstage with us.”
Anderson’s set to return to solo performances, including a highly anticipated show tonight at new local venue The Electric Belle. That will be his first solo Huntsville performance in about a year. “I’m hoping I’m ready,” Dave tells me. Bet you he will be. And we’re ready for Dave Anderson’s return too.
Dave Anderson performs 6 - 10 p.m. May 26 at the Electric Belle, located at Stovehouse, address 3414 Governors Drive. The show is free.
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