Connecticut-based folk-Americana singer-songwriter David Coller has been writing and performing for decades but apart from one album in 1995 (‘New Moon/Old Friends’) this activity has been little more of a side-line to a successful career in emergency medicine and 20 years spent captaining a gaff-rigged schooner.
When a good friend invited him to join him at a local performance venue in 2019, Coller decided it was high time to share his back catalogue of 30 years’ worth of songs and stories.
As a father of two, and with a lifetime spent on outdoor pursuits, he has plenty of first-hand material to draw upon. He is accompanied by his partner Diane Chodkowski on harmony vocals.
With simple arrangements - acoustic guitar, banjo, fiddle and accordion – and unambiguous lyrics, Connor is striving for clear statements which never stray far from a tone of politeness and discreet humour.
The territory he charts is more Pete Seeger than Bob Dylan. The only track that could remotely be described as a protest song is the first. Written in 2024, Let Nothing Come Between Us is a call for a return to community values. He sings “The winds of hatred fan the flames that burn across this nation, As men of wealth seek to destroy this marvellous creation. He leaves it to the listener to put faces or names to these ‘men of wealth’. It is unlikely that he is suggesting that all rich men are trashing the American dream but, by keeping things diplomatically generic he remains on safe ground.
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The decline of rural towns (Wherever You Are) is viewed of with a tone of mild regret that is tinged more with a mood of gentle nostalgia rather than being a paean to lost values. Indeed, the past itself is regarded broadly as a way to measure the experiences of his own life, a ways of looking back with a degree of fondness. He says that I’ll Take The Moon , written in 2012 is ”The first real love song I ever wrote” and he muses on where his former schoolmates are in a much earlier song: Class of Sixty-three.
There’s something very homely and reassuring about his voice as he makes a series of thoughtful and whimsical, observations about families, communities, and the changing seasons. Overall, there’s a unpretentious honesty to his approach which is never less than engaging.
David Coller’s website
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