Compassion and Artistry Collide for Missoula Musician David Boone

By Peter Metcalf, 2-27-09

Listen to prolific Missoula rocker David Boone sing and its clear he loves to make music.  Listen to him talk and it’s clear he is a man of vision. 

So when he released his critically acclaimed seventh album Tale of Gold just over a year go, he did something unheard of in the Missoula music scene.  He held a benefit concert. At the Wilma. 

With around a 1000-seat capacity the Wilma’s sheer size is problematic for local musicians, fellow guitar picker and sometimes Boone stage mate Tom Catmull said.  Four or five hundred people in a bar and the energy is fantastic.  Four or five hundred people in the Wilma and the place feels empty. 

“I told him he was crazy,” Catmull said. 

Boone sold the place out. 

Boone hopes for similar success tonight when David Boone and The Mercenaries play a CD release benefit concert at the Wilma for their new album, State of the Union.  All proceeds from the concert benefit Mountain Home Montana--a home for teenage mothers—and the Poverello Center.  Doors open at 6:30 and the concert begins at 7:00 p.m.  Tickets are $16.00 in advance at Rockin’ Rudys and Earcandy Music, or $18.00 at the door. 

The musicians chose to highlight the two organizations in part because of thematic connections between songs on the new album and the mission of the organizations.  “Ode to Princess” for example, deals with the weight of societal expectations on young girls and many other tracks examine issues around homelessness. 

“I think it makes the experience more significant for everyone if (the music) is not just completely random,” Boone said.

Written and arranged with members of The Mercenaries, the album marks a sharp departure from the often explicitly hope and love-filled songs for which Boone is known.

“The material that came out was darker.  Not darker.  I don’t like that word,” he says and then pauses searching for the right word.  “It was more weighty.”

Weighty.  At first the word sounded awkward, like a best available substitute for the actual word he wanted but couldn’t find.  The more he talked about his work and repeated the word however, the more it revealed a poet’s knack for precision.  For his latest album delves into weighty social matters, especially the alienation, loneliness and social stigma associated with homelessness. 

Those concerns seem to sit like weighty rocks in the pockets of this sensitive musician, constant reminders of the harsh, often inhospitable reality of this world and his weighty self-appointed mission as a musician to try and shine some light and generate some possibility for a brighter future. 

“A lot of the material was directed at the outcasts and the people in the homeless community and I try to empathize and try to relate to the narrative of not belonging,” Boone says. 

As a language beyond words, music has an incredible power to communicate other people’s experiences and realities and help forge greater understanding and empathy.  The truth is everyone struggles at some time with the “disease” of loneliness and lack of love, Boone said.  Growing up he often experienced a sense of loneliness and social isolation.  But as a society we have a hard time empathizing with this deep reality especially when it confronts us as blatantly as with homelessness.

Music is his means to help spread compassion.

“I want to give as much as myself as I can give,” Boone says, a smile cracking his bearded and often serious face.  Suddenly sounding like St. Paul, energy infusing his voice, he reflects philosophically on the different types of gifts people have been given—business, compassion, education, artistry—to use for the common good.  “I love the idea that everyone has their own gifts,” he says. 

The St. Paul allusion is not a stretch.  Although not a traditionally religious person, the traditional tenets of religion infuse Boone’s work and thought.  He grew up in a “Christian America”—in quotes he says—attending church and absorbing the “teachings of Christ.”

Most of the experience didn’t resonate with him in a meaningful way.  In fact much of what passes for Christianity in the public sphere bothered him, especially the apparent lack of regard for people on the margins. 

But one thing in particular stuck with him—“the selflessness of Christ and the disciples” who rose above themselves in the service of love. 

“It’s a lonely realization but there’s something that resonated within me and said that’s the life worth living,” Boone said. 

So with a guitar instead of a pulpit, Boone has tried to break through the myriad distractions of society and focus attention on living to love and care for others instead of the self. 

As much as the inhumanity of the world grates on his heart these days and fills his music, Boone remains firm in his belief that love and selflessness can help people experience a little “heaven on earth.” And he promises, if you listen closely, hope shines through at the end of the album.

This album and concert may be the last for Boone, at least for a while.  The process of writing and recording the album and producing the concert has been enjoyable and rewarding, but it has also taken its toll on his energy. 

“It’s exhausting to put a microscope on brokenness,” he said. 

The musicians originally envisioned the album as a double CD, one part rock, one part acoustic.  They eventually shelved the acoustic album as it wasn’t quite coming together.  At some point he would like to finish the project which he believes is lyrically his strongest work. 

But he senses the “weighty” content isn’t healthy for him right now and he promised himself that he will not force an album, so the record will have to wait. 

In the meantime he would like to spend time building his house and loving his wife.

“If it was up to me I would want to take a break and try to find the Eden I always sing about,” Boone said. 

One gets the sense listening to him that that Eden will somehow involve a guitar, a song and a cause.