Performance

Songs and stories to enlighten and entertain

The songs and stories that David prefers performing feature ordinary people in real and often challenging circumstances, or deal in some mythopoeic way with the existential mystery of being human. For David, singing ballads and telling tales is the ultimate sustainable creative practice - leaving no trace behind except in the listener's mind.

David's material is drawn mainly from the rich mythological, folkloric and historical traditions of the islands of Britain (England, Scotland and Wales) and Ireland, places where his ancestral roots reach deep. David has been playing acoustic guitars and singing traditional ballads for many decades, taking up oral storytelling as well at the turn of the last millennium.

David believes that oral storytelling practice has broad application in life, and that, as well as being performance art and entertainment, storytelling can inspire transformation in people and make a highly beneficial contribution in such disparate areas as education and lifelong learning, psychological wellbeing, organisational improvement and personal development.

Since 2000, David has performed in the Bath area at the Glastonbury Festival (Green Fields), the Priddy Folk Festival, the Bath Literature Festival and the Bath Fringe Festival, as well as at numerous events and venues further afield, from Exeter in the south west to Newcastle-upon-Tyne in the north east. David performs on his own, as part of a loose association of folk musicians and singers (Dark Tarn) or together with his Fire Springs colleagues. Below is a small selection of recordings of David in action.