David Childers & Abe Partridge at Bird's Nest Listening Room

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Show starts at 7:00pm. Doors will open at 6:00pm.

David Childers

MOUNT HOLLY, North Carolina — Singer-songwriter David Childers is the proverbial study in contradictions. A resident of Mount Holly, North Carolina, he’s a former high-school football player with the aw-shucks demeanor of a good ol’ Southern boy. But he’s also a well-read poet and painter who cites Chaucer and Kerouac as influences, fell in love with folk as a teen, listens to jazz and opera, and fed his family by practicing law before turning in his license to concentrate on his creative passions.

The legal profession’s loss is certainly the music world’s gain. Childers’ new album, Run Skeleton Run, releasing May 5, 2017 on Ramseur Records, is filled with the kinds of songs that have made him a favorite of fans and fellow artists including neighbors the Avett Brothers. Scott Avett contributes to four tracks, and Avetts bassist Bob Crawford co-executive-produced the effort with label head Dolph Ramseur. (Crawford and Childers, both history buffs, have recorded and performed together in the Overmountain Men).

In fact, it was Crawford who kickstarted this album, Childers’ sixth solo effort, by suggesting he reunite with Don Dixon (R.E.M., the Smithereens), who’d produced Crawford’s favorite Childers album, Room 23 (done with his band the Modern Don Juans). Crawford also suggested tracking at Mitch Easter’s Fidelitorium Recordings.

“I’ve made records in my living room and been perfectly happy with it. But I think ol’ Bob wanted to give it one more shot,” Childers says. “It’s kind of like the Wild Bunch at the end of the movie, on their last train robbery.”

Not that he’s suggesting this is his “last train robbery.” Not with songs as rich as these. Sounding like literature and playing like little movies — several are under three minutes long — they’re populated by sailors, hermits, lovers and killers, facing off against fate, skeletons, good, evil, or simply the trials of everyday existence. Lust, virtue, guilt, innocence; alienation, desperation, sorrow, gratitude … he examines these conditions with such precision — combined with music that draws on folk, rock, rockabilly, country and Cajun influences — he doesn’t need lengthy exposition.

“You look at a song like ‘Pancho and Lefty’; it tells a story in four stanzas,” Childers notes. “An amazing story. That’s the way I approach songwriting. You don’t have to say so damned much. ‘The train went down, oh lord oh lord.’”

That line is from “Belmont Ford,” a mandolin-laden disaster song about the Great Flood of 1916. It’s based on a poem by Mary Struble Deery, a Chicago friend. The twang- and bluegrass-infused “Collar and Bell” (featuring drums/percussion by his son, Robert, and fiddle by Geoffrey White) had a similar origin; its lyrics are derived from ones written by Shannon Mayes, an Ohio school principal. Another Ohioan, Mark Freeman, shares credit for “Hermit,” a mid-tempo rocker of sorts with Dixon singing harmony, that Freeman started and Childers finished.

“I’m always looking for ideas,” he says. “I’ve never been able to get any serious writers to co-write with me. Here are these folks, just regular people, and they got something to say, and they’re sending me stuff, and I’m going ‘Well, if they’re gonna send it to me, I’m gonna try and do something with it.’”

Childers has always regarded his place in the musical pantheon as that of an outsider, though not deservedly so. As those involved with this album indicate, he’s well-regarded among tastemakers. Evidence includes playing the syndicated World Café and Mountain Stage radio shows (he’s done the latter twice), as well as Merlefest’s mainstage. He’s also toured in Europe, and hopes to again. But he credits the support of Crawford and Ramseur with helping him sustain his musical career — which began in college, though he didn’t start recording until the ’90s.

Childers’ father had given him a banjo when he was 14, but he still had his “jock mentality” back then and didn’t do much with it. That changed when he picked up a guitar at 18.

“My girlfriend had left me for one of my best friends and I was all shook up and needed an outlet besides drinking and fighting. As soon as I learned my first chords on a guitar, I knew I had a friend who would never betray me,” he recalls. He formed his first band, the acoustic trio Steeltree, in 1973, and released his first album, Godzilla! He Done Broke Out!, as David Childers & the Mount Holly Hellcats, in 1995. His first solo album, Time Machine, came in 1998. He spent several years playing rock, folk and honky-tonk with the David Childers Band, then the Modern Don Juans, whose fans included the Avett boys. He calls his current band the Serpents, but says he’s given up trying to label each incarnation.

His last album, 2014’s Serpents of Reformation, delved into religion; this time, several songs address aging and the perspective of a man in review mode — a perspective he sums up on the final track, “Goodbye to Growing Old,” written with Theresa Halfacre. It approaches the subject with a mix of acceptance and defiance.

Well, it’s mostly just a state of mind/And I ain’t about to say that it’s time/To surrender to anything. Anything. Anything, he sings, driving home his points with harmonica and his own layered harmony.

“I used to be afraid of growing old, but now I wouldn’t trade where I am for all the lean fury of my youth,” Childers insists, saying he’s happier now than he’s ever been. Especially now that he can concentrate on making music and painting; he and Robert did the album cover, a fine example of his primitive/outsider style.

He’s also considering adding memoirs to his publishing credits, which include two books of poetry. And there’s gardening, and dogs and cats, to tend. Yep, life’s pretty good for the man Crawford likes to call “the sage of Mount Holly.”

Crawford has also called Childers “a great friend, a great thinker and a great man … a true North Carolina treasure.”

But let’s take out “North Carolina,” because Childers is the kind of treasure who can spread joy wherever people love listening to great songs. In other words, just about anywhere. Or everywhere.

Abe Partridge is a heralded musician, singer/songwriter, visual artist, and podcaster based in Mobile, Alabama. His 2018 debut, Cotton Fields and Blood For Days earned him rave reviews, with Tony Paris saying in The Bitter Southerner: "He plays guitar the same way he writes lyrics, bashing the strings with abandon until they are just about to come loose, then beautifully picking the notes until every last word falls into place. More to the point, Partridge writes to make you sit up and think. He wants to jar your reality. Sometimes, his lyrics are sly and subtle. Sometimes they come at you with a roar and thunder, as if the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse were approaching, and the heavens were opening up to herald a warning."

Since the release of his debut, Partridge has toured relentlessly, including several tours of the Netherlands and the U.K. developing a reputation for moving, passionate, and sometimes comedic, performances at prestigious songwriter festivals such as 30A Songwriters Festival, Frank Brown Songwriters Festival, and Americanafest. He is a regular at the Bluebird Café in Nashville and Eddie’s Attic in Decatur. He has performed on the syndicated radio programs, Mountain Stage and Woodsongs Old Time Radio Hour. He has shared the stage with Morgan Wade, Paul Thorn, Steve Poltz, Dan Bern, Jerry Joseph, Glen Phillips (Toad The Wet Sprocket), Tommy Stinson, Shawn Mullins, John Fullbright, and more.

Most recently, Partridge and co-producer Ferrill Gibbs released the Alabama Astronaut podcast, where they explore songs previously undocumented at churches in Appalachia. The podcast finds Partridge chatting with Holiness preachers and looking into the practice of snake handling. It was in the Top Ten documentary podcasts on Apple Podcasts within days of its release and now has over 35k downloads and a 4.9-star rating.

When Partridge is not writing or touring, he is also a highly acclaimed visual artist. His paintings, primarily acrylic on tarred board and watercolors, now hang in art galleries around the southeast and in the private collections of Tyler Childers, Mike Wolfe (American Pickers), Rick Hirsch (Wet Willie), and Tommy Prine. His artwork was featured in Stephen King’s 2019 sequel to The Shining - Dr. Sleep. He painted the cover art for Charlie Parr’s, Last Of The Better Days Ahead (Smithsonian Folkways). He also created art for Tyler Childers’ 2022 release, Can I Take My Hounds To Heaven?

American Songwriter Magazine said, “Abe Partridge has established himself as one of the most respected songwriters and visual folk artists in the southeast.”

In November of 2022, Partridge released the EP Alabama Skies on Baldwin Co. Public Records label which includes "Abe Partridge’s 403d Freakout". Partridge told Songfacts the story behind the song: " 'Abe Partridge's 403d Freakout' was a song I wrote in about 20 minutes. It took me two weeks to make it rhyme, and then it took me about six months to learn it. I just sat and wrote a couple of pages of thoughts as they came to me. It was my attempt at describing my thoughts chronologically as they sometimes occur in my head before I filter them. It is those thoughts that I often have if I allow myself to mentally wander."