David Albert Lee, sometimes known as Dempsey Dave by a few "buck-dancing hillbillies", was born into a farmer's family in middle Tennessee, but spent most of his up-bring on the Cherokee Lands in the beautiful Appalachian Mountains of western North Carolina.  At sixteen his family moved to New Mexico's Land of Enchantment near the home of the Dine Indians.  For the past thirty years David has lived beneath this mystical mountain in Northern Arizona.  He has B.A. and M.A. degrees in the psychology field but has spent most of his career managing a gasoline station/gift store.  He is married and has four children. 

    Although David has never worked professionally in the music business, he has always felt the rhythms that surround us and tapped into the magic field that comes from sounds.  As a young boy he listened to the classical records that his father played.  From the North Carolina backwoods he heard the gospel /bluegrass sounds.  At college in Knoxville during the sixties, he was uplifted by the soul masters, than later in L.A., during the Age of Aquarius, he was exposed to the new dimensions of rock as well as the old rebellions of folk music.  He began writing songs in the late sixties when a "young gun", and has pretty much kept at it through the years, recording what he has seen and felt through the passage of time; the changes of the seasons; and events, both internal and external, that have come and gone.  

    He always wanted to write songs, feeling that was about the best thing a good ole country boy could do, besides having a family of course.  And he still seems to think, like a loyal Jimmy Page fan, that music is the "stairway to heaven", and expanding on the theories of Charles Darwin, that it is a key link to personal spiritual growth and advanced evolution for all of mankind.  Beyond, below and besides that, he, quite simply, writes because he just "has to", that's all.  It's what he does; that's who he is…that's it.  

    Over the years, he's written many tunes and seems to have a song about almost everything, and one to cover a pretty good range of thoughts, feelings and situations. It's not that he really has done that much, I suppose, him being pretty much a simple man from good Tennessee people, but he seems to have traveled far, as far as the imagination goes. There are songs of love, songs of loss, songs of highest joy and songs of deepest despair.  He tells stories, lots of stories.  For examples, he has children's songs from Never Never Land about frogs and princesses.  Another one tells of a Scottish lass in the 1600's trying to save her laddie boy from the gallows.  A story set in the 1860's is about a Tennessee plantation owner's son who, like Thomas Jefferson, falls in love with a young slave girl, with a love so deep that it travels and reincarnates into the present.  Another song documents the life of a mentally-handicapped man. David loves cowboys and writes often of them.  He writes loud down-home gospel sounds but also quiet songs of religious longing, always the longing… Another gem depicts an auctioneer trying to sell a "weak" dollar bill on the international money exchange.  He even has a story of highly intelligent and advanced space travelers who come to Earth to get it back on the "right" course for survival and advancement.  He has songs on the environment, songs about 9/11, songs about war and songs about peace.  He has a cover on the women's suffrage movement sung by him pretending to be Annie Oakley.  Say what?  Another song is delivered from the eyes of a female lioness long before man came upon the scene.  (How far can he go?)  Well, another song is sung by a 450 year old Hopi Indian man. (That far)  He even has a song about his toes, for God's sake!  Loving tributes have been sung for Princess Diana, John F. Kennedy, Jr., the Tennessee Man (his father), and to Janis Joplin.  Lots of fun can be found in these Songs of David, in particular those about him high jacking a Kenny Roger's concert, about getting kidnapped by Jane Fonda, and about Jesus returning to Earth to save Mankind and getting arrested in Flagstaff, Arizona for "disorderly conduct".  They just go on and on…

    David's priority over the years has been on raising and being with his family.  His music, however important, has been kept in the background.  In fact, most of his songs have rarely been heard.  Now he feels, with children grown and gone, that he should try to get the songs out to the people, believing again in the magic that they hold and their potential positive energy on all things living.  

    A few years ago David rounded up many very talented local musicians and went into a professional studio and cut a fully arranged and orchestrated CD of fifteen of his songs, titled SHOW ME THE WAY. Ever the over-achiever, Dempsey, since then, has completed eight more CDs, all with the original songs and stories memtioned above. COUNTRY TOONS (2008);  DARK ANGEL (2008);  LOCO GRINGO (2010);  NEVERMORE/EVERMORE (2011);  and LAST CHANCE CAFE (2011) are all listed and available for review and purchase at www.dempseydavemusic.com, CD BABY, AMAZON and iTUNES.  The remaining three CDs are all tracked and mixed but awaiting final mastering and pressing until I find money and miracles.

    Thanks for your help in this quixotic quest.  Buy some. Spread the joy.  "Breathe in Beauty, breathe out Love".  

                                                                                                  Dempsey Dave, 2014