(“Dave/Photo Gallery”)

("Dave’s e-mail Link")

Dave Leonard/Banjo

     Dave joined Common Ground in October of 2005.  His contribution is punch and drive.  The Scruggs and Crowe style of the 5-string banjo will be heard as long as he’s around.  His instrument of choice is a pre-war 1933 Gibson Granada flattop conversion.  What a choice!  Dave can flat make it talk too.  Vocally, he’s a fantastic baritone singer.  Dave’s baritone and Jack’s bass vocals, round out the bottom end of the 4 part harmonies.

     There are groups that can flat cook when it comes to pickin’, and some groups have great vocal harmonies, but not very many groups are around that can do both, and do it well.  Common Ground’s goal is to try and fill that nitch.  Dave definitely helps the group do just that.  He has become a fantastic baritone vocalist.  He has shown so much vocal improvement in the past year, that it’s unreal.  He’s just not satisfied in being ok, he strives to be perfect, in his banjo work and especially in his vocals.

     When the guys started looking for a banjoist, they decided to search for someone who could not only play the banjo well, but someone who could also sing baritone equally as well.  There are so, so many great banjoists around the area, and there are so, so many great baritone vocalists around the area, but there aren’t very many at all who can do both well.  They wanted to keep the 3 and 4 part harmonies alive in the group.  Why somebody hadn’t already snatched him up for their group is amazing.  It was just meant to be.

     Dave had just been keeping a low profile all of those years.  When he did play out, to fill his pickin’ crave, he circulated more in the central to northern areas of Indiana.  The rest of the guys circulated more in the southern areas of the state.  They had crossed paths surely more than once, but the connection wasn’t made until Common Ground.  It must have just been fate.

     For the last few years, Dave has been content to sit at home and practice his banjo techniques with the Bluegrass Album Band CDs, among others.  “For the first 15 years or so that I played, no one ever heard me play the banjo.  I was satisfied just to sit at home and play with Cds.  No one especially has ever heard me sing, at least un til now.”  When Dave kicks a tune off, you feel almost as if Earl or J. D.’s kicking it off.  It doesn’t get any better than those guys.  That stuff is timeless.  It’s just as good today as it was back then, when they originally recorded it.    I guess if a guy’s going to pattern his banjo style after someone, it doesn’t get any better than Earl Scruggs and J. D. Crowe.

     Dave is also a walking songbook.  If you just mention the title of a particular song, Dave cuts loose with the words.  Jack feels like they’ve got to be related somehow.  He feels like he’s finally got someone who knows as much about bluegrass interests as he does.  He and Dave can get to going on about a past festival or some picker from long ago, and they sometimes totally lose Ronnie.  It absolutely drives Ronnie nuts.  They love doing it though.

---Ronnie Deaton