David Lindley Digs In/ Nobody tells 'Badgerman' how to navigate his

Gazette, The (Colorado Springs), Sep 19, 2003 by BILL REED

Meet Badgerman. He looked in the mirror one day at his bushy white sideburns positioned against his long black hair and realized he is the proud owner of a two-tone head. Like a badger. Then he learned stories about badgers. They never back down from a fight. They keep orderly burrows with a "bone room" to celebrate their kills. They take on 18 wheelers if provoked. Even if a badger appears to be a hopeless underdog, he should never be counted out.

That, friends, is when David Lindley fully embraced his alter ego as a minor superhero: Badgerman.

"A badger is driven and they will take on anything," Lindley says. "It's an attitude.

"They will dig after an animal until they can't dig any more. And then they'll lie on their side and keep digging with one paw." On one hand, Lindley is not at all badgerlike. He's kind and funny. He's a 59-year-old recovering hippie. His wardrobe is drawn from a vast collection of screaming polyester shirts and golf pants. "Dress funny and play," he says. "That's about what it is." And he's even shy and retiring in a sense - he's a musician's musician, he's the guy behind the guy, his guitar work is the gravy on some of the best music of the past 30 years.

Lindley is a master of all things stringed. Guitar, slide guitar, banjo, bouzouki, saz, oud, dobro - on his latest album, "Twango Bango III," Lindley plays a dozen instruments.

That talent makes him a prized commodity in the studio, and he has credits to prove it with Bob Dylan, Linda Ronstadt, Warren Zevon, James Taylor, David Crosby and Rod Stewart.

He is one of Ry Cooder's favorite partners in crime. And Lindley is perhaps most famous for his decade-long collaboration with Jackson Browne, as he helped shape Browne's music from 1971 to 1981 and served as Browne's featured soloist on the road.

Lesser known but possibly more important are Lindley's forays into world music. Since his early days, Lindley has been collecting sounds and instruments from around the world. Way before Paul Simon, Peter Gabriel and even Mickey Hart ventured to foreign shores, Lindley's band Kaleidoscope (1967-71) was fusing rock with the world beat. "It's kind of like Bruce Lee's thing when he formed his martial art," Lindley says. "He took a little bit from everything and put it all in there. He said, 'Take what is useful and make it your own.' That's what I did. It's kind of insane, but it's my own thing."

That fascination continued with Lindley's '80s band El Rayo-X. And it infuses the string/percussion duo sound he began with Jordanian musician Hani Naser in the '90s and continues today with percussionist Wally Ingram.

"It's a traditional form all over the world, with a string instrument and drums," Lindley says.

"And then you can hear everything being played because it's simplified. Especially with Wally, because he listens well and he doesn't clutter things up."

Lindley and Ingram have been touring together five years now. They bring to the stage an amazing display on the strings (Lindley brings nine instruments on the road) girded by a bed of percussion, polyester and Lindley's slightly wacked-out banter. Their minivan will pull up at 32 Bleu on Monday night.

"What's really good about it, is from the back I look like a soccer mom," Lindley says. "Then I get horrified looks from guys who drive up beside me and think I'm a soccer mom babe. 'It's not a soccer mom babe. It's Mr. Puffy, boy.' "

So Lindley may not be as mean as a badger, but Badgerman is nevertheless a relentless force. Badgerman does what Badgerman wants to do.

In the late 1980s a record company threw a particularly suffocating contract in his face, and he walked away completely.

Lindley now records his albums exactly the way he wants them to sound, he manages his own affairs and he distributes his albums at shows and on his Web site at www. davidlindley.com.

"I play what I like. Life's too short," Lindley says. "Working for the big record companies is like the sharecropper system. I'm not gonna do that stuff anymore. I know too much.

"And you can sell a lot on your own. And you can sleep. You don't owe yo' soul to the company sto' no mo'."

It doesn't hurt that Lindley has a faithful audience and a web of connections. His latest album was recorded in Jackson Browne's studio, with one song co-written by Ry Cooder, and with friend Dennis McNally (the Grateful Dead's biographer and former publicist) handling the publicity.

Badgerman thinks music should be honest, funny, sometimes political and even prickly when the need arises.

"It always matters," Lindley says. "It's one of the functions of a musician to do that, to point things out and say, 'Look at this. This sucks.' "

He questions the role of big oil in "Operation Iraqi Freedom." His song "Meatgrinder Blues" brings up topics from radiation to genetic engineers crossing "a tomato with a fish." While "When a Guy Gets Boobs" confronts a more personal problem.

Bring on the 18-wheelers of the musician's life. Big record companies. Professional bootleggers. Trying to make a living outside the established system.