David J. and his sixteen-year-old daughter, Charlotte, are both musicians who thrive in front of an audience and have never experienced a single case of stage fright. For Charlotte, he believes this comes in equal parts from her being classically trained from a young age and observing how, despite the fact that her father wasn’t, he could still get up on stage and entertain a crowd for hours—improvising even, if need be.
As soon as she was old enough to participate in a performance, David would bring her up onstage to sing a few songs with him whenever she wanted. In recent years, he says, she’s lost interest, but he hopes in the future they’ll be able to do it again and this time create something of their own.
“She has this incredible Bonnie Raitt style voice that just commands an entire room. I’ve been in this business a long time and I can tell she has what it takes, she just hasn’t let it show yet.
For now, I’m just glad she still comes to my gigs and stays for the whole show without complaining. he laughs. Though I can’t always be sure if it’s because she doesn’t have another ride home!
As an only child, he says, it can be easy to find yourself feeling like the center of the universe, as though your needs are more essential than anyone else’s.
These days, David admits, he finds it increasingly more difficult to connect with his daughter like he used to. Mostly what she seems to need from him involve rides somewhere or money for the things she wants to buy. Her questions, he says, all seem to center around what he can give her. As someone who long ago decided not to do anything for work that he doesn’t enjoy, a decision which prompted him to open his own sound engineering company, he admits it isn’t always easy to satisfy her every whim and he suffers when she openly shows she’s disappointed with him.
I’ve always tried to impress upon her that brushing people off when they do something you don’t like, classifying them as this or that, will only lead to alienation, which never solves anything.