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Wednesday, January 22, 2020
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Today’s Paper
Music |David Olney, 71, Singer-Songwriter, Dies
Onstage
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DAVID OLNEY, 71, SINGER-SONGWRITER, DIES ONSTAGEDAVID OLNEY, 71,
SINGER-SONGWRITER, DIES ONSTAGE
He wasn’t as famous as those who sang his songs, but he was revered
by them. After apparently suffering a heart attack, mid-song, he
stopped and said, “I’m sorry.”
David Olney performing in Nashville
in December. “Anytime anyone asks me who my favorite music writers
are, I say Mozart, Lightnin’ Hopkins, Bob Dylan and Dave Olney,”
the songwriter Townes Van Zandt wrote.Credit...Val Hoeppner/WMOT
By Bill Friskics-Warren
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Published Jan. 20, 2020Updated Jan. 22, 2020, 5:35 p.m. ET
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David Olney, an uncommonly thoughtful singer-songwriter whose music
has been recorded by the likes of Linda Ronstadt and Steve Earle, died
on Saturday after apparently having a heart attack while performing
onstage in Seaside, Fla. He was 71.
His manager, Mary Sack, said Mr. Olney was pronounced dead at a
hospital nearby. He had undergone surgery for a heart attack a decade
ago.
Mr. Olney was stricken while performing at the annual 30A Songwriters
Festival, held at venues in and around Seaside, on the Florida
Panhandle’s Gulf Coast.
“David was playing a song when he paused, said ‘I’m sorry’ and
put his chin to his chest,” Scott Miller, a singer-songwriter who
was performing with him, said on Facebook.
“He never dropped his guitar or fell off his stool. It was as easy
and gentle as he was. We got him down and tried our best to revive him
until the EMT’s arrived.”
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Mr. Olney never had a hit single or won a Grammy Award, but in
folk-rock and Americana circles, he is revered for his poetic
sensibility and gruff-voiced storytelling, especially by his fellow
songwriters, including his musical hero, Townes Van Zandt
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“Anytime anyone asks me who my favorite music writers are, I say
Mozart, Lightnin’ Hopkins, Bob Dylan and Dave Olney,” Mr. Van
Zandt wrote in the liner notes to Mr. Olney’s 1991 album,
“Roses.” “Dave Olney is one of the best songwriters I’ve ever
heard — and that’s true. I mean that from the heart.”
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Emmylou Harris has recorded several of Mr. Olney’s songs, including
“Deeper Well,” which appeared on her Grammy-winning 1995 album,
“Wrecking Ball.” Other songs of his recorded by others include
“Saturday Night and Sunday Morning” (Mr. Earle), “Women Cross
the River” (Ms. Ronstadt) and “Queen Anne’s Lace” (Del
McCoury).
“David Olney tells marvelous stories, with characters who cling to
the hope of enduring love, all the while crossing the deep divide into
that long, dark night of the soul,” Ms. Harris said in a statement
on Mr. Olney’s website .
ImageThe cover of Mr. Olney’s
album “Through a Glass Darkly,” released in 1999. He released more
than 20 solo albums after his rock band dissolved in 1985.
Mr. Olney at times approached his richly imagined character studies
from unusual if not implausible perspectives. His wryly titled “Hymn
of Brays” was written from the point of view of the donkey that
carried Jesus into Jerusalem. The ballad “Titanic” is told from
the standpoint of the iceberg that sank the ship. Another song was
about the Hall of Fame Yankee shortstop Phil Rizzuto.
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“I have always read a lot,” Mr. Olney explained in a 2014
interview for a roots music website. “Besides being a cheap source
of entertainment, literature gives constant lessons in how to tell a
story.”
David Charles Olney was born on March 23, 1948, in Providence, R.I.
His father, Peter Butler Olney, worked as a manager in a cotton plant;
his mother, Francis (Swift) Olney, taught elementary school.
The second of three children raised in Lincoln, R.I., Mr. Olney had
what he described as an “idyllic” childhood. At 15 he saw Ray
Charles in concert; shortly after that, he was in the audience at the
1963 Newport Folk Festival in Rhode Island when Bob Dylan made his
first appearance there. David was 12 when he received his first
guitar.
After high school he briefly pursued a degree in English at the
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he spent more time
playing folk music in bars than studying.
Mr. Olney moved to Nashville in the early 1970s and fell in with
similarly literary-minded singer-songwriters like Mr. Van Zandt, Mr.
Earle and Guy Clark. Later he formed Dave Olney & the X-Rays, a new
wave-inspired rock band that released a pair of albums in the early
’80s. The group also opened shows for Elvis Costello and appeared on
the PBS series “Austin City Limits.”
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The X-Rays disbanded in 1985, after which Mr. Olney proceeded to
release more than 20 albums, tour extensively and distinguish himself
as a widely admired, if not quite famous, singer-songwriter.
He is survived by his wife of 30 years, Regine (Popp) Olney; a son,
Redding; a daughter, Lillian Olney; a brother, Peter; and a sister,
Debby Atwell.
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