Bruce Anthony: the magic of musical memory
Bruce Anthony: the magic of musical memory
Sam Nobles, left, and Bruce Anthony, playing on the water as “Bruce & Sam.” Photo via Facebook
Bruce Anthony’s story demonstrates the persistent power of musical memory.
Anthony is half of “Bruce & Sam,” the Delaware-based jazz/folk songwriting and standards duo that will play the DelFolk coffeehouse concert series this Saturday, Feb. 18, in Dover.
Bruce has been playing solo guitar gigs around the Diamond State for over 25 years now. He’s been gigging as a duo with Sam Nobles, the Newark-based bassist, since 2010.
There have been times, though, when Anthony forgot what his mind and fingers could do when applied to a fretboard.
“I’m nothing like I was,” Anthony says, asked about his jazzy fingerstyle playing. “What happened was I stopped playing because I had to make money.”
As a youth, still in school, Anthony toured “up and down the East Coast” with a Chester, Pa. R&B and funk band called “The Signs of the Times.”
“I got to do a lot until I got to my 20s,” Anthony said. “I’m 21, 22, I stopped playing. My parents said you’re not going to play music for a living.”
Anthony’s family was familiar with the music business: his brother has played professionally his entire adult life. He’s now in Stockholm, Sweden, with the band Blacknuss. Anthony also had an uncle who cut a few songs on Atlantic Records with Philly funk group Tony Alvon & the Belairs.
“I was the one who stayed home and took care of Mom,” Anthony says. “I went out and drove a truck, a forklift, played no guitar.”
Then, Bruce met a girl. An artist. A French woman, from Montreal. It was the mid-90s, and Anthony was working for Bob Evans restaurants, opening their then-new Delaware locations. The couple married in ‘97 in a church on Bradford Street in Dover.
“After a couple years of knowing me, she said ‘You need a hobby.’ I said I used to play guitar,” Anthony recalls. “When I was a young kid touring with all these older people, I never took a lesson. All I had to look and see what they were doing. My wife says, ‘You could still do that.’”
“I took her to a Pat Metheny concert at the Mann. I said ‘I can’t do everything he does, but I can do that. And that. She said ‘Go get yourself a guitar.”
Bruce walked into a now-closed Dover area music shop and tried out an electric guitar. “Everybody in the store started listening. It’s like riding a bike, you get back on, you can kind of ride.”
He practiced, and then started playing background music for his wife’s art gallery openings. Before long, he started playing in high-end beach restaurants.
“After three months, I was making more money in a weekend doing that than in two weeks working,” Anthony said. “Bob Evans was a great experience for me as a musician, because I knew you can’t go in and be so loud you make people leave the restaurant … I made a point of telling the people in Rehoboth, I can play your place and people can still enjoy a bottle of wine and nice food.”
After finding his niche, Bruce grooved for years as a gigging guitarist and most impressively, as a musician who plays almost exclusively in Delaware. Covid was the first break in the action for him, and the aftereffects again challenged his musical memory.
“When (covid) came in, I started drinking more, a lot of people did. I never did before. And when it was over and I was working again, I was drinking the same way as during covid. I didn’t know it, but I went down.”
Anthony had a stroke, but living by himself wasn’t aware for a couple of days. He went to a gig with Nobles.
“Sam said, something’s wrong with you, man. I didn’t know.”
Anthony took a month off from everything during the summer of 2022 and had to relearn his own songs.
“The doctors said I was able to come back a little quicker than most,” Anthony says. “I guess musicians are a little more active in the mind.”
Bruce & Sam play the Delaware Friends of Folk Coffeehouse Concert series this Saturday, February 18. Doors open at 7 p.m., show at 7:30.
Location: Dover Art League, 21 W. Loockerman St., Dover DE 19904
2022 Delmarva Folk Hero finalist Lavender Brown will open the show. Watch her October 7 Folk Hero set on YouTube:
Coffeehouse Concert Series tickets are $10 cash at door, $7 for DelFolk members, $5 for teens, 12 and under get in free.
Interview by Josh Brokaw