"Classic Blues acknowledges the commonality of human experiences.  It shows us that we exist in a reality where our souls respond in the same ways as other souls around us do when stimulated by the emotions in the music we experience together. I believe that in today’s fragmented societies which are under constant attack by forces committed to controlling them in their quest for power and money, music is a counter force that can fend off these attacks, as long as the music is truthful and produced without ulterior motives."

David Givens: Zephyrus Wonderland

Bassist David Givens born in Michigan and his well-known as co-founder of Blues-Jazz-Rock band of Zephyr. Studied Liberal Arts at University of Colorado. Zephyr was a blues-based hard rock band formed in 1969 in Boulder, Colorado by guitarist Tommy Bolin, keyboardist John Faris, David Givens on bass, Robbie Chamberlin on drums and Candy Givens on vocals. Although the charismatic performances by Candy Givens were originally the focal point for the band, it was the flashy guitar work of Tommy Bolin that the band is best remembered for. After Bolin left, he was replaced by Jock Bartley, and the band recorded the album Sunset Ride, their second for Warner Bros. On Sunset Ride, Candy Givens displayed her gifts as a singer, composer, and harmonica player. The album was produced by David Givens who also authored the majority of the tunes. Various versions of Zephyr continued to play in Colorado until Candy's death in 1984. The release of "Heartbeat" in 1982 was promoted by a video that incorporated very early examples of analog computer animation combined with live action.

(David Givens, Colorado Michigan 2019 / Photo by Jim Eckenrode)

Other Zephyr members of note include trance blues maven, Otis Taylor, who played bass during the mid-1970s, Kenny Wilkins (Drums) and also later on as (guitarist), guitarist Zack Smith (founder of Scandal), and blues guitarist, Eddie Turner, who played guitar in the last incarnation during the early 1980s. Candie and David, Tommy, and John Faris were all founding members of The Legendary 4Nikators, Boulder's oldest and best loved party band. Taylor and Turner were later additions to The Legendary 4Nikators - Taylor noted for playing motorcycle on stage during "Leader Of The Pack" and performing in a kilt and Turner for his renditions of Jimi Hendrix classics. Decades after, Zephyr's music is still in print and continues to be played in the various media. In 2014, Greg Hampton and David Givens collaborated on a project that resulted in the release of a limited edition boxed set that included a remastered version of the "bathtub" album, two albums of live material - mostly previously unreleased, and a booklet featuring liner notes by Givens and photos from his private collection. The remastered first album is an unqualified improvement over the original and the live material justifies the high esteem the band accrued with the audiences that witnessed their performances. David, also recorded with Carly Simon (1971), two albums with bluesman Eddie Turner and was producer and guest at his wife Ohio-based Jazz singer, Anna Givens 'Sky Lark' (2010) album.

Interview by Michael Limnios                     Archive: David Givens, 2016 Interview

How has the Blues and Rock Counterculture influenced your views of the world and the journeys you’ve taken?

I became a professional musician in 1962 at 14. Musicians exist in a world outside of the “normal” workaday world and we learn early that we see behind the curtain of imagination shared by most. I was lucky to come to music at a turning point in the culture. First cannabis and then shortly thereafter, psychedelics were just becoming available. I smoked my first joint at almost the same moment I began playing bass in a rock band. The people I knew at university in 1966 were early adopters of the “counter culture”, whether in the arts or in politics – I was friends with a student who introduced SDS (Students for a Democratic Society) to our campus. I had been raised in a conservative household and before 1964, I supported the Viet Nam war as a fight against communism. When my friends started returning from the war, they told me how corrupt it was and I changed my position accordingly. 

What moment changed your life the most?  What’s been the highlights in your life and career so far?

It’s difficult to pick ONE, but my first acid trip probably changed my point of view more than any other single event. I experienced reality in the most unfiltered way since I was a young child. I recognized my soul – the being who looks out the window of my eyes, the person I am when I dream – as my ultimate reality on this planet. 

The highlight of my early life was finding love with Candice Ramey, my first wife and partner in music. The highlight of my early career was founding Zephyr, creating that music, and playing on big shows all over the United States and Canada with that excellent group. My midlife highlight was living in Hawai’I with my second wife, Judy Howard, and raising our son. The highlight of that period of my career was finding success in the straight corporate business world starting in Hawai’I and carrying over into the automotive industry. 

The current chapter of my life is based on the enduring marriage my wife, Anna, and I have made while we have pursued the winding paths of our business and social careers.  There have been certain important aspects of my life that underlay all these things – in Colorado, we skied and hiked in the mountains. In Hawai’I, we hiked and swam in the Pacific. I studied Japanese karate in Honolulu for eight years and I developed my body and mind.  In my current life, I play guitar, bass, drums, and keyboards nearly every day and continue to learn to work effectively in the recording studio. I also play competitive tennis several times a week. Physical and mental cultivation is important to me and has been a theme in my whole life.

"I believe people then and people now respond to the honesty and straight up power of the music we made. Obviously, it was based on music that had gone before, but I believe we created a new synthesis, a new sound that is not available anywhere else." (The Zephyr / Photo by Rod Dyer)

How did the idea of the band come about?  What is the story behind the name “Zephyr”?

Candy and I met and fell in love in Aspen, Colorado in the Winter of 1968. One of the things that brought us together was our mutual desire to get into the band business. I had played around Detroit for several years, first in a folk group context and then, in college, I started playing bass and singing in a popular rock band at university. Candy had learned some progressive jazz piano in high school and had taught herself to play harmonica and washboard as a member of a jug band in Aspen. Our first serious conversation was about how we both had the ambition to ‘make it’ in the music world. She and her good friend from high school, Doug Lubahn, had hitchhiked California the year before and Doug had fallen into playing bass on The Doors’ first album. He introduced her to Paul Rothchild, the Doors’ producer and she had felt the pull of that world as she visited a recording studio for the first time. She had returned to Colorado to learn the skills she wanted including playing harmonica. Besides being attracted to each other, we shared the same ambition and confidence in our ability to succeed.  We fell in love and moved in together in short order and immediately got busy putting a band together. She left the jug band and we immediately started a band with some new musician friends who had come to Aspen from San Diego. After playing a few gigs in Aspen, we realized that if we wanted to make a living playing music, we’d have to leave tiny Aspen for the far more populous Colorado low country: Denver, Boulder, Fort Collins, Colorado Springs, and other cities and towns along the Front Range had colleges and universities where the students were a ready audience for the blues, soul, and blues rock we were playing.  We moved to Boulder in September of 1968 and started attracting an audience. 

By New Year’s Eve, we had become quite popular, and we were asked to play at a private party in a galleria in Denver with several of the most popular local bands, one of which was a new band in town named Ethereal Zephyr. We watched them play and were immediately impressed by the keyboard player, John Faris. He had a wild stage presence and played a whirlwind of amazing improvisation on his Hammond B3. The guitarist was also impressive.

A couple of weeks later, we were playing our regular Wednesday night gig at the Buff Room, a 3.2 beer joint on the Hill in Boulder when we were approached by a young long-haired guy who asked if his friend, a guitarist, could sit in for a song.  We agreed to have him come up during the next set. The guitarist was the one we’d seen on New Year’s playing with the Ethereal Zephyr band and I recognized him when he showed up at the side of the stage with his guitar case in hand.  His friend introduced us to Tommy Bolin. Our guitarist agreed to let him play through his amp and we started a blues jam. The chemistry between Candy and Tommy was apparent right away. They traded licks; guitar and voice, guitar and harp, while the audience crowded closer to the stage. It was second set and the energy was running high already and this sudden escalation of the music got everyone even higher. When we ended the jam, the crowd went wild. As they were cheering, I leaned over to Tommy and said something like, “Maybe we ought to think about starting a band together.” He looked me right in the eyes and said “Yeah, I think we should”. A week later, Candy, Tommy, John Faris, and I along with a drummer friend from the Fuchs Hate Band jammed at a band house in our neighborhood. After we played, we discussed what our interests were and we all agreed that a combination of blues, jazz, and rock with lots of improvisation was to be our goal. Everything that happened afterwards proceeded from that meeting. One of the first things we negotiated was eliminating “Ethereal” from the band name and keeping the name “Zephyr”. There was a train named the California Zephyr that ran from Chicago to Los Angeles with a big stopover in Denver. It was a beautiful art deco styled passenger train that we had all seen charging across the dry lands at 80 miles an hour and it was a powerful image for our music. “Zephyr” was also the ancient name of the West Wind. In Colorado, the West Wind was usually moderate but every now and then, it raged down out of the mountains at over a hundred miles an hour. This, too, was an image we liked for our new hot band.

"Experience your own epiphanies. Do not look at life through the lens of images; rather look for the truth about reality based on your own observation.  Do your best work at all times; don’t make art designed to please others.  Respect your audience in all walks of life. Creativity is just as important in prosaic work as it is in art. Trust your intuition. Do not betray your values for any reason – you will live to regret it. When given the opportunity to interact with people you admire, don’t be shy. There is always a price for moving on. Love yourself, forgive yourself, respect yourself." (Photo: The Zephyr, New York City c.1971)

Why do you think that Zephyr music legacy continues to generate such a devoted following?

I have been working for several years using modern recording tools to radically reshape all the Zephyr recordings I have been able to get my hands on in hopes of improving the band’s reputation. New mixes are now possible on the two track recordings that are all that exist of the early Zephyr sessions thanks to the AI based tools that can separate the various instruments and voices and make them available for revision. I have listened very carefully to both the studio albums and many live recordings of concerts and rehearsals I have collected. As a 76 year old, I have a much different perspective than I had as a younger man and I have gained a tremendous amount of respect and admiration for the virtuosity, honesty and fearlessness in the music we played. The musicianship of all the players and the interaction between us is unlike anything else I have heard.

Timothy Leary, the psychedelic prophet, came over to speak to Candy and me after a show we did together at the University of Colorado in 1969. He told us that we were the best band he had ever heard. At the time, I discounted his words as just polite talk, but now after hearing what I’ve heard, I am inclined to believe he meant it. I see why it has lasted and why it still attracts new followers. To use an overworked term, it’s totally authentic. When we started, we were very young with no outside influencers and we were confident that we were going where the music wanted to go. We admired and loved each other as if we were a family. I believe people then and people now respond to the honesty and straight up power of the music we made. Obviously, it was based on music that had gone before, but I believe we created a new synthesis, a new sound that is not available anywhere else.

What are some of the most important lessons you have learned from your experience in the music paths?

Experience your own epiphanies. Do not look at life through the lens of images; rather look for the truth about reality based on your own observation. Do your best work at all times; don’t make art designed to please others. Respect your audience in all walks of life. Creativity is just as important in prosaic work as it is in art. Trust your intuition. Do not betray your values for any reason – you will live to regret it. When given the opportunity to interact with people you admire, don’t be shy. There is always a price for moving on. Love yourself, forgive yourself, respect yourself.

"As a 76 year old, I have a much different perspective than I had as a younger man and I have gained a tremendous amount of respect and admiration for the virtuosity, honesty and fearlessness in the music we played. The musicianship of all the players and the interaction between us is unlike anything else I have heard." (David Givens & Anna Givens on stage, Colorado Michigan 2019 / Photo by Dan Fong)

What’s the balance in music between technique and soul/emotions? What is the driving force behind your continuous support for your music?

Music is the language of emotion. Technique is how we speak this language. Like any technology, music can be analyzed, quantified, and taught. Music can be domesticated and turned to serve the egos and ambitions of ambitious people.  But, for me, the most profound music uses the minimum amount of technique necessary to express the emotion of the moment. Virtuosity is tempting for its own sake; it’s natural for most of us to enjoy the accolades of others, but, I think it’s best to use no more than the amount necessary to properly serve the needs of the music. To this day, I am happiest playing music that is an organic conversation that happens in the coordinated minds of the musicians and enters the world through the physical manipulation of the instruments and voices involved. Zephyr excelled at this and that is what drives me to continue to work to make their (our) music accessible.

Why is it important to preserve and spread the blues?  What is the role of music in society today?

Classic Blues acknowledges the commonality of human experiences. It shows us that we exist in a reality where our souls respond in the same ways as other souls around us do when stimulated by the emotions in the music we experience together. I believe that in today’s fragmented societies which are under constant attack by forces committed to controlling them in their quest for power and money, music is a counter force that can fend off these attacks, as long as the music is truthful and produced without ulterior motives.

Life is more than just music.  Is there any other field that has influence on your life and music?

Yes. My father had a swimming pool construction, repair, and maintenance business. My mother was a health and physical education teacher. My father taught me how to break down a problem and how to use the skills, both mental and physical, required to resolve whatever issues I encountered. I took over the maintenance side of the business when I was 16 and ran the business for two years. I used a gasoline powered pump to vacuum my clients’ pools, and the pump produced a rich steady tone. As I worked, I sang improvised melodies over the hum of the motor. I think that many hours of this helped me later when, as a musician, I was called upon to be spontaneous. He also taught me how to work hard, stay focused, and to persevere until the job was completed. Giving up was not an option and knowing how to find and use resources to discover answers was an important component of what I was taught.

My mother played piano and taught dance as part of her curriculum. She taught me to sing and to play music on her Hammond organ. She encouraged me to improvise rather than simply to recite what I learned from written music. Of course, this led to my preference for jazz and blues when I became a working musician since those forms don’t require simple recitation but instead place a premium on producing music that bears the stamp of the musician’s own personality, spirit, and technique. Many years later, my mother and father came to a gig in Boulder. She had heard my records, but had never seen me play. Her comment to me after watching us play was, “How did you learn to do that?”.  I wish I had been able to answer her, but I didn’t have the insight at the time to give a suitable explanation.                     (Photo: David and Candy Givens in the early 70's)

Another important influence on me was my 20+ year career as a computer systems engineer, IT executive, programmer, and corporate executive. I suspended my music career a couple of years after Candy’s death. I never stopped playing music, but I’d had enough of the music business. Candy and I had been blackballed by our former manager, one of the most powerful promoters of live music in the world.  When we grew tired of his mismanagement of our careers and tried to strike out on our own, unknown to us, he put out the word that we were to be booted from the big time music industry. Every time we started to make progress toward reigniting our career with new record deals or new management, the projects would suddenly vanish with no explanation. For example, in the late 70’s we had put together a deal with a new record company and we were on track to record a new album to be produced by Marty Balin, the singer with Jefferson Airplane/Starship. We met with Marty at his home in Marin County and we all decided to move ahead with the project. We were supposed to get together with the record company A&R department to determine next steps and suddenly it was radio silence. No one called, no one returned our calls. We had no idea why. There were other examples that really shook our confidence. Finally, an old friend who had worked as a promoter under our former manager took pity on us and explained that we had been blackballed and that it was not going to change. Our career together continued for a few years with new bands and new songs, but we could never get back to our former level. The music was good, but it was a meager existence that stressed our day-to-day lives and we drifted apart. Candy and I divorced but stayed close until her death. I remarried and Candy went through a series of boyfriends that ended in nothing. The night she died, she had a fight with her partner that ended with her locking herself in the bathroom of her rented condo and an endless dip in the Jacuzzi. 

After she died, I carried on for a while working with another singer, but eventually decided that it was time to move on. I had learned programming and some computer science from one of our former equipment managers and I found programming came easily to me. Music has a similar form to the type of software we wrote in those days – it was modular, repetitious, and was created out of a non-verbal language. My new wife was born and raised in Honolulu and after our son was born, we decided to move to Hawai’i to raise him. As it turned out, I more or less fell into a career as an IT professional in Honolulu. In the late 80’s and early 90’s, the computer business was blowing up and it was the wild west: computer science graduates were rare and there was a lot of opportunity for anyone with practical skills. I had practical skills – no degree, but I could make computer systems work, and I could create capable, efficient software. Learning how business works with information and organization greatly expanded my view.  The nuts and bolts of manufacturing, finance, human resources, as well as legal and administrative disciplines were a whole new way of thinking for me.  Eventually, my wife and I were hired by a supplier to the American automotive industry in Ohio; she as Training Manager and I as IT Manager. Over the years, we climbed the famous Corporate Ladder and eventually, I was promoted to Director of Planning for the $100M company and she took over IT, Logistics, and Training.  We worked with our Japanese and German allies in a world-wide operation that supplied all the major automotive companies in the world.  We travelled to Japan, China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Mexico to work with our partners and our suppliers. It was an amazing education.

When the company went bankrupt over a fight with the auto workers’ union, the UAW, we were two of the last employees on the payroll as we sent 75 truckloads of machinery back to Ohio from our facility in North Carolina. We witnessed the death of the organization we had poured our energy into for 13 years and it was both heartbreaking and liberating. We were back to being independent free agents solving problems and making things happen for ourselves. My third wife, Anna Lewis, and I sold our house in North Carolina and moved back to our house in Ohio on the south shore of Lake Erie. For the next 10 years, she pursued a career as a jazz singer and I was her support man. She was brilliant and we had some wonderful adventures.

(David Givens & Anna Lewis-Givens, Colorado Music Hall of Fame, 2019 / Photo by Jim Eckenrode)