David Pulizzi and Graveyard Rooster

David Pulizzi was born and raised in the once-robust steel and lumber town of Williamsport, Pennsylvania. As an adult, he lived and worked in a range of other locales—Baton Rouge, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Chicago, Delray Beach—before settling once again in his native city in the early 2000’s. All along the way, for more than 30 years now, he’s been singing songs and playing guitar.

Mostly he plays his own music—finely crafted tunes that touch on American folk, country, blues and rock traditions. His lyrics usually reckon with the ebb and flow of what passes for normal life in these United States. By turns his writing is wry, joyful, brooding, rollicking, reflective and most always deeply insightful. For nearly two decades, Pulizzi worked as a freelance journalist, primarily covering music and the artists who create it. During those years, he developed a sharp eye for the telling detail, and he came to understand that there is a quiet, abiding mystery at the heart of every truly good story. And in his songs, he began to address the mystery at the heart of his own story. That process is ongoing, and Pulizzi doesn’t expect it to end anytime soon. Nor, on a related note, does he expect to grow bored with the natural beauty and rich history of his beloved hometown or with its endlessly entertaining array of characters who increasingly populate his songs and enrich his own life in ways great and small.

Recently, Pulizzi recorded his debut CD, This Town, at Richard Rupert’s Green Valley Studio, located on a rural parcel of property just outside the small, nearby town of Muncy. “As the title suggests, the record is generally about life in this town.” Pulizzi says from his home near Williamsport’s Brandon Park. “I put a song called ‘Key of T’ on there, and that’s the only one that doesn’t have anything to do with life in Williamsport. That one’s about a bluesman named T-Model Ford. He was in his 90s when he passed away in Mississippi a couple years ago. I wasn’t always crazy about his music, but I loved his spirit. So I wrote ‘Key of T’ shortly after he passed. And somehow it fit naturally with the other songs on the record.”

There are seven additional tracks on the disc. From an ode to his son (“Beautiful Young Man”) to the troubled relationship of a young Italian couple (“Gina and Pasquelli”) to the unbridled thrill of newfound love (“Miss Sunshine”) to one man’s tale of middle-aged angst (“Mexico”), each song stands as a snapshot that eloquently captures some element of everyday existence in Williamsport. Characters pass through their days amid fleeting moments of happiness and triumph, fear and loneliness, and, above all, uncertainty. “It’s a world full of dreams/a world full of hope/ It’s a world in despair/a world on the ropes/Send out a prayer/where does it really go?” Pulizzi wonders on the album’s open-ended concluding track, “Who Can Say?” “I don’t have many answers,” Pulizzi says. “I don’t know why the world is like it is. There’s a lot of darkness out there, a lot of meanness, a lot of things we’ll never know or understand. At the same time, there’s a lot of light, a lot of beauty. On the whole, at least for me, life hasn’t always been great so far, but it’s always been wildly interesting. And, fortunately, there’s been a lot to sing about.”

Praise

"This is flawless music … at once merry, heartbreaking, unflinchingly honest, unrepentant and lyrical. This is art." — Roger Williams, Florida Weekly

"Imaginative, profound, sad, realistic and courageous. Well done." —Richard James, freelance entertainment correspondent, Williamsport Sun-Gazette