Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to David Luther. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

David, appreciate you joining us today. What’s been the most meaningful project you’ve worked on?

This is such a great topic! I could talk about these all day. When I read the question, one particular project popped into my mind immediately. In 2015 I was invited to a session at weights and measures studio in Kansas City by David George. I hadn’t known him very long, but I felt pretty honored to have been asked to write a verse and sing on a collaboration of Kansas City based musicians to benefit the ACLU at a time when immigration issues were on the rise. David was the only person I knew walking in the room, and now I know most of them as friends like John Keck, Erik Voeks and Phil Haggard. Others I met again later only to be inspired by them time after time like Mark Manning. Other friends and fellow artists I hold as the finest in Kansas City at doing what they do like Nathan Corsi and Jessica Paige. I was inspired by the spirit of the collaboration and David George at bringing it all together. Who knew that 6 years later he would be producing a songs I hadn’t even written yet and others that were just waiting for the right collaborators and it would be mastered by Duane Trower who opened his studio up to us that night. Yeah, that was a meaningful project for sure.

David, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I’m a 42 year old dad of two teenage boys. I’m a recovering alcoholic with adhd and haven’t had a drink in almost 4 years. I have a masters degree and spent 15 years working in social work and the last 5 working in foster care. I live in the middle of somewhere and I launched my full time professional music career during the beginning of a global pandemic. It’s been a rollercoaster so far with ups and downs, sometimes balancing one with the other and sometimes not.

I grew up in Topeka Kansas, but that’s just what I can remember. I was, I think, 2 years old when my mother left from Arizona in the middle of the night, pregnant with my sister Anna, with my older brother Matthew and me in her arms. Her father had wired her enough money to get home where he picked us up at the bus station. I don’t remember my dad, who I would meet for the first time when I was 15. My mother moved into the house next door to the Broxtermans an Irish/German Catholic family. My mom met my dad Carl when I drove my tricycle off the deck and face planted on the sidewalk. He jumped the fence and grabbed me up. I loved being a part of the Broxtermans. My Grandmother Helen was a saint, the kindest woman I’ve ever known. She ran a beauty salon where I spent a good deal of my time when I wasn’t tormenting the neighborhood on my bike. When I was young I’d collect cans on the weekends and turn them in at the grocery store for change and then would buy little Debbie treats that I would hide in the abandoned houses on my block. Sugar, right?!

I never felt right, I always felt outside the circle, I have come to understand this is not an uncommon story amongst alcoholics. Drunks run in my family, well, they used to.

I was obsessed with music as far back as I can remember. I looked forward to Casey Kasem every Saturday morning. The only TV we had was about the size of a shoe box. It had a 4×4 inch screen so it didn’t hold my shattered attention like Starship, Tiffany, Joshua Kadision, Jon Secada, Billy Joel, Elton John, George Michael, or Queensryche! I didn’t touch a guitar until I was a sophomore in highschool when I got grounded from my car. My brother had previously picked the guitar up and was teaching himself “Come to my Window“. I did whatever the hell he did so I soon started learning too.

I don’t know what happened. I don’t really remember anything but the start, kind of like my first experience on stage. I am pretty sure I was a Junior at this point and I had learned the song “Name”, by the GooGoo Dolls. It was a high school talent show, with maybe 500 people there, mostly my classmates who I was “sure” thought very little of ME as well as their parents who I was “damn sure” would have preferred I not be around their kids. And then there was the school administration, but I won’t get into that. I remember walking on stage and walking off stage. Everything else was blank. I blacked out the entire experience. I watched a video of it later and was amazed to see that I’d played the song just like I wanted to. I’d practiced it so many times that it just happened. I don’t remember making any kind of a decision to do music. It was more like “oh, thank God there’s something for me too!”

I started listening to what was easy to mess around with, Neil Young, The Eagles, Led Zeppelin. I gravitated to their songs and I don’t know when or how or any of that, but I started writing songs. My first one, “Momma”, was a heartbreaking ballad about my mother being found dead on the side of the road in Tennessee. Don’t ask me, because I have no idea. I think we probably start with the things we are most afraid of and write ourselves out from there. True to my nature the response was all I needed and it’s been a love drug ever since.

I graduated high school and got on a bus a week later. My mothers sister lived in Gatlinburg, Tennessee with her husband and our cousins, The McCoys (yes those McCoys). I had always wanted to be there and now I was on my way! I lived with them for the summer and worked as a soda jerk in the crafts community of this beautiful tourist trap at the bottom of the smoky mountain national park. I had always adored my family in Tennessee and loved it when we would visit. I was so grateful that they generously opened up their already full home to me for the summer. Kirk was a tall, easygoing troubadour with a huge smile. He lived out of a VW bus with his dog and played guitar at several of the bars there in town. Kirk was quite simply “the shit!” I DON’T THINK I WAS EVEN CONSIDERING WHAT I MIGHT DO AS A CAREER OR ANYTHING LIKE THAT TO THAT POINT. I WAS SIMPLY GOING ABOUT WHAT SEEMED TO BE THE NEXT THING TO DO.  I moved back to Kansas and followed my brother Matt to Benedictine College where I completed my first year of UNDERGRAD.

Well, I have completely skipped the parts where I started experimenting with alcohol in the 5th grade, which is when my emotional development went on sabbatical. I  was constantly in fights and finally expelled from 8th grade for the last fight they were going to tolerate. I didn’t mention that I’d had a two week long inpatient visit at a mental health facility. By the time I graduated high school I had two DUI’s. But college was like a new start. It really was. No one knew me, I wasn’t colored by my past. I was good at Rugby, I played guitar, for the first time in my life I felt cool, but I wasn’t cool!

I was still playing music and writing and I found a gig at Paolucci’s, an Italian deli with a bar upstairs, up some pretty rough stairs if I recall. I would walk there from campus with my guitar each Wednesday evening and back that night. I wasn’t driving, I was done doing that stupid crap, until I wasn’t. I remember it was the last time I was going to be playing there that second semester and I had to bring some gear home so I borrowed my friend’s car. Later that night I’d get my 3rd DUI sitting next to a guy who told me he played bag-pipes for Bonnie Raitt.

School finished and I thought it’d be a good time to get the hell out of town. I got on a plane and went to Denver where my dad, Joel. lived with his 3rd or 4th wife, Eileen. He always told me that “he didn’t do very well on his own ”. That’s something I haven’t thought about in a while. I didn’t do very well on my own either. In fact that was the problem I wasn’t looking at. I was 20 years old. I couldn’t even buy alcohol and I had 3 DUI’s, I’d had more blackouts, fights, scary nights then anyone should have and I was just getting started.

I loved Colorado, I tried to climb everything. While living there for the summer I met and became friends with Richie Furay who was the pastor at Calvary Church in Boulder. I still had no real ambition to pursue music as a profession when I moved back home, I didn’t even know that was a thing really. Honestly I wasn’t really thinking about the future in that way. I didn’t know it then but I had a sense of something more that I was here to do. I had intended on returning to Benedictine College, but after facing the DUI charges and spending 90 days in county jail I decided to move back home to Topeka. I lived at home with my folks again and started playing guitar in a contemporary band at the Baptist church I grew up in. This is where I met Jonathan Bleu, who used to play with Mylon LeFevre and Broken Heart. He was the maintenance man at the church and I came on as his assistant. We worked closely for about 2 years. He introduced me to the study of apologetics and ignited my interest in pop-physics and comparative religions. He also introduced me to Kerry Livgren of the band Kansas who gave me the opportunity to sing on a “Cantata” that he’d been working on for almost 20 years at that point.

I met and married the mother of my two children. As far as I knew I was in Topeka for good. I finished a bachelor’s degree in psychology at KU and was working as a juvenile probation officer. I then started working on a masters degree in criminal justice through Boston University while working as a juvenile probation officer for the 3rd District Court of Kansas. I can’t remember exactly how, but I connected with Jarrod Guth who I’d known from high school. He had been playing with Andy McKee and together, a female vocalist we formed the group Significant Others. We played a few shows before Andy blew up as a fingerstyle artist following an appearance on the Jimmy Kimmel show. He embarked on the beginning of an amazing career which I’m overjoyed to see him flourishing in today.

Not too long after that I met Larry Perez, now Jaikeb Lawrence, and together we formed the rock band Killing Eve. Up to this point I’d only written by myself with an acoustic guitar which was very limiting. Larry is an amazing guitar player and working with him gave me the opportunity to write in the context of a band which is something that I’d wanted to explore since being absorbed by bands like LIVE and Pearl Jam.

Over the next year we wrote some great songs that we performed in our one and only show at the Granada in Lawrence, Kansas. It was a phenomenal experience that taught me a great deal about music, writing, and being in a band. It taught me even more about myself. Not long after that show Larry decided to leave the band and I didn’t feel it was something I could continue on my own, nor did I want to.

That is when I turned my attention to myself as an artist. I don’t exactly remember how I stumbled on it, but I started listening to Matthew Perryman Jones and fell in love with the style, the writing and the production. I reached out to his producer, Neilson Hubbard, in Nashville and sent him some songs. I remember taking his call at my sister’s apartment in Kansas City. I was so excited that he wanted to work with me. We landed on 5 songs and recorded them in a week at Mr. Lemon’s studio in Nashville. It was a surreal experience. Working with Garrison Starr was particularly memorable.

Not having the first clue what it meant to have a music career and with a family to support I knew I couldn’t just pack up the car and head to Tennessee. Ultimately that’s pretty much what we ended up doing. That’s a longer story. We lived with my aunt and uncle in Gatlinburg and I drove to Nashville where I was half the week trying to find my way which was more like trying to find my way in the dark. I had no idea what I was doing. I could only do that for so long before I had to make a change. I took my first job in foster care and we moved into a condo in Sevierville.

While attending a Rita Springer concert in Knoxville I met Will Reagan of United Pursuit. He invited me to his house where they had a weekly gathering they called “Love War”. It was the first time being introduced to organic worship music. I fell in love with all of them and we found a community with them that was beautiful and life changing. It’s one of those times in my life I look back on and wish I’d have been paying attention.

I still didn’t have any real sense of direction or purpose, but I received a phone call from my brother in law who had been working with producer Brandon Mashburn in Springfield, Missouri. He was running a studio for Tom Whitlock who had written some songs I loved like “Take My Breath Away”. They had heard my EP and were interested in working with me. Financed by my little brother Luke I went to Springfield and began the recording project which included the song “World’s Gonna Change” co-written with Tom Whitlock and Brandon Mashburn.

Things were becoming increasingly difficult at home and it looked like there might be some real opportunity if I moved closer to Springfield. We once again packed up the Uhaul and headed to make a new start in Missouri. We lived with my sister and her family before getting a place of our own in Grandview. I was driving to Springfield and working on a project that never seemed to end.

Still not understanding much of anything about how it should be going and facing increasing financial difficulty, I took a job with Missouri Baptist Children’s home working intensive in-home services. I was drinking more and more and my home life was continuing to unravel. My wife left me and I sank deeper. The divorce was unbelievably heartbreaking, but I was lost. All I knew is that I had to find a way to continue being there for my two young boys.

I went through inpatient treatment at Valley Hope in Atchison but was drinking only days after leaving. I wandered around Kansas City playing open mics, but it was really just a distraction from the pain. It wasn’t until a few years later that in a desperate plea for change I hung up the phone after talking with my sister and hung myself in the backyard of my girlfriend’s home. My sister had the where-with-all to call 911 who was able to ping my phone and get there just in time. I was blacking out as the paramedics cut me out of the tree. I will never be more grateful for anything in my life.

I returned to Valley Hope and finally gave myself to recovery. I learned that many people who did what I did don’t really want to die, they just want the pain to stop. This resonated with me to my core. I was lost beyond any hope I could see. After leaving Valley Hope I moved into an Oxford House where the boys and I lived in a shared basement for the weeks that I had them and I attended intensive outpatient treatment 3 days a week. I had one relapse when I’d been sober for about 60 days. I remember taking that big drink and instantly feeling as lost as I had ever been. Alcohol had nothing left for me, it couldn’t even numb my pain. I threw myself into recovery and connection with my higher power and haven’t had a drink since that day over about 4 years ago.

The power of addiction is gripping and crippling, but we are not alone in it. Learning that made all the difference in the world for me and my family. I had worked in foster care up until about a year before this when I took a position as an adoption manager which I was thankfully able to return to after treatment. I had a lot of difficulty with organization which was only exemplified when quarantine happened and we were all working from home. It became evident that I was not going to be able to continue in that role successfully. I had a hard decision to make and I simply decided that one way or another I was going to do what I felt I was on the planet to do, write songs and make music.

My sister who runs a successful business had the idea of launching a new product line and hiring me to record some songs she would also use for marketing. Grateful for the opportunity I jumped at the idea. The coolest part of the project was getting to write a song with her.

During the course of working on that I and trying to develop as a solo artist I approached David George who I’d had the opportunity to play with in his band David George and a Crooked Mile a couple years prior. I had a song called “Kansas City” that I wanted him to produce. I had no idea what to expect. David led me through the rewrite and development of the song in a way I had not experienced. I remember when he sent me the first demo of the song and the music dropped in. I was overwhelmed. I felt what I felt when I was writing it. I’d never experienced that before. We recorded the song with Pat Tomek and released what is now “Home to Kansas City” an anthem to the place we both call home.

The studio I was working out of in Branson on the project for my sister closed and we still had work to do. After listening to the tracks it was felt that it would take just as long and be easier if we started from scratch. We quickly decided that we should just make an album. With the generous efforts and talents of David George, Pat Tomek, and Matt Kesler we recorded the core of the songs. Over the course of the next 6 months David produced an album that was more than I could have imagined it to be. We enlisted the talents of Kansas City musicians Lauren Mayhew, Marco Pascolini, Mike Stover, Christine Broxterman, David Browning, Nate Nall, Kristen Nall and Matt Baldwin. We were also graced by the amazing vocals of Kim Keyes, a singer in Nashville with a more than impressive resume, as well as Tory Stoffregen. The album was mixed by Pat Tomek at Largely Studios and mastered by Duane Trower at Weights and Measures Soundlab here in Kansas City. During the time leading up to the release of the album I have developed friendships with some of the most amazing and generous people I’ve ever met and who have become chosen family to me. James Carter of You Found Music, Buck and Joey of ULAH, Kelly Dougherty of KKFI 90.1 FM and Uptown Artists Group, Chris Hagairian of 90.9 The Bridge have been of unfathomable support to me. The added support of people such as Chad Bourquin, Mark Manning, Diana Ennis and Barry Lee and the embrace of the music community in Kansas City has been overwhelming and I am so proud to be a part of it. In 2022 I released the album “Take Me Home” with a concert that many people made possible. I’d shared a bill with the Kansas City based band Timbers while playing at fundraising event and was really impressed with them. I’d asked them if they’d consider being the backing band for my release show and a few others following.

It was an adventure up to the very day. The night before I received a notice that Timbers drummer was out with COVID and the female vocalist was also out sick. With less than 24 hours to go I thought, who could I call on who could be show ready in that amount of time. Though there are, I’m sure more people in the surrounding area who could fill such an order, I could only think of a couple. Mike Kessler, who had played the songs. Craig Kew, who I knew through Kerry Livgren and had played bass in Proto Kaw. Finally, Dan Hines, whom I also met while there in Topeka and had played on a very early project of mine. He was most well known as the bass player for the band PAW. He is quite simply the finest player and human being I know. It was the wildest thing. I called and he answered and told me that though we hadn’t spoken in at least a year or more he was going to call me that night. Overjoyed, I contacted Lauren Mayhew, who had done vocals on several of the songs and who I have come to simply adore. Timbers drummer had a scheduling conflict from the start which lead to Pat Tomek playing drums. This of course set me right at ease, having spent the previous 6 months with him recording the album. So on the day of the release I was joined by Dan Hines, Lauren Mahew, Pat Tomek and David George as well as Timbers Devon Teron and Aarron Mitchem who have since become close friends and ongoing collaborates. There is so much more to tell, but I’ll leave it with this. I’ve been embarking on a journey to bring this music and the heart of the arts community of Kansas City to the rest of the world. I can’t do it alone and after having the privilege of working and doing life with so many people I wouldn’t want to. My experience in recovery and social work have helped me to understand there is so much more work to be done and that people deserve respect, honesty, and kindness. I hope my music will help others find their way out of sorrow. And through my music, I hope it exemplifies what my true heart is and will give my boys the framework that will extend into their own dreams. Thank you for reading.

Are there any resources you wish you knew about earlier in your creative journey?

Early I was aware of recovery but I didn’t understand how critically important those resources would be in my life. However, I did eventually take advantage of them when I was at my lowest point and I’m forever grateful.

Are there any books, videos, essays or other resources that have significantly impacted your management and entrepreneurial thinking and philosophy?

Through Mastering the Music Business with Chad Bourquin at Generation Relevant I have been given the opportunity to learn from others currently in the music business. It’s a group that gathers twice a week on Zoom. You can ask a question and someone there has a shared experience and will be able to answer that question.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://thedavidluther.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thedavidluther/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thedavidluther
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCMFjreIN5fyd5tJAMH7Omow
• Other: https://thedavidluther.bandcamp.com/

Image Credits
All photos by Kelly Dougherty