David Childers started playing music in college. That was 1970 and Chapel Hill, North Carolina was still a small town but it had a lot of big stuff going on. James Taylor had been through recently, the Red Clay Ramblers were forming. Mike Cross was showing audiences how to play like Doc Watson and Bukka White. Childers remembers: “I was watching all this and saying to myself that I wanted to do something like that but not that. I was playing Elvis, Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee Lewis stuff along with Bob Dylan and a lot of traditional stuff. It probably looked and sounded a little like folk music, but it was really rock and roll. That was what I was after. It worked some times and some times it didn‘t, but I kept on chasing those times when it worked, and now, after over thirty years, I’m in this band that makes the kind of music I always wanted to make: Ass shakin’, hard sweatin’ rock and roll.”
Now, Childers fronts that band, the Modern Don Juans, and they play in venues throughout the U.S. The Modern Don Juans are Mark Lynch on bass, Robert Childers on drums, and Randy Saxon on guitar. “They’re not just a back up band,” says Childers. “For one thing, except for my wife and dogs, I probably spend more time with these guys than anybody. So we’re friends, thank God. As far as playing, and now writing, it’s a team effort. We all try to find the best way to play a song. We work for a unified goal. Lots of bands are dictatorships, but this one is pretty democratic. It just worked this way because these guys are smart, and like me, they want to rock and roll.”
Recently Childers and the Modern Don Juans have been guest openers for the Austin, Texas based band The Gourds at venues in Georgia, Virginia, Texas, Arkansas and North Carolina. In the past Childers and the MDJs have opened for or done shows with Alejandro Escovedo, The Avett Brothers, John Hiatt, Scott Miller, Two Dollar Pistols, Unknown Hinson, Jimmy Lauderdale, Lou Ford, Kevin Gordon, and Malcolm Holcombe. Closer to their home base of Charlotte, they regularly rock full houses at various honky tonks, bars, and theaters. Childers toured the United Kingdom in 2002 as a solo artist, and played the Celtic Connections Festival in Glasgow, Scotland in early 2004. That same year, “Room 23”(Silver Meteor/Rank Records, 2003), was Number One for two months on the Euro-Americana Radio Chart. In the United States, “Room 23”, like two prior albums, “Hard Time County“(Rank Records, 1999), and “A Good Way To Die”(Single Wing Records, 2001) rose to the top 40 of Americana Radio. Their newest album, “Jailhouse Religion” will be released on January 17th, 2006.
