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Dave Malone The Radiators 
Dave Malone was born in New Orleans in 1952 and is best known as the guitarist/vocalist of The Radiators. He has also worked with a wide variety of other musicians, in and out of New Orleans. He has recorded more than a dozen albums with the Radiators, including their latest release Dreaming Out Loud. They maintain a strong, loyal fan base and are on the road relentlessly. Malone was born in New Orleans on August 29. Because his father was in the military, he and his mother and three brothers moved constantly and spent many hours in the family car with the radio blasting. “I feel very fortunate to have had access to radio the way it was then. We would hear every type of music imaginable: pop, country, soul, blues etc., etc…and to me they weren’t all that different from one another.. If it was melodic and tuneful with a good singer...I loved it!!.. To me, George Jones and Hank Williams are just as soulful as Otis Redding and Muddy Waters.” The family finally settled in a tiny sugar cane town on the Mississippi River—Edgard, Louisiana....where Malone’s older brothers got mail order guitars from Montgomery Ward and were learning folk songs and Duane Eddy songs from the records they were starting to collect. Malone was just a kid when he witnessed the event that changed his life: The Beatles on the Ed Sullivan Show. Singing and playing guitars seemed like an extremely cool thing to do. “I was mesmerized and completely hooked and thought that their music sounded so fresh and exciting…" When brother John put a band together with school friends, Dave hung around so much that he got the opportunity to pick up and learn to play the bass guitar. His folks were kind enough (or crazy enough) to let them commandeer the family dining room for years and years for practice. A little later, Dave started on the guitar and formed his first band: The Family Dog. After high school, Malone moved back to New Orleans started a country rock band, Dustwoofie, with his brother John. Dustwoofie became a mainstay at Tulane University and later, Dave's brother Tommy joined. After Dustwoofie, Dave bounced around in other bluegrass, rock & roll and country-rock bands such as The Johnny Zimple Band with Subdude John Magnie and The Dr. Bill Malone Band (no relation), finally winding up in Roadapple with Spencer Bohren and Radiators bassist Reggie Scanlan. One day Dave and Reggie got a call from Ed Volker to come over and jam with him, Frank Bua and Camile Baudoin. “We had such a a great musical experience that we decided to become a ‘band’ the very next day. The name took longer than the music. We played gigs as Them Neighborhood Boys, then a few more gigs as the Weema Woppas, and finally came up with The Radiators.” In addition to his life as a Radiator, Malone has put together and become involved in many other projects. One of his side bands, Monkey Ranch with a core line-up of Malone as band leader, Reggie Scanlan on bass and Neville Brothers drummer Mean Willie Green, has included a real who’s who of New Orleans musicians: brother Tommy, Theresa Andersson, Anders Osborne, John Gros, David Torkanowski and many others. Dave has also done shows with brother Tommy as The Malone Rangers… interpreting songs from their Mom’s original record collection as well as the Everly Brothers and Louvin Brothers and other vocal harmony duos. “The Radiators are on the road so much that there isn’t a lot of time for other projects… I’ve had the good fortune, however, to share the stage with some amazing musicians—James Burton, Steve Cropper, Greg Allman, Martin Simpson, Danny Gatton, David Hidalgo, Warren Haynes, Maceo Parker, Derek Trucks, Robbie McIntosh and even Derek Smalls. It’s been a crazy ride….but now I’ve been doing this for over 30 years....and .. Yes! It IS an extremely cool thing to do!” Dave Malone plays a custom version of a Category 5 Katrina Amp called Easy, named for a hurricane that was in the same year as his birth, and also as a nod to The Big Easy, New Orleans. |
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