David Rea played with the best in folk music's heyday, and he's still pickin' and grinnin'

Oh, David, he'd sit in some dark corner,
And seem to melt the shadows with his eyes
And the songs that he was playin'
Were nothing' short of prayin'
And nothin' more than sayin'
I'm alive!
"Play, Little David, Play," Joni Mitchell

The man about whom Joni Mitchell wrote that song three decades ago lives on Bainbridge Island today. And by all accounts, he still plays guitar like an angel.

David Rea was a 17-year-old kid from Akron, Ohio, learning the ropes in what at the time was the world's center of folk music -- Toronto, Canada. Joni Mitchell was there, writing music not only about David Rea's filigree guitar picking, but about Toronto:

Night in the city looks pretty to me,
Night in the city looks fine.
Music comes spilling out into the street
Colors go flashing in time.

Ian and Sylvia were there. Gordon Lightfoot was there. Just about all of the greatest names in folk music crossed paths in Toronto in the late 1960s. And when they needed the best guitarist to accompany them, they looked up David Rea.

Though he says there are some great young guitar pickers out there today, all you've got to do is listen to Rea play to realize what magic he makes with a rosewood box and six strings. Listening to him is easier now because he's just released a new CD, "Shorty's Ghost," available on Bainbridge, and he's planning a few live appearances on Bainbridge and in Seattle, Port Townsend and Port Orchard this month. First chance to hear him is Saturday at the Pegasus Coffee House, 131 Parfitt Way SW, Winslow.

Classics ("Stack-O-Lee") and original compositions ("My Evangeline" and the title song) fill the new CD, which is available at Pegasus and the Glass Onion, 146 Winslow Way E, Winslow. His recent previous releases include "The Brass Ring" in 1993 and "Feelin' Good" in 1986.

Rea says he was fortunate to develop his fingerstyle guitar at a time when "there were a lot of 'Michael Row Your Boat Ashore' strummers out there." Ian and Sylvia Tyson heard him playing and he made a tape with Ian.

"They gave me a lot of encouragement," he says. "Then Gordon Lightfoot hired me part time to play, and from then on it progressed. Ian and Sylvia had hired me and Tom Rush and Fred Neal."

Mitchell was getting her start in Toronto at the time and wanted Rea to teach her to play. Her guitar style was unique, Rea says, and he told her not to change it. But she admired his playing so much that she wrote the song about him, "Play, Little David, Play."

Rea was the guitar sideman on Ian and Sylvia's early albums and on Lightfoot's debut album, "Lightfoot!" He appeared with the best folk artists of the time: Judy Collins, Buffy St. Marie, Ramblin' Jack Elliot, Neil Young.

Later, Rea spent time in New York with members of the Rascals and Mountain, and in Nashville, with the likes of Kenny Buttry and Tommy Jackson. His "Mississippi Queen" on the 1970 album, "Mountain Climbing," won a Gold Record Award

On "Slewfoot," Rea's third solo album, he was joined by members of the Grateful Dead and New Riders of the Purple Sage. About the same time, he was recording with practically everyone whose last name was Seeger, including Pete, Mike, Peggy and Penny, as well as with Ry Cooder and Elizabeth Cotton.

He's done a number of productions for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, including an opera, "Emperor Norton," and a three-part series on bluesman Robert Johnson. His latest CBC effort was a 1990 feature on Gordon Lightfoot's career.

He seems to enjoy telling the story of how he landed on Bainbridge. He was playing a gig at the Backstage in Seattle, and "my good friend and mentor, Sky Walkinstik (a Choctaw flutist), wanted me to meet somebody over on the Suquamish reservation."

They stopped at the Tides Out Tavern where Rea was introduced to Barbara, the former owner, and now Rea's wife. He said it was pretty much love at first sight after she showed him how to play darts.

Rea said he went back to California, packed all his stuff into an old red Volvo and drove back to the Northwest. He and Barbara were married, and today Rea runs his musical productions from the couple's Lynwood Center home.

He says he plans to continue composing and playing and is impressed with many of the local musicians he's encountering.

"I'll play at some of the little pubs around here -- you got to put a few dollars away, and as a musician, it also helps to keep your chops up," he says.

"The level of musicianship today is astounding. If I were starting out right now, I don't think I'd get anywhere."

But those who hear Little David play in person, or hear his latest CD, might disagree.

I don't need no Sunday sermon,
Need no Sunday shoes,
When I hear Little David playin'
I get religion, through and through.
Why don't you play, Little David
Play, Little David, play.