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‘Working stiff’ Dave Mason stays on the road after a lifetime in rock

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Dave Mason's career stretches back to the 1960s, when he was a member of the band Traffic.

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Dave Mason will be at the Palace Theatre in Greensburg Friday.

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Dave Mason is considered one of rock's premier guitarists.

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Dave Mason's biggest hit came in 1977, with "We Just Disagree."

In a 2020 interview with Rock Cellar Magazine, Dave Mason said, “I’m not a rock star…I never wanted to be. I just wanted to write some great music, make some money and have some fun.”

In a more recent conversation, Mason expands on the point, saying that he and most of his fellow musicians are “working stiffs.”

“There’s a small little pocket of superstar entertainers, and the rest of us are all just working stiffs,” Mason explained over the phone last month from his home in Nevada. “We’re working musicians.”

Now 77, few would dispute Mason’s work ethic over a career that extends back to the 1960s and has included rubbing shoulders with some of rock’s most celebrated figures. The native of Worcester, England, first broke through as a member of Traffic, penning the song “Feelin’ Alright,” which went on to become a hit for Joe Cocker and has been covered by numerous other artists. The guitarist stayed with the band through three albums, and released his first solo album, “Alone Together,” in 1970. Mason was also briefly a member of Eric Clapton’s Derek and the Dominos and, in the mid-1990s, was in a lineup of Fleetwood Mac.

Mason’s high-water mark as a solo artist came in 1977, when he just missed the Billboard Top 10 with the country-flavored “We Just Disagree.” The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee has continued to release new music sporadically in the years since, and has a blues album in the works that he has been recording at his house, which he says is in “a big valley with a lot of cattle and horses.”

“It’s been on and off over the last couple of years,” Mason said of the album, which will be called “A Shade of Blues.” “It’s been something I wanted to try to put together.”

The album is set to include remakes of the Traffic hits “Low Spark of High-Heeled Boys” and “Dear Mr. Fantasy,” both of which will have guitarist Joe Bonamassa making a guest appearance.

Another Mason project looming over the horizon is the publication of his autobiography, “Only You Know and I Know.” It had been due to reach stores this month, but Mason’s publisher decided, in his words, “we’re not in the book business anymore.” When it is released, Mason’s volume will be joining a flood of memoirs by classic rockers, and he admitted that if it had been up to him he probably would not have gone ahead with it, but “I got badgered into it by fans and my wife.”

It will undoubtedly contain some interesting stories. A friend of Jimi Hendrix, Mason was among the backing vocalists on Hendrix’s “Crosstown Traffic,” and played acoustic guitar on the Hendrix version of “All Along the Watchtower.” Mason also played on the Rolling Stones’ “Street Fighting Man,” was part of the legion of guests on George Harrison’s post-Beatles debut “All Things Must Pass,” and played guitar on Paul McCartney’s 1975 No. 1 hit “Listen to What the Man Said.”

Mason explained that he can remember moments like those, but “the stuff in between” can be hard to recall. For his book, he hired a co-writer to do “a lot of the digging up and research, the times and places.”

Before the book and album reach the public, though, Mason will be doing what has consumed much of his professional life in recent years, which is playing live. He will be at the Palace Theatre in Greensburg Friday at 8 p.m., on what he is calling the “Endangered Species Tour.”

Thanks to music royalties drying up as a result of streaming, Mason said that “live is all that’s left.”

“We’re just getting ripped off,” he added. “Spotify and the others don’t pay the proper royalties. And that’s what’s happened. Nobody’s buying records. And the only thing we have left is going out live. Songwriters are screwed. And the public doesn’t really care. … It’s decimated the business of making music. This is our job. This is what we do.”

Any advice he’d like to offer to young musicians just getting started?

“Have a Plan B,” he laughed.

Nevertheless, Mason said he has no plans to hang up his guitar, despite being a stone’s throw from 80.

“I’ll probably just keep going until I can’t. I don’t golf and I really don’t have too many hobbies. I love playing. It’s getting a little hard traveling because of my age, but I love playing.”

Additional information on the Palace Theatre concert can be found at the palacetheatre.org.

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