Melancholy Angel David Childers & The Serpents

• 1 Kiss Me Like Judas 03:38
• 2 Melancholy Angel 04:23
• 3 Never Take the Place of Your Man 03:45
• 4 Claudelle and Ennis 03:20
• 5 Like Some Old Sad Song 03:57
• 6 A Married Woman 02:47
• 7 Easy to Be Free 03:37
• 8 Blankets 02:47
• 9 Blueberries 04:48
• 10 I Have Met My Love Today 02:38
• 11 Let's Just Let It Be 03:54
• 12 All Our Good Times Are Through 02:50
• 13 Books Are Books 03:51
• Total Runtime 46:15

Info for Melancholy Angel

Mount Holly’s own bard is back with a wonderful new one, to be released April 7th on Ramseur Records. It features a dozen songs written by David, plus a surprise Prince cover! While David himself is an accomplished painter (and attorney!), the album’s cover comes courtesy of his son and longtime drummer Robert Childers. “I trust his judgment,” Childers says of Robert. “I wasted time goin’ to college and bein’ a lawyer for 35 years, and he just went straight from high school into rock n’ roll. He has a very developed sense of how music oughta work– though he’s got kind of a nasty attitude from time to time,” David laughs. “That’s ’cause he cares about it and he’s willin’ to fight for it!”

David Childers & The Serpents

David Childers
Singer-songwriter David Childers is the proverbial study in contradictions. A resident of Mount Holly, North Carolina, he’s a former high-school football player with the aw-shucks demeanor of a good ol’ Southern boy. But he’s also a well-read poet and painter who cites Chaucer and Kerouac as influences, fell in love with folk as a teen, and listens to jazz and opera.

Childers’ most recent album, Run Skeleton Run, released in 2017 on Ramseur Records, is filled with the kinds of songs that have made him a favorite of fans and fellow artists including neighbors the Avett Brothers. Scott Avett contributes to four tracks, and Avetts bassist Bob Crawford co-executive-produced the effort with label head Dolph Ramseur. (Crawford and Childers, both history buffs, have recorded and performed together in the Overmountain Men).

In fact, it was Crawford who kickstarted this album, Childers’ sixth solo effort, by suggesting he reunite with Don Dixon (R.E.M., the Smithereens), who’d produced Crawford’s favorite Childers album, Room 23 (done with his band the Modern Don Juans). Crawford also suggested tracking at Mitch Easter’s Fidelitorium Recordings.

Crawford has also called Childers “a great friend, a great thinker and a great man … a true North Carolina treasure.” But let’s take out “North Carolina,” because Childers is the kind of treasure who can spread joy wherever people love listening to great songs. In other words, just about anywhere. Or everywhere.

I first saw David Childers perform on a hot, humid night in July 2000 at the legendary Double Door Inn in Charlotte, NC. Most of the songs he performed that evening were filled with the subject matter of Jesus, damnation, salvation, the devil, forgiveness, and redemption. I will never, ever forget it. It was such an inspiration that the next day I wrote David a personal letter asking him if we could make a record together about those things in which he was singing about. We have been friends ever since. No record or manager contract. Just a handshake.

It is my hope David's greatness as a songwriter and artist will be recognized and appreciated by many in years to come. Please lend an ear to his latest release, ‘Serpents of Reformation,’ and experience for yourself the same power that moved me so, that mesmerizing Summer night some fourteen years ago. -- Dolph Ramseur

This album contains no booklet.