David Stevenson, aka MISUNG, will come up various times in my blog because not only is he my best friend, he’s one of my favorite artists and songwriters that I hold in extremely high regard.
Not only can the man illustrate up a storm (see above), he has also written more songs than there are to write. I have never worked with anyone as creative and quick as he is. He has managed to maintain that sense of creativity that most of us lose when we enter junior high school or maybe earlier.
He has to be the most prolific person I know to date.
When I was in high school,I went to his house for the first time with my bass guitar and a red hot chili peppers blood sugar sex magic book and said, come on lets play these songs. He said, no, let’s make songs! Like this:
Monkeys and Electricity
I was 14 and had never actually taken my eyes off a score or a recording when it came to instruments, so I was shocked ! He put the guitar in my hands after a few songs and said, ok you play guitar, I play bass.
Not only did I learn how to play guitar because of Dave, his mother made me learn how to write and speak a little Korean. This is one of my favorite Misung (his korean name) songs:
16 Anyo
The words to this song are basically give me a cat, NO, give me some beef NO, hello, give me some mountain rabbit, NO, NO NO NO mom dad.
He broke all the rules that I thought made music what it is.
Of course, this haphazard style of music making that Dave excels at, doesn’t work for everyone as I am slowly starting to realize as I work more and more in the music industry. He is a true artist in this regard and doesn’t need manuscript or notation for his ideas. He just needs something that records.
Dave is the mastermind behind the OTTOMEN, which began at Kansas City Art Institute with fellow artist and songwriter Jim Cambpell of AngryJim.com
Jim recorded a bunch of OTTOMEN recordings and I recorded 4 albums.
Here are highlights from some of my favorite recordings I did with Dave.
From the album
Back to the Past:
Tennis Shoes Of Love
From the album
EVERYONE AGREES!
Old lady from Phoenix
This album is filled with lots of memories. Duane Bridges played a keyboard solo on the opening track, Mario Viele plays a killer solo in the middle of this track, Alison Derrick sings background vocals with me at the end as well. Lots of friends being creative together! I played most of the instruments on the song. John Halloran on drums and Dave on guitar and lead vocals. Plus my Grandfather is on the album jacket posing like the icon that he was!
I will leave this post here with a few of my favorite drawings by Dave that I could find online:
Notice the robot wife
Can’t beat the deer God!
Dave is the head artist at St.Louis Trader Joe’s and does this all day
This is classic Dave art that probably took him a minute to make
