Premiere: David Starr’s road trip: The Cars’ Drive

Touchstones album serves up comfort music

David Starr’s compelling voice has been honed not only by touring nationally and internationally with top performers, but by choosing songs by artists whose audible and philosophical voices are legendary. Touchstones, Starr’s new project, features John Prine’s “Angel From Montgomery,” Jackson Browne’s “These Days,” Dylan’s “Gotta Serve Somebody” and nine other classics

When COVID-19 stopped the world in its tracks, Starr looked back at the music that shaped his own experience and brought them back to new life in Touchstones. “Some of the songs I cover were lyrically inspiring,” Starr said. “Some just felt good to sing and play.” He describes many of these songs he as “musical comfort food.”

Starr’s story of “Drive,” like other cuts on the album, goes back a long way for him. He told Elmore, “I distinctly recall hearing The Cars’ “Drive” for the first time. I was living in hard-partying Aspen, Colorado at the time and knew more than my share of folks who needed to be driven home on any given night. Maybe I even felt it spoke directly to me on occasion. Something about the lyrical content, the lush synth-heavy production and Benjamin Orr’s plaintive vocal just burned this one into my psyche. I have wanted to cover it for years!”

Lucky for us—he made his wish come true.

The Touchstones project was produced by David Starr and Mark Prentice, with co-production by David Kalmusky, and recorded, mixed, and mastered at Addiction Sound Studios in Nashville by David Kalmusky along with Ethan Barrette and Alberto Sewald.

Starr launched Starr’s Guitars in Little Rock in 1998, then relocated to Cedaredge, CO, in 2001. Today, the store is such an institution that Cedaredge proclaimed the musician’s birthday as David Starr Day in 2016. Starr helped design Cedaredge’s Grand Mesa Arts Center, a space dedicated to attracting musicians and visual artists to Southwestern Colorado.