He can awe an audience into pin-drop silence with a solo acoustic blues or goose his fans to their feet with a bluegrass reel by his Quartet or an R&B romp by his Big Band. David Bromberg has spent his life absorbing traditional music from its surviving creators and their recordings so convincingly – while adding his own instrumental twists – that he has become a part of musical tradition itself, as close to the source of American roots music as anyone alive. Folk, blues, bluegrass, ragtime, you name it – he has become The Real Deal.