David LaFlamme, Sonoma County musician and ‘White Bird’ songwriter, has died

Longtime Sonoma County resident and musician David LaFlamme, who inspired a generation of rock-violinists with the 1969 song “White Bird,” died Aug. 6 in Santa Rosa. He was 82.

LaFlamme died of health problems related to Parkinson’s disease, according to his daughter, Kira LaFlamme, the Washington Post reported.

Among those who were inspired by his virtuoso talent and pioneering spirit are several local musicians who remember LaFlamme as a brilliant violinist and a fun friend.

“David was unquestionably the primary musician to introduce the world to the idea that the violin could take the lead in a rock band,” said violinist and bandleader Tom Rigney in an email to The Press Democrat.

Born in New Britain, Connecticut, and raised in Salt Lake City, LaFlamme was already a skilled violinist who had performed as a soloist with the Utah Symphony Orchestra when he moved to the Bay Area in 1962 after being discharged from the Army.

While in San Francisco, he jammed with contemporaries like Jerry Garcia in the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood, created the band Electric Chamber Orkustra and joined cowboy folk-rocker Dan Hicks in an early iteration of Dan Hicks & His Hot Licks in 1967.

That same year, LaFlamme formed his own band, It's a Beautiful Day, with his then-wife Linda Rudman, vocalist Pattie Santos, guitarist Hal Wagenet, bassist Mitchell Holman and drummer Val Fuentes.

Rigney, a Bay Area native and rock violinist whose bands include The Sundogs and Tom Rigney and Flambeau, said he first saw It's a Beautiful Day in concert in the ‘60s before he even began playing violin. “His (LaFlamme’s) playing and his band made a deep and powerful impression on me.”

“By the time I was playing electric violin, he was certainly an inspiration to me,” Rigney said.

While LaFlamme’s band, which blended folk, jazz, rock and classical music, did not receive the same national attention other San Francisco acts of the late 1960s were getting, he would cement himself in rock-and-roll history when he co-wrote “White Bird” with Rudman.

In 2011, LaFlamme told The Press Democrat that he wrote “White Bird” during the winter of 1967. He and the band went from their home base in San Francisco to Seattle to play a gig, and didn't have enough money to make it back home, he said. LaFlamme and Rudman holed up for several weeks in the attic of an old rundown house.

"There was a little window with a window seat. The lyrics of the song tell what we were observing as we looked out that window," LaFlamme said at the time.

"When you have lyrics that go, 'The leaves blow across the long black road to the darkened sky,' that's exactly what we were seeing."

Sebastopol mandolinist Phil Lawrence, who played with LaFlamme in It’s a Beautiful Day’s later-years acoustic lineup, says “White Bird” — a six-minute counterculture folk ballad about the struggle between freedom and conformity — is an “immortal piece of music.”

“That song probably more than any other song captured the spirit of San Francisco in the 1960s,” Lawrence said. “I believe that and I think a lot of people would agree with me.”

In 1970, LaFlamme moved to Sebastopol. After a brief marriage to Sharon Wilson, LaFlamme met singer Linda Baker in 1973, the year he left It’s a Beautiful Day. They married in 1982.

After six years in Sebastopol, LaFlamme moved to Berkeley, Salt Lake City and Los Angeles before coming back to Sonoma County to live in Santa Rosa nearly 20 years ago.

David and Linda Baker LaFlamme acquired the rights to the band name, It's a Beautiful Day, right before moving to Santa Rosa when former manager Matthew Katz let the trademark of the name go unrenewed. The two continued to perform with both electric and acoustic iterations of the band during the last two decades.

In 2011, the year he turned 70, LaFlamme told the Press Democrat that he was playing 40 shows a year with the band. “That's pretty active for an old guy like me," he joked at the time.

Aside from being a virtuoso violinist, and a talented singer, songwriter and bandleader, Lawrence said LaFlamme was a wonderful person

“He valued friendship above everything else, he was a funny guy too, he kept everybody laughing and he had a lot of stories to tell from the Haight-Ashbury and his heyday in the 1960s as well as stories of his long career on the road,” Lawrence said. “He was like your favorite uncle, he was a wonderful guy to hang out with.”

LaFlamme is survived by his wife, Linda Baker LaFlamme, two daughters, Kira LaFlamme from his first marriage and Alisha LaFlamme from his second, and six grandchildren, according to a Washington Post obituary.