Now, he has turned himself physically away to one side, his slightly downward-cast gaze unfocused as he ponders the direction of his narrative.
"What do you think, about how much is worth saying?" he asks.
That Boone would even question what's worth saying is, in itself, a bit ironic. Over the past six years, he has laid his soul bare, and publicly, to anyone who cared to listen. In that span, he has released no fewer than eight full-length CDs, with another one already recorded (he finished it just this week). During one particularly productive period, he released two new CDs in the span of a single week. He has performed concert after concert, week after week, singing nothing but the songs that sprung forth from somewhere deep inside him, a place so subconscious that he's not even altogether sure it's part of him.
Yet there's still more to say. There are pieces of David Boone that haven't quite fallen into place. Occasionally, he worries that maybe the pieces don't fit together after all - that it's put together all wrong, and will eventually fall apart, again. He is gaining confidence that he's finally got it figured out. But the wariness is behind his eyes, and it drives him to keep working at it.
David Boone, once a shattered shell of a man, is piecing himself together, one song at a time. This time, he's being careful.
The town of Seeley Lake, nestled among the timber of eastern Missoula County, has become something of a weekend getaway for Missoula city-dwellers in recent years. Golf courses, resorts and sprawling timber-framed vacation houses give the casual visitor the impression of a town of colorful people and relaxed prosperity. But to David Boone, who grew up there, Seeley Lake is a black-and-white place - a repository of bad memories that he can't shake, yet also a place where he discovered his life's passion under the guidance of an unlikely mentor.
"I love that I grew up with a small-town mentality," says Boone. "But at the same time, there are parts of my experience there that weren't entirely positive."
Actually, one of Boone's earliest musical memories seems comical now, even though it surely felt tragic back then. When Boone was 9, his parents decided to buy him a few guitar lessons. During the first lesson, Boone managed to pluck out a couple chords, and began practicing at home on an old acoustic. But that first career as a guitarist quickly ended one evening when Boone's father, play-wrestling with the young boy, sat on the guitar, crushing it.
"I guess I thought it was over then," laughs Boone.
Things did indeed begin to sour soon after. By the time he turned 14, Boone's parents had divorced, and he was struggling in school; several of his teachers were complaining that he was unmanageable. At Christmas, Boone's father told him that he wasn't going to get any presents because he'd been bad all year.
"Then he told me to go look behind one of the curtains because there was another present there for my sister," recalls Boone. "Instead it was this electric guitar."
The guitar was nothing special - an inexpensive Peavey - but Boone began playing avidly. His newfound interest caught the attention of Seeley Lake junior high school teacher Cliff Nelson.
"Most teachers thought I needed Ritalin, but he noticed I really liked guitar so he bought me an acoustic guitar just kinda out of the blue," recalls Boone. "That really opened up the songwriting for me."
It also was the beginning of a relationship that would transform from simple teacher/ student to something closer to father/son.
"He was the one thing I don't have bad memories about in school," says Boone. "He basically ended up raising me during those years."
With the blessing of his parents, Boone eventually began staying at Nelson's house. The teacher helped Boone form a band with a pair of other Seeley Lake students, providing them with practice space and helping them find gigs.
"Whatever we needed, he found some way to get it," says Boone. "He saw potential, even though in retrospect I don't know how he saw it."
During the summer of 1996, Boone's band, called Faucet, decided to record a CD. Nelson offered to put up the money to buy studio time in Missoula. The last recording session took place over the last weekend in September.
The following Monday, Boone received a phone call that would change his life forever. Cliff Nelson had been murdered in his home.
"It was just so random, so bizarre, and it was really hard for us to even fathom," recalls Boone. "From there, it just seemed like Seeley Lake turned into this bizarre, David Lynch-style town, where this dark cloud had descended and never left."
Faucet stopped practicing for several months, and the band's album never was released. Eventually, the band reformed with the goal of recording a tribute CD to Nelson. That record, titled "Forgotten Water," was released on the first anniversary of Nelson's death. The album addressed the band's collective sense of loss head-on: "I'm learning to live without a friend," Boone sang in the song "Haven."
But without Nelson, David Boone felt there was nothing left for him in Seeley Lake. At 16, he dropped out of high school and moved to Mexico with a friend. The two managed to make it almost a year on a budget of $800. Upon his return to Montana, Boone promptly moved to Spokane and reformed Faucet with former drummer James Wasem.
For a time, things appeared to be going great for the young band. Within a year, they had recorded a new CD, titled "Slow Down."
But then, in the summer of 1999, things came crashing down once again. Only this time, it was all inside David Boone's head.
"I still can't explain it," says Boone. "I literally woke up one morning feeling like something had snapped. I told James (Wasem) that I couldn't get out of bed. All of a sudden, nothing made sense, nothing had any order to it."
The feeling didn't go away. But the music did.
"For nine months, I couldn't write (music), I couldn't eat, even brushing my teeth just seemed way too strenuous," recalls Boone. "And then, when I came out of it, I just kept going up, and up, and up, until I was in just as bad a place on the other end of the spectrum."
Boone was diagnosed as clinically depressed, and over the course of the next five years he endured several hospitalizations. Doctors told him he would likely spend the rest of his life coping with the wild mood swings.
His recollections from that dark period are understandably blurry, and even today he struggles to put words to what he went through. He knows that, for a time, he bounced back and forth between living in Missoula and Spokane, depending on where his head was at: When his ambition was up, he would head to Spokane; when things crashed, he would return to the safety of Missoula. He remembers living for a period during 2000 at the Clark Fork Inn on West Broadway, where - when he could pull himself out of bed - he would practice on a three-string acoustic guitar, "because I didn't have the energy to put the other strings on it."
"I got to the place where I thought there was no way any of this was redeemable, I'm never gonna write another song, I've totally wrecked my life and this is how my life is going to be until I die."
Despite those fears, Boone did manage to write and record several CDs during the period. His first solo CD, "Someday," was completed in 2000, although he didn't release it until 2001. He managed to perform one show to promote it before he crashed again. Another CD, "Perspective," was written and recorded during the same period; "Undiscovered" came out in 2002.
In 2003, Boone went into the studio to record two new songs; when he got there, a whole slew of songs "just bubbled up" - songs he had written back in 2000, while living in the Clark Fork Inn. He released those songs in late 2003 as the album "Recollections." The same week, he and his new band, Open to Closure, released "We Bleed the Same."
In light of David Boone's struggles, that double-release could easily appear as simply a sign of a man moving too fast for his own good. But in fact, by the time those records came out, things were beginning to even out for Boone. After being hospitalized briefly in May 2002, Boone began earnestly exploring his interior life - his insecurities, his fears, all the things that had been bottled up. He finally began to take the advice of the title of the album that he'd recorded at the beginning of that stormy period. He began to slow down.
"I think those things that did occur had a lot to do with not having love, not having a firm idea of who I am or knowing myself," says Boone now. "I believe that there are definitely chemical issues that were going on in my mind, but I think it was also very much about my experiences too, and how I was coping with them - or not coping with them."
The evening-out process didn't occur with nearly the kind of suddenness that signaled the beginning of his period of depression. The insecurity, the fear of regression and of further descent, plagued him daily. But as time went on, Boone gradually began to believe that he was coming to grips with his emotional issues.
Boone also began working to attack the very tendencies that had previously triggered his periods of instability. For his 2004 release, "Ignore the Orange Hand," Boone chose to spend one month apiece on each of the 11 songs on the album.
"I wanted to force myself into patience," says Boone. "Prior to that, I felt I had to record whatever I had written right at the moment I wrote it. With 'Ignore the Orange Hand,' I wanted to see if I had some control, or if it's all just out of control, all chemicals, there's no ownership or willpower."
The result was an album that marked a distinct departure from Boone's previous work. The songs, while still emotionally charged and occasionally quirky, were more carefully arranged and sharply focused.
For his next project, Boone decided to address his demons even more squarely.
"I had in my mind this concept album, about growing up in Seeley Lake, this weird, quirky, small town," he explains. "All but one of the songs are about experiences and people I grew up with."
To get himself in the right frame of mind for the album, Boone drove around Seeley Lake, shooting a series of digital photos which he printed out in black and white. He then hung the photos all around his living room, where he and James Wasem began recording the album last winter.
The album, titled "Hard Enough to Bend," was recorded at a similarly slow pace to "Ignore the Orange Hand:" Boone finally put the finishing touches on the record just this week. And now, he's doing something he's never done before: He's shelving it.
"I need to get some space between myself and the album, and then come back to it with a fresh perspective," explains Boone. "I'm forcing myself into a new level of patience."
Boone intends to revisit the record something this winter, at which time he'll make sure he's still happy with it. Presuming he is, he plans to release "Hard Enough to Bend" next February.
In the meantime, he's striking out on yet a new journey. Over the next 18 months, Boone, Wasem, and Boone's new bride, Stephanie (the two were married in June), plan to tour the country. The goal: to perform in all 50 states. While facing new audiences is daunting, Boone feels like he's at a place where he is ready for the challenge.
"My first gig in Seattle, last October, was literally for six middle-aged ladies at a coffeehouse," says Boone. "They were knitting the whole time. But when I came back in March, they brought 60 people, all their teenage kids. It was amazing."
While he's perfectly willing to talk about his past, David Boone doesn't want to make a big deal about the struggles that plagued him. He definitely doesn't want to sound like he's some kind of hero who has figured out how to triumph over adversity.
"I think I have a grip on it now," he says. "I can't explain it though. I just feel fortunate that it's turned out this way."
But one thing is sure: The extremes that Boone has experienced in life have lent him a clarity of perspective, humility and self-awareness that is rarely found in people twice his age.
"I think I live with a healthy fear" of regression, says Boone. "I never want to get to a place where I think I'm above all this, that it's all over.
"Every human, if they're not in check, they're capable of going all the way. As soon as you think you're untouchable, you're in danger."
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