Longtime Athens musician playing Saturday

Although some of the memories are a little fuzzy, David Prince can remember with great clarity his first onstage performance.

"I actually started singing, with my brother and sister, when I was 3 years old at the Kiddie Club in the Palace Theater near the old Southern Mutual Building," says the 60-year-old Prince, who lives in Bogart, remembering Athens' earlier years. "The Palace Theater was the place to go back then. That was when I fell in love with being on a stage."

And with the exception of a recently curtailed multiyear retirement, Prince has been on a stage ever since, playing a key role in the early development of the Athens music community, which still thrives and survives today.

An Army brat born in Alabama, Prince has lived in the Athens area for much of his life and is back doing what he loves, alternating between occasional gigs with an eight-piece band (which includes his brother, Bobby) and steady work singing the hits of yesteryear to pre-recorded tracks.

Prince made his "comeback" a few months ago with a weekly date at Gnat's Landing and frequent performances at Harry Bissett's Bayou Grill, but he's most excited about a series of dance party concerts he's scheduled at the VFW, one of the venues where he began singing so many decades ago.

"It's kind of funny," says Prince, who will appear at the VFW on Saturday and Dec. 19.

"I was at the VFW recently and told the people there, 'This is a song I sang on this very same stage 50 years ago.' It's still a great venue with some good folks there."

When Prince was 8, he began his musical career in earnest, appearing at the VFW, the Moose Club and the American Legion, which were the few available music venues in the late 1950s and early 1960s. He and his brother, Bobby, (who composed the music for the video game "Doom" and has written music for other video games) founded the band called the Brothers Two with Larry and Lamar Coffeen, which was when he first learned to play an instrument.

"My brother told me that if I wanted an equal cut, I'd have to play an instrument - it wasn't enough just to sing," he says. "On a Tuesday, I bought a Sears Silvertone bass and by Thursday I was playing it onstage at the Moose Club."

In the early 1960s, the Prince brothers were co-founders of the Jesters, a band that still plays occasional dates. Prince stayed with the Jesters until about 1966, and then joined October People, which might have been Athens' first taste of psychedelic music.

"One of the guys was from Califor