Born into a long line of farmers and musicians, Dan’s musical endeavours started early. Piano playing probably started at around eight years old. He remembers his first public performance, though not on piano, with some trepidation. Nervously rattling the skins of his grandfather’s snare drum at the Cecil Plains Golf Club on the Darling Downs of Queensland, about 25 miles south of Dalby. Bobby maintained his position on the drum-stool keeping time on the bass drum and high-hat.
Dan’s mother Kathie was playing piano and his father Kev wailed away on clarinet or alto sax. The tune was ‘Colonel Bogey’s March’ and the patrons were reeling around the modest dance floor, routinely prepared with ‘Pops’, that mysterious combination of sawdust and oil, to help them slide around to a Gypsy Tap. All the townkids crowded around, with menacing looks of bewilderment on their faces. This was a tough first gig. These were sawmillers’ and timber-fellers’ kids. And farmers’ kids. “What is this ten year old kid doing playing drums? Who does he think he is?” etc etc. You could almost see the questions floating out of their troubled little heads. And when the song was over Dan and his brothers would be back out there in the dark, in the sand and the burrs, playing rough‘n’tumble games with these same kids.
So began many years of playing dance music with his parents and brothers and sister. Drums were an essential skill when playing dance music. Kev also played drums as did his brother Leo who mainly played cornet. Dan played cornet too on these outings. Elder brother Tom played trombone and younger sister Jo played violin. Rob, the oldest brother, played trumpet too in the early days before he left home. Having three drummers and all these instruments gave way to a unique and flexible playing line-up. Dan was taught piano from an early age, however, and this remains his favourite instrument. In his teens, he taught himself to play his father’s clarinet and so began a long journey with ‘reeds’.
Dan’s father Kev was fairly shrewd. Early on he had all the boys playing in the brass band in town, the Dalby Citizen's Band. Hence the great supply of instruments. They all had a great time in that band and it was a wonderful seedbed for reading skills which were to be very useful for Dan and Leo years later, playing jazz and big bands.
While studying agricultural engineering at the University of Southern Queensland in Toowoomba, Dan met a musician called Denis Levonis, who played trombone, and would become Dan’s jazz mentor over the next 10 years. A mate of Dan’s, John Sheehan, also studying to be an agricultural engineer played tenor sax. Denis organised a jam one night with the three of them and he presented an array of wonderful dixieland arrangements that he had. Denis needed a trumpet player to complete the front line. Dan piped up with “My brother Leo plays a pretty mean trumpet. Will I get him in?” Denis couldn’t believe his luck. He mustered up a rhythm section and The Ruthven Street Stompers was born. Dan played clarinet and did some vocals. ‘The Stompers’, under Denny’s leadership played at many pubs, clubs and functions around Toowoomba and the eastern Downs for over 10 years.
After three years of growing Australian native flowers at Cecil Plains and doing gigs with the Stompers, Dan did a stint in Bundaberg working in soil conservation research with the Department of Primary Industries, playing the occasional gig with some of the local musos. In 1991 it was time to move to the big smoke (Brisbane) working as a design engineer with Department of Primary Industries Forestry. Jazz took a back seat for a good spell then. There wasn’t a whole lot of practice being done either. He used to sit-in regularly with Joe Fingers’ jazz band at the Bomb Shelter at the Story Bridge Hotel. He had arranged with the publican, Richard Deery, to leave his clarinet locked up at the pub as it was easier to roll up on a Sunday afternoon, have a few beers, play a couple of tunes with the band and not worry about leaving the clarinet lying around and perhaps losing it. In those days Sunday afternoons often turned into big nights.
In 2003 Dan fulfilled a long-time ambition to do some serious jazz study. He graduated from JazzWorx at the end of that year, focusing on tenor sax.
The song writing began about 20 years ago, not long after graduating in engineering from USQ and has been a fairly constant activity since, although as many hobbyist writers will attest, there were long periods of not much happening followed by purple patches. The time at JazzWorx certainly gave things a lift, producing one of his favourites ‘Elizabethan Waltz’, a clarinet/guitar duo. The album has been a dream for a long time, but all things have their time, and its time has come.
Enjoy an ‘eclectic’ bunch of songs.