Music: Still Clickin’! • Greg Cahill • Pacific Sun
Danny Click is the youngest of nine and rocked out in his older sister’s band when he was in high school.
Guitar phenom, singer and songwriter Danny Click has been burning up local stages for six years with powerhouse blues honed in the sweltering nightclubs and beer gardens of Austin, Texas, and building a loyal Marin fan base along the way.
So when Click, a 53-year-old San Rafael resident, decided to record a much-anticipated live CD during one house-rockin’ night last September at the142 Throckmorton Theatre in Mill Valley, he knew just who to turn to for advice.
“The tracks all are staples from our live shows and fan favorites,” he says. “I polled a few of the fans who have been to 50 to 100 shows—for real, there are people that have been to 150-plus shows already!”
The newly released 12-track disc, Danny Click & the Hell Yeahs Captured Live, includes three special request tracks: a smokin’ cover of Delbert McClinton’s “Livin’ It Down,” a blistering rendition of Elmore James’ “Stranger Blues” (with guest vocalist Texas blues queen Angela Strehli) and Eddie Burns’ barn burner “When I Get Drunk.”
“These are the main ones they asked for,” Click says, “minus some that we already do live that are slated for the new studio CD we’re working on that will be released in the fall.”
Four of the tunes were played on the lanky Marin axeslinger and avid guitar collector’s treasured 1966 Sears Silvertone “lipstick tube” guitar that he bought for $39 at a pawn shop a few years ago.
“That Silvertone guitar rips and when played loud, it has a tone that many search their whole life for,” Click says.
In addition to fellow Texan Strehli, Click was joined onstage by Carlos Santana’s sister-in-law Tracy Blackman and Lynn Asher on vocal harmonies; keyboardist Mike Emerson; violinist Adrienne Biggs Tennant and cellist Rebecca Roudman; and the ace rhythm section of Kevin Hayes (a Robert Cray Band veteran) and rock-solid bassist Don Bassey.
The Kickstarter campaign-funded disc, which already has sparked interest from a major label, also features five Click originals, including “Wait My Turn,” from the 2011 critically acclaimed studio recording “Life Is a Good Place.”
“There may be a Volume Two, one of these days, as we did over three hours of music that night we recorded,” Click says. “The last song ‘Swingin’,’ by Tom Petty, kind of sounds like a ‘musical church’ when the audience sings back to me at the end.
“I always say, ‘Singing together is a spiritual experience—it’s like church without the guilt!'”
– Greg Cahill
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