"Pinch The Gringo" says; "Welcome to the right side of the river."
Hello, and welcome to my little site.
I guess I should tell you that Pinch The Gringo consists of me, Danny Keylon, and whoever I can beg to help me with some of my song ideas. That's Johnny House playing guitar on "Nobody's Kitchen But Mine." He is a great player and a lifelong friend from Asheville, NC. His band, the Night Crawlers features some kick-ass musicians (also lifelong friends) and they play gigs all-the-time, and everywhere around the South East.
So an old friend called (Mike "Quick" Whitt) in August of '07 and I have been doing some gigs with him and his band. The transition into the band Mac Arnold and "Plate Full O' Blues" has been great. Mac is a great front-man who developed his style while playing bass for Muddy Waters, Tyrone Davis and recording for Blues legends like Otis Spann, John Lee Hooker. You can check out his history, the new CD, and the band by going here . We have just released a new album (CD) Back Bone & Gristle and I am really pleased with how well it turned out. Hope you like it, too.
My biggest "claim to fame" (so far) was the two years I spent with the Rockets . That was from 1978 through 1980 when I was living in Detroit. Dennis Robbins and I had played together in a band we had brought to Detroit from Asheville and Hazelwood, North Carolina. So when John Fraga left the Rockets, Dennis called me to audition and I got the gig. BUT; more about that later.Let The BIO Begin: I guess it is time to do the Bio thing. I won't write from the perspective of the unknown third person (Oh yeah, that Dan is great guy and a heck-of-a-bass player, too!!!) but just put it out, straight, because after all we're friends here. Right?
I started taking piano lessons at ten years old, clarinet lessons via the Jr. High School Band at twelve years old, began learning Bassoon the next year. The summer between the 9th and 10th grade is when I began to learn the Bass. By October of my Sophomore year I started getting paying gigs. Certainly not much money in the beginning, but enough to reinforce my love for the Bass and a desire to improve.
We (the band I was in at the time) went from playing sock-hops and school functions to private parties and clubs. Because we were under age, club owners' would sneak us in through a back door and keep us either in the office or the kitchen when we took our breaks.
There was this Sax player that was a few years older and he booked our band and became like our manager. By Spring of my sophomore year we were playing every weekend, and some week nights, in clubs referred to as being on the "chitlin" circuit. (Ronnie Millsap was playing this circuit as well, billed as the 'White Ray Charles.') We would book-out as just a rhythm section for hire and patterned ourselves (somewhat) after Booker T and the MGs. Sometimes the band would be as few as four or as many as twelve, depending on whether there was a horn section or back-up singers, plus the stand-up 'star.'.
Mostly it was doing a dance set before "star time" and then we backed up a singer or vocal group. Singers like, Mary Wells, Oscar Tony, Jr., Sir Lattimore Brown, Otis Clay, the Dixie Cups, Peaches and Herb, Dee Clark, Robert Parker, William Bell, and shared the stage with Eddie Floyd, Jerry Butler, Arthur Conley, Lee Dorsey, Gene Chandler, the Unifics. were some of the acts.
I just can't remember them all, but Sunday nights at the Jade Club were absolutely magical. These were the days of the "Package Show" where several acts shared a bus and set-off on tour together, and most of these tours stopped at the Jade Club. A few of those acts needed a back-up band and bingo, there we were. I was a fortunate guy.
Time flowed into a new decade and a new band, but the groove changed to blues-based rock-n-roll. I was playing clubs all over the Southeast and doing opening act gigs at colleges, universities, and municipal auditoriums. We opened for Tony Orlando and Dawn, Clarence Carter, Rare Earth, Stony and Meatloaf, Ides of March, Son of Cactus, ZZ Top, Edgar Winter, and landed a record deal with James Brown's old label, King Records, that went nowhere.
Band members left and new ones filled the vacancies. We took the band to Detroit and the lands of opportunity. There were clubs everywhere and we played almost all of them in Detroit, and the State of Michigan, and throughout the region.
We met and played with some great players and bands from around the Detroit, Ann Arbor area like Bob Segar and the SBB, Rob Tyner, Rusty Day, Jim McCarty, John Badanjek, Mitch Ryder, Bob Gillespie, Steve Dansby, just to mention a few. We even did some shows for John Sinclair in Ann Arbor. At the Brewery in Lansing, MI we opened for Little Feat, Aerosmith, and others that have somehow slipped my memory.
Our band, Flat Rock, left Detroit, headed East and moved into New York's Manhattan Island. Contacts that we made over a period of a few years encouraged us to make the move and to do some recording there to see if we could land a recording deal with a major label. We recorded a demo at studios, Sound Ideas and the Hit Factory. After the recordings were finished we saw where a friend, Bonnie Bramlett, was playing a club on Long Island so we went to see her and ask her opinion of what we had done. Her band was made up of a few of Capricorn Records studio players and the drummer Billy Stewart liked what he heard and invited us to come to Macon, GA and play for Phil Walden. Unfortunately we never got a chance to play for Phil but at least we were back down South and closer to home.
That summer of fun led to the break-up of the band so we all went in different directions but our paths would cross again as soon as our livers scabbed over and healed a bit.
I know I have like way too much crap here, but I need to finish it and I can't seem to find the time. But, if you have read this far thank you and I will get back to it very shortly. Thanks for stopping by... Dan