Singer-guitarist sounds like Jimi Hendrix beating up Buck Owens
GRAHAM REID
THE NEW ZEALAND HERALD
March 30,2004

Singer-guitarist Danny Click, from Austin, the capital of live music in America, laughs about a description he heard of his playing style.

"I'm not really country and I'm not really total blues - and I'm definitely not hardcore thrash rock'n'roll. In Austin all the minor sub-categories are mixed up but I don't fit any of them sometimes.

"Someone once described my sound as Jimi Hendrix beating up Buck Owens but I'm not so sure about that. But I guess it's kinda appropriate."

Click - who played in Jimmy LaFave's band for many years but now mostly helms his own outfit - has lived with lots of references: Tom Petty crossed with John Mellencamp, the Allman Brothers meets Stevie Ray Vaughan, Lynyrd Skynyrd ...

You get the picture. Click rocks - but he's coming here for the annual Waiheke Island jazz festival held over Easter, which is now expanded to include shows at the Auckland Town Hall.

Click knows about being on the jazz and blues bill and he's seen the festival's website. "I thought, uh-ho, I might be the Antichrist again."

He was spotted by the festival organiser David Paquette at a concert in Lugano, Switzerland. Paquette was impressed, they talked about him coming down here with his band, "and when I got home, sure 'nough there was an email waiting for me".

Click has been a journeyman musician all his life and seen everything from small bars for his solo sets to huge festivals with his rocking band. He still plays about 100 nights a year - the east and west coasts of the States, the European festival circuit - but admits that after a lifetime of playing he has started to be selective about where he appears.

"When I played in other people's bands some of the gigs have been kinda scary, and I have a studio at home so I'd just as rather be at home recording a song idea or watching The Andy Griffith Show or something.

"I don't want to tour all the time although I know some people would kill to have some of those gigs. But I've been on the chitlin circuit for years, so I've done it - and now it's done."

Oddly enough for this guy who prefers to stay in Austin, he rarely plays there these days. His band and his girlfriend are based in San Francisco so he's mostly out that way or on the road elsewhere.

"Austin is a great place. I love living here and I've been here since '89. It's cool but it's changed since I first came here. It's not as musically friendly as it used to be.

"There's a lot of music here, don't get me wrong, but clubs are going out left and right. Legendary clubs have become cover band places or discos, and the live music scene is suffering in that area.

"There are more clubs popping up but the ones that are really cool, that everybody had heard of forever, are gone now. The Steamboat's gone and they tore Liberty Lunch down several years ago. They took it down to make room for a computer software company or something, and the company went out of business and they didn't finish the building for years. It's crazy.

"But there's a lot of good folks here and it's a great place to be from."

Austin has long had a reputation for hard rocking bands. Joe Ely, who moved there from Lubbock, Buddy Holly's hometown, toured with the Clash; Antone's house bands were the Fabulous Thunderbirds and the Cobras (featuring Stevie Ray Vaughan); and the annual South by South West music showcase puts punk bands alongside outlaw country acts.

There is a rock'n'roll spirit in the air of Austin and that's just fine with Click.

"I've always been a rock'n'roll guy and I've played it for years and years. I love the blues and play that, but I love good old-fashioned rock'n'roll. Not many people do that any more, it's getting kinda rare these days. That's unfortunate in itself because there are a lot of artists out there playing rock'n'roll music and not getting any airplay.

"A lot of people try to jump on whatever bandwagon that's happening and that's okay. If they want to do hip-hop or pop-rock or death metal or whatever is popular that's fine, there's all kinds of validations. But it's not something I want to think about. I just do what I do.

"My music's evolved for sure. I started out playing in AC/DC cover bands and I still love AC/DC, they are my favourite band in the whole world. But I also love Emmylou Harris and respect all those [singer-songwriter] guys."

There's a bit of that in him too - he talks of his next album being probably just him playing acoustic guitar, and he plays lap steel guitar - but at heart he just loves to play rock'n'roll. His albums - notably his most recent, Elvis the Dog - find him scouring the fretboard, tossing in a Beatles and a JJ Cale cover, and ripping out songs with titles such as Killing Fields, Dust on the Bible, and Love at War.

He's looking forward to coming down this way, playing in Fiji on the way through ("I've never been any place tropical") and he wants to go to Japan.

"I want to go to there and play the Budokan like Cheap Trick," he laughs. "I loved that album when I was a kid. It rocked." Busy enough to turn down gigs he doesn't like - "I've had residences in clubs but I've got used to getting paid and I just don't wanna not get paid any more" - he considers he's got a pretty good job.

"You know, it's real simple. I like playing guitar and singing songs and I guess it's what I'm supposed to do on this earth. Any time you can get paid for something you enjoy, you know you're a lucky man."



Danny Click
"Elvis the Dog" (DogStar)
Art Thompson
GUITAR PLAYER magazine
December 2003

Click is a fine slide guitarist with a great voice, who expresses some deep and obviously heartfelt emotions on this engaging collection of songs. Lots of artists try to do the same thing, but Click gets into the heart of the matter with such honesty and passion that even the album's instrumental title track can make you want to reach up to dog heaven to give "Elvis" a little pat on his head. DogStar.



Danny Click
Blues To Bop Music Festival – Lugano , Switzerland

Danny Click grew up in a small town near Indianapolis in a family devoted to country music. He has fond memories of listening to his mother play guitar, holding it flat on her lap, using a knife as a bottleneck. Before finishing high school, Danny was already playing regular gigs as a member of his sister’s band. It was during the 80s that his passion for the blues developed and, after a thorough study of the masters, he moved to Austin which was then bursting with the energy created by Stevie Ray Vaughan, Eric Johnson and the Fabulous Thunderbirds. Despite the competition Danny quickly established himself and his first recording, "Forty Miles" assured him his place at the centre of the action. Today, Danny’s music is a refreshingly aggressive contemporary mix of blues inflected Rock ‘n Roll charged with that special intensity that is a characteristic of the southern rock approach. This is not so surprising given the fact that Danny fills the role of lead guitar in top rocker Jimmy LaFave’s band, often on the road for 200 concerts a year.

Blues to Bop is proud to have convinced this incredibly talented artist to stay for the whole festival on one of his too rare visits to Europe.



Danny Click
"Elvis the Dog" (Appaloosa)
Meribeth Malone
Metro Santa Cruz
July 2-9, 2003

After being tucked into Jimmy Lafave's band, blowing away fans and critics, Danny is finally doing the solo tour. Last summer he turned heads at the Kate Wolf and Strawberry festivals. His slide guitar and Southern gothic vocals have earned him guitar god status in Europe. Now we get to hear what all the fuss is about. With the 2002 release of Elvis the Dog (Appaloosa), he turned the loss of his great hound into a well-structured dedication to the pain and transformation anyone who's loved and lost can appreciate. Right between the smokiness of Duane Allman and the playfulness of Lowell George, Danny reintroduces the comfort of Southern rock with a fat dose of blues on top. Henfling's; $7-$9; 8 p.m.



Danny Click
"Elvis the Dog" (Appaloosa)
Christopher Contini
Good Times (Santa Cruz Coast)
July 2-9, 2003

Whether cruising along West Cliff drive without a care in the world, or hacking through gridlock along Highway One, the soothing (or thrashing) melodies that constitute Danny Click's rock and blues are just what you need to get you to that happy place inside where the little things in life start to fall away. From his soft and sonorous guitar ballads to his downright crunchy, in-your-face shredding, Click's guitar playing, which has earned him the title "the unsung guitar hero", is your one-way ticket to a musical la-la land where neither traffic nor pesky power-walkers can keep you from experiencing your well-deserved bliss. Henfling's, Tuesday July 8th.


Click's smokin' grooves sizzle


Danny Click
"Elvis the Dog" (Appaloosa)
***
Mark Whittington
Mercury News
Dec. 24, 2002

Danny Click plays killer slide guitar, capturing the fire of Lowell George and Sonny Landreth and the warm, fat tones of Ry Cooder and Duane Allman. That's no secret in Austin, Texas, or to those who've heard him as part of songwriter Jimmy LaFave's band.

And that alone would be enough reason to search out Click's solo album, `"Elvis the Dog," released on the Italian label Appaloosa.

But Click also has an easy vocal style, a tight band and solid producer's chops. This tasty little Southern rocker sounds like a lost Skynyrd album, one of the good ones but with better lyrics.



He has picked some wonderful songs penned by former bandmates -- "Killing Fields" by Carol Howell, "Fool's Parade" by Andy Van Dyke, "Love at War" by Billy Harvey and "Dust on the Bible," a haunting ballad by Bob Childers that can raise gooseflesh on the back of your neck. "Songs too good not to be played or heard," Click says.

Click can write, too, as he shows with "No Good Reason," a simple, smokin' duet with Julieann Banks. For a familiar touchstone, check his reworkings of Lennon and McCartney's "I've Got a Feelin" (with LaFave adding the Lennon vocals) and J.J. Cale's "Tijuana" (with Andrew Hardin taking the Middle East-meets-the-Old-West guitar solo).

And yes, there really was an Elvis the Dog, a border collie-springer spaniel mix who died while Click was on the road. Click pays homage to his pet with two of the album's songs, the instrumental title track and "I Miss You."

And check out Click's other two albums: "Forty Miles" (DogStar) and "Night of the Living Guitars" (Appaloosa).

If you can't find them at the local record store, try DogStar Records, P.O. Box 9039, Austin, Texas 78766-9039, or go straight to the Italians at www.ird.it or Appaloosa/IRD, Via G.B. de Lasalle 4, 20132 Milano, Italy.





Danny Click
Forty Miles (DogStar)

Michael Corcoran
The Austin-American Statesman
July 16, 1998

Here's a sleeper: a rock-solid album of good songs and somewhat economical backing from a guy previously best known for his relentless slide guitar playing (with Danny and the Hurricanes). "To get yourself a little bit of heaven/You've gotta go through some hell," Click sings on "Out Yonder" and, indeed, he proves it by recovering from a near-fatal car accident less than three years ago with an album that brims with hopefulness. On the last cut, "On the Inside," Click finally cuts loose with some soaring bottleneck soloing, and it sounds like a fitting climax to an album that deserves attention.



Danny Click
Forty Miles (DogStar)
*** 1/2
Christopher Hess
The Austin Chronicle
June 5, 1998

Not only is the debut CD from Midwestern transplant Danny Click a thoroughly engaging batch of sneerful country rockers and ballads, but it's also a way for many who are caught on the fringes of this Americana thing to see exactly how their roots figure into the equation. The overall sound of Forty Miles settles somewhere between the blood and guts jams of the Allman Brothers and the soulful, thoughtful pickin' of Mark Knopfler and Dire Straits. Click even does a cover of "Six Blade Knife" from Dire Straits' first album, and the passion of Click's delivery is a great twist on Knopfler's mumbling. The songs are about the road and the pain of living, and the words are sung as if they may be Click's last. His playing shows signs of Hendrix and hints of any of the Skynyrd guitarists, and all of it mixes well with the direct engagement with which Click's songs meet the world they come from. Whatever Americana turns out to be, this will definitely fall within its boundaries, and it may even help to expand them outward a little bit.