Danny McGuinness - Chicago, IL
Room 809 CD Review and Interview
By Kelley Guiney

I’ve followed the career of Chicago-based singer songwriter Danny McGuiness since it began nearly 20 years ago; his considerable talent was evident even in those early days. From his first songwriting efforts, solo gigs and fledgling performances fronting the progressive hard rock band band Coven of Thieves through his artistic evolution over the years up to the present, McGuinness has consistently proven himself to be a gifted lyricist with a dramatic flair whose powerhouse vocals never fail to command attention. With Coven of Thieves in the early nineties McGuinness built a reputation in Chicago as an incendiary performer who seemed from the first to feel perfectly at home on stage. Since then he has been through several artistic incarnations; when Coven’s considerably fiery energy dissipated McGuiness put together the more melodic pop/hard rock band Icos, which saw recording and performing success before their deal with Mercury got lost in a merger. McGuinness has been on his own since then, honing his songwriting skills, trying his hand at pop and production and continuing to broaden his range of genres.

McGuinness most recent release, Room 809, (see a review of this album at add link) is an acoustic record that captures his stunning power and range as a vocalist while each track showcases his considerable songwriting talent. There is a nice diversity to the tracks – a simple, hopeful message that all will be well (“Good Rain”), a countrified murderer’s tale (“Whiskey”), a pissed off breakup song (‘Breathe”), a lyrically brilliant, tasty, rhythm-driven road tune that makes you want to jump in the car (“The Road Ahead”), and even a couple of earnest and heart wrenching love songs (“Forever Be Mine” and “Waiting for You”) -- and they hold together well as an album you’ll want to listen to over and over again. The stripped down album also introduces the delightful musical chemistry between McGuinness and guitarist Kent VanDerKoelk. The way this album came about is a story I’ll let McGuinness tell – I had the pleasure of sitting down with him recently to talk about his musical experiences as well as this new release.

Interview with Danny McGuinness

HotBands - I know you’re very excited about your new record, Room 809, so let’s talk about that first. So Room 809 came out of what was originally a demo session?

Danny McGuinness - It was a demo session for songs that would have eventually become full blown rock tunes, but then it just sort of took on a life of its own that night. We were recording and my buddy Kenny who’s a film actor, he was filming, he shows up with a case of beer, my buddy Sky, who’s a photographer showed up, so it was the five of us hanging out in this hotel room and me and Kent jamming and we were drinking beer and shooting the shit and the next thing you know we got 10 songs on tape.

HotBands - That’s cool.

Danny McGuinness - And the next day Brett, who’s my manager and also was engineering that night called me and said you’ve got an album in the can, bro. And I listened to it and I said you know what I really like this. I mean it’s raw, there’s one overdub, a background vocal on “Justified Loser,” there are no other overdubs on the whole record, it’s all live. So it was just one of those things, it’s like a snapshot in time, the vocals aren’t all perfect, nothing’s perfect on the record, it’s just this really cool acoustic thing, you know. And I like it. Whatever happens with the record, artistically I’m very satisfied with it. The majority of those songs that you hear are first or second takes. The solos are things that he thought of as we were playing the songs, the solo on “Whiskey”, which is one of my favorite solos on the whole album, is one step from being a train wreck. I didn’t even know where he was going with it or what he was going to do and it’s like it’s either going to become a train wreck or it’s going to be brilliant. And the second take on “Whiskey” he nailed that solo and I wanted to stop and go dude that was brilliant, except I had to keep singing. That was so much fun.

And when we recorded “Good Rain”, the second track we recorded that night, Brett, who never tips his cards, Brett stands up, comes out from behind the recording deck there, comes over by me and hugs me and then hugs Kent and he goes “so that’s the kind of night this is going to be.” It was like we just set this vibe all of a sudden, it was like well maybe we’re going to get something here tonight. You know, and sometimes you go to record and you get one song and you’re lucky, and that night we got ten.

HotBands - So it was kind of magical and it –

Danny McGuinness - The only reason we stopped was security was banging on the door at one in the morning.

HotBands - So they were all done in one or two takes and those – the solos, a lot of the solos, the playing is improvisational, his guitar, a lot of it is improvisational.

Danny McGuinness - It all is. None of it was planned out.

HotBands - He hadn’t even rehearsed it?

Danny McGuinness - That’s what was so cool about it. When we listened to it he’s like dude I don’t know if I like the solo on this, I’m like no, man, it’s cool as hell. Like the solo on “Monday Coming Around” he does like these open string things against the lick and it was like – how kick ass, just really raw and what I liked about it was that it was an immediate musical conversation between the two of us. First reaction to the songs, my first reactions to what he’s doing rhythmically, how I’m playing rhythm guitar and all that. It was just a lot of fun. And I think that comes across on the record. What I love is the pictures throughout the night, because my buddy Sky showed up and took a bunch of pictures and as the photos go on through the night there’s just more and more empty beer bottles everywhere.

HotBands - Do you have some favorites off the album?

Danny McGuinness - Yeah, I think my absolute favorite of the whole album is ”Monday Coming Around” and “Good Rain.” And I really like “Breathe” as well, although I don’t know how much airplay it’ll get because we didn’t do an edited version, but so what.

HotBands - Why are those your favorites?

Danny McGuinness - Something about the performance, just capturing the energy that was just right there. And I love “Whiskey.” I think it’s a very countrified, picking kind of tune.

HotBands - I wondered whatever got you to write that.

Danny McGuinness - I wrote “Whiskey,” I was staying at a friend of mine’s house in Hollywood Hills a few years ago, I wrote it several years ago and I’ve just played it in live shows and never got around to recording it. The short story of that is my friend used to live next door to Glenn Campbell. Glen Campbell went by the fence on a riding lawn mower in a bathrobe. It was surreal, it was like being in a Fellini movie, and I looked, I’m like no, that’s not Glenn Campbell, he doesn’t cut his own lawn, but there he was. I said I’m going to write a country song. I wrote “Whiskey,” which had nothing to do with Glenn Campbell, but that’s the truth of the matter.

HotBands - That’s hilarious. My favorite song is “The Road Ahead.” It’s the rhythm of it partly, it’s got this driving rhythm to it that really matches the lyrics well. I wonder – the way that song came out it feels very inspired and very alive and I wonder is that the way you imagined it, or was that part of just the magic of the evening?

Danny McGuinness - Actually the original way I wrote the song was the way that we recorded it, but I had also turned the song around. I had a demo version of the song done a couple years ago where we made it into like this Bowie-esque circa Ziggy Stardust kind of days. Completely different groove than what’s on the record now and I came back around to doing the song the way I originally wrote it. Whenever we do the song live I always tell Kent, let me get the train started and then jump on. Because it’s that kind of a groove.

HotBands - That’s right. And that’s partly what impresses me so much is that there are no drums in it, but you’ve got such a great rhythm going.

Danny McGuinness - That’s from years of playing with Kyle Woodring, my drummer I think. I just picture him on the backbeat and just try and lock and I’ve gotten used to that even when I’m writing, of having a groove ready for him.

HotBands - I know that you and Kent have a lot of chemistry musically. Can you talk about that for a minute?

Danny McGuinness - I have a blast working with him, but recording with him especially. Every night it’s a little different, he surfs a lot the way he plays guitar. He’s very inspired and he’s willing to take chances and it makes a huge difference in his musicianship, it’s just great. He’s always changing things. So he makes it a lot of fun. There’s times when he plays stuff and I go I don’t know where that came from or how you did it, but it sounded great. I think he’s a brilliant guitar player, I love some of the comparisons people have made to him and some classic guitar players over the years, Knopfler, Keith Richards. Somebody walked up to him at a gig in LA and told him he sounded like Mike Campbell, who’s the guitar player for Tom Petty. I think that blew Kent’s mind, because that’s one of his heroes for sure

HotBands - You’re a very diverse artist and seem to have a wide range of influences. Who influenced you early on?

Danny McGuinness - Two influences since I was a kid are Johnny Cash and David Bowie. I remember when I was still in grammar school listening on headphones late at night to Changes. It was something that really effected me but it didn’t really come out until I started writing music.

The words have always been more important in a song than the twist of melody. I didn’t start learning what it means to modulate the key or to do some cool twist on the end or start the song on the four instead of the one or any of that stuff until I started to get into songwriting as a craft, but the first thing that taught me about music when I was young was the lyrics. Like “Ghostriders in the Sky” by Johnny Cash and “Changes” from Bowie. It’s strange to think of those two writers next to each other, but they really both had this profound influence on me when I was very young. The music would move me more than anything. I remember “Ghostriders in the Sky” bringing tears to my eyes when I was like eight or nine years old when I had the 45 and listened to it at home and I didn’t know why I was crying. I didn’t know why it was moving me so much. I would listen to Bowie until two or three in the morning, get up at 7 and go to grammar school. And all I wanted to do was play music and I was like the geek kid at the time. That music precursed everything else, those are the two things I remember and hold onto so clearly. And then I think right after that was Zeppelin and U2, I was like 12 years old when I heard Boy and it was an import that my buddy had and we just thought they were the greatest thing since sliced bread. I thought they were just the coolest fucking thing in the world.

HotBands - I’ve never noticed the Johnny Cash influence until now, I think it comes out more in this new record.

Danny McGuinness - I love Johnny Cash, look at what he did in his career, all the different people he worked with and you know the last ten years of working with Rick Rubin, those albums are incredible. “Unchained”, absolutely, “Unchained” is one of my favorite songs of all time. And I think he had Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers as his backup band on that. And even that last thing, the thing that they just put out, My Mother’s Hymnbook, which is really good, it’s part of the "Unearthed" series, and that’s all just gospel songs, it’s just Johnny and a guitar doing these old gospel songs. There’s a song called “Do Lord” that’s just him going “Do Lord, oh do Lord, do remember me,” and you can hear the gravel in his voice, his age in his voice, but he still has all this passion. I don’t know who said it, but they said if God had a voice he’d sound like Johnny Cash.

HotBands - Who has influenced you more recently?

Danny McGuinness - Well Daniel Lanois put out a record last year called Shine and Peter Gabriel’s last record are two of the best records I’ve ever heard. Shine from Lanois is just brilliant. It probably sold 50,000 units or something, but I tell everybody I can to go buy that record because it’ just incredible. Just a great record. And you can hear what an effect he had on U2 just in that.

If I had to say the three records that would not leave my CD player last year it would be Lanois’ album Shine, Lucinda Wililams’ World Without Tears and Peter Gabriel’s record. You know that old question what would you take with you to a deserted island – yeah, those records are incredible.

HotBands - So you started playing in your late teens and then tell me about kind of the chronology, you put together Coven of Thieves a few years later, right?

Danny McGuinness - Yeah, not too much longer after that. I think I was 22 when Coven of Thieves really came together and that kind of took on a life of its own. We did one EP and then we did a record and that started to take off. We got involved with some folks who were with Atlantic at the time who helped out the Indie label we were on.

HotBands - That’s right, so you toured Europe with Coven of Thieves, right?

Yeah, we toured the U.S. and Europe.

HotBands - And then you stayed in Amsterdam.

Danny McGuinness - No I came back home, broke up the band and went back to Amsterdam around four months later.

HotBands - And then you played solo while you were there, right?

Danny McGuinness - Yeah I was there just under a year, I lived in Amsterdam.

HotBands - Were you busking there?

Danny McGuinness - Yeah, I was busking, I made a lot of friends that were buskers. Alan McLaughlin was this guitar player from The Damned he was busking in the streets and he became a buddy of mine and Terry Mann who is this really cool cat who played with Lennon a long time ago. He became like a mentor to me, I spent a lot of time hanging out in the café. He changed me in a lot of ways, just conversations that we had. I think he still hosts the jam now at the Bourbon Street in Amsterdam.

I would sit in on jams there every Wednesday night and he would hand me a bass and go you’re playing bass tonight and I’m like dude I’m not a bass player and he goes you are now. And he’d call out the chord changes. I learned a lot from Terry in that year. Terry would change keys in the middle of a song. Terry was great. The cool thing about the jams was every time you’d go to a jam night with him different people would just walk in, major players. I mean Jeff Healy came in one night.

HotBands - Oh wow.

Danny McGuinness - Freddie Jackson’s keyboard player and Freddie and some other people. I mean it was just like every time, so it would be different folks. He’d always bring me up and he’s always have me do some songs and then he’d go all right, now play piano for the rest of the night, or play bass or whatever. It was definitely a workout for me musically.

HotBands - How else did Amsterdam influence you musically?

Danny McGuinness - Well playing in the street. Playing in the street changed me a lot because I’d play Beatles songs all afternoon to make money to go drinking and eat and party and stuff and then go play a gig. Busking with Alan and some of the other guys, we’d hope trains and busk, we went to London for a couple of days, we went to Paris for a couple of days and just busked. And you know staying in the youth hostels and head on back. And it was a completely different life than growing up in Chicago, that’s for sure. Nothing really compared to having your home base be Amsterdam and the places that you go that are such a short ride comparatively. All of the different languages. Itchanges your perception of history and of music in general. Because you run into these Peruvian guys who are playing upright bass and pan flutes and then you run into German guys who are playing Beatles songs in German or Japanese kids who were playing Elvis songs, that was big then. Alan and I would stand out at what we call the blue pole, the blue pole was this giant blue pole with power plugs in it right out in front of Central Station in Amsterdam. And you could plug an amp in or whatever, a microphone and a little boom box and I’d take my pig nose amp with me and set that up and burn up batteries and we’d just jam. And we always knew when the German trains would come in, and we’d play all Beatles at that point, because you always knew you’d make a lot of money. We’d go hey the train from Berlin’s coming in, let’s do the set and we’d do all these Beatles tunes and then we’d go back to doing Stones and Jimi Hendrix and all this other stuff that we liked to play. I learned a lot from Alan, too, he’s a great musician. A great Scotsman who made sure I pissed on a specific door before I left Amsterdam. Which I won’t reveal where because it would get him in trouble. It’s a busker thing.

HotBands - That’s great. So then you came back from Amsterdam and that’s when you started Icos, around ’95 or so, and you recorded At the Speed of Life at Abbey Road.

Danny McGuinness - Mm hm. Right, which got some good reviews. I still have people come up to me and tell me they still really like that record.

HotBands - What was it like recording at Abbey Road Studios?

Danny McGuinness - Incredible. It was really incredible. Alan Parsons was running the studio at the time, and we’d run into Alan in the hallways all the time. And then the last week and a half we were there George Harrison was in the surround sound room, he kicked us out of the room we were in and we ended up having to spend the last week and a half in Studio 2, which is the Beatles main room, so we had no complaints at all. He was doing a remix of Yellow Submarine for the 5.1 surround sound and of course the one chance I get to talk to George Harrison is in the fricking can. I’m standing in the bathroom peeing and he comes in to pee. And I didn’t say anything to him, I walked out in the hallway and my drummer Kyle’s walking down the hallway and I go, “Kyle, George Harrison’s in the bathroom.” I go, “I need a reason to stay in this hallway, let’s talk about the posters on the wall or something.” So we’re standing there, we’re talking about the posters, Alan Parsons walks up, I go hey Alan how’re you doing, he goes oh good, how are you guys doing. Alan’s a really nice guy. So we’re standing and talking to him and George walks up and he says hello to George and he goes George this is Danny and Kyle and he introduced us to him. So that was even cooler and we just shook his hand said hello and said yeah we heard you’re remixing next door and stuff. He was very nice and it was just weird. That was just a cool experience, it wasn’t one of those things where you can ask him for an autograph or anything, we were in the studio and it was just cool to meet him. One of the sweetest people, though, he’s very amiable, very nice guy.

HotBands - Your music is so diverse. It’s like there’s this very honest kind of no-bullshit grittiness and then there’s this sort of mythical kind of romantic gothic storytelling that you never quite – you listen to it and you’re never quite sure exactly what’s going on or what you’re referring to, but it definitely sets a scene, but where does that part come from?

Danny McGuinness - I think that’s just part of reading a lot. I’ve always been an avid reader and I think the combination of my – with the way I write as a songwriter is honest emotion from myself but also I’ve always been a – I’ve always liked the grand gesture in music.

HotBands - Yes, that’s kind of what I was trying to say about your music.

Danny McGuinness - It’s the same reason I love Zeppelin, for that, and U2, they do the same thing. There’s a grand gesture in the lyric that can be made, and Dylan – I mean listen to “Isis”, “Isis” is about this guy going away and digging through the snow and looking for treasure. But is that really the story or is he just looking inside himself for the treasure, and you don’t really know. You don’t know if he really went away or if he just went away in his mind. And so I guess that’s the thing, I mean you can have a story be an analogy or it can be a real story and no one really knows except the songwriter, and I love that mystery of songs.

HotBands - What’s different about playing acoustically?

Danny McGuinness - The largest gig I played solo before I went to Europe on my own was in front of 1,000 people in Chicago opening for this Irish band here, the Drovers. I remember getting ready to walk out on stage and I turned to the garbage can next to me and barfed, walked out and did this set and it was the first time I had played a solo set in front of a big audience. And it was like being naked, it also had this zen quality of rising about what you were doing and I forgot what I was playing or doing and all of a sudden the gig was over and it was a really cool crowd. The crowd was very kind to me. And I remember coming offstage and it was the first time I ever met this guy Charles Levi, and he’s a bass player from My Life with the Thrill Kill Cult, I don’t know if you remember that band, but Charles is a dynamite bass player. And he walks up to me and he goes, “I saw you puke, but that was a great set.” Charles and I became fast friends that night. Anyway, that taught me about playing acoustically and from then when I went off to Europe and started playing, like festivals in front of 20, 30,000 people and then the next day you’d be playing in front of 15 people in a youth center. It’s a huge ego check in doing that, but it also was a lesson – you have to be just as powerful for 15 people in a small club as you do in front of 30,000 and it’s focusing all of that into playing a guitar and singing. You can’t hide behind the bass player’s big thump or the kick drum or whatever, it’s just you and a guitar and it’s a whole different way of being honest. And if – you know I’ve had nights when I wasn’t being honest, when I was walking through the motions, and you can tell right away.

HotBands - By the audience.

Danny McGuinness - Yeah, the audience feels it. You don’t get the same response. Some songs you’re opening your veins up when you write a song and then there’s nights when you play them when you open that vein up again live and you sing it right from your heart and you give it everything you’ve got, people know that, and there’s nights when that feels like you’re emotionally raw and if you put it out there, you try and do that every night, but there’s nights when you’re just either worn out or emotionally you can’t get there and I know that’s why artists turn to substances and stuff to chill it out or to numb it a little bit so if you do access it it’s not torture again. There’s certain emotions that you bring up when you write.

HotBands - Any highlights of touring, either in Europe or here, where have you been with which band? Any stories?

Danny McGuinness - I just have a lot of great memories of all of that stuff. One of my favorite memories of touring with Icos was we had this 32 foot RV and a 12-foot trailer behind us, we played a nice gig at this club with this radio station that was playing us regularly, we had a good crowd. I ended up throwing my guitar into a wall because my guitar tech missed it so it smacked into a wall. It was a long night, we had a great time, we stayed out late partying, we all crashed. It was one of the last couple nights of the tour and we were burning hard and everyone slept in and we woke up in the middle of a marathon. The cops had been trying to get us to wake up and open the door and we were parked in the middle of the main street where they were having a marathon. That was funny.

HotBands - Oh my god. What city was that?

Danny McGuinness - That was in Mobile, Alabama.

HotBands - So everyone was running around you?

Danny McGuinness - We heard feet running by and people smacking the sides of the thing, I woke up and looked out, I lift up the shades and I go guys wake up! Everybody starts waking up and looking outside and then we busted out laughing. And Scully, our road manager walks up in his underwear like what’s going on? It was great. And we had a great road crew.

HotBands - How do you feel about the Internet, as a musician?

Danny McGuinness - I think the Internet is the most brilliant replacement of the classic music industry schmoes who have helped destroy people over the years, I think it’s incredible. It’s great for delivery of music, it’s great for distribution, it’s great for marketing potential, it’s great for eliminating a lot of the middle men. I think the Itunes, Rhapsody, Sony, all of the different delivery systems out there are great, plus the fact that you can be independent and build and deliver your music yourself as well, it’s just a great combination. I think it’s beautiful to see, Itunes did 150 million bucks worth of business last year. That speaks volumes about that fact that the days of seven or eight different people and different arms of businesses having their hands in the pot are gone. It’s changed the whole nature of the business.

HotBands - How do you feel about file sharing on the Internet?

Danny McGuinness - Overall I’d like to see some sort of licensing come down. I think always there’s going to be some sharing just like people always used to make duplications of songs on cassettes in the old days. I’d like to see some controls over it, but I think at some point people are going to rip stuff and it just spreads the word about your music, I don’t think it’s that harmful overall. I think that whole argument that the Metallicas of the world make – nothing against Metallica, but I think the argument that it takes money out of independent music’s pocket is a crock. Because you give away some music you let people share your music, they’re still going to go buy the disc or attend your show. Unless they don’t have any money anyway, so why force them. If they don’t have the cash and they can’t be supportive that way then they can be supportive by spreading the word.

HotBands - Good answer.

Danny McGuinness - On the new tour site I’ve got five songs from the album available, you can’t download them, but you can listen to them all you want. For the next album I’m planning on making a certain section of songs available for free and then the rest of the record available to buy.

HotBands - So what’s next?

Danny McGuinness - Another record, we’re already recording it, I’ve got a studio that we built in a barn and we’ve been working on new songs and it’s going to have some band tracks and some acoustic tracks. I think we’re going to be putting that out in the fall.

HotBands - You seem like you’re on a roll now with being on your own.

Danny McGuinness - I’m real happy, we’re starting to get a lot of response from radio stations, college stations across the country. I’m excited as hell, I can’t wait to get out there and play.

HotBands - And you’re going to be touring this year, right?

Danny McGuinness - Through the spring and we’ll take a short break, put the new record together and come right back out. We’ll definitely be playing festivals in the summer and I think we’re going to go over to the UK and do some European festivals, too.

HotBands - Can you think of any songs by other artists that you wish you’d written yourself? Are there any that haunt you?

Danny McGuinness - Todd Snider, “Sunshine.” I love that tune. It’s brilliant. And Bob Dylan’s “Isis,” that’s just a great song. That’s a tough question.

HotBands - I know. That’s why I always like to ask it.

Danny McGuinness - I think the feeling that comes from writing a song, I just wrote a new tune for the next album the other night, I took about four minutes to write it, the lyrics came blurting out and the chords were all there and it’s just one of those experience, it’s an incredible high. And I can’t imagine what the high would be like to write, you know, whatever, “Satisfaction” or something like that. It’s just unbelievable. Like U2’s “Where the Streets Have No Name” still gives me chills, after whatever it’s been, 14 years. There’s a whole list of songs I wish I’d written in a way.

HotBands - What do you think is the most important thing you’ve learned in your career?

Danny McGuinness - I’d say to be resilient and shake off the dead weight, to know when to change your game. One thing I’ve learned is to just kind of go with my instincts musically first, and let everything else fall where it might fall. Musically I’m really happy where we are with this record. I have no idea what it’ll do and I don’t really care other than I’m just really satisfied with it musically, and I think that’s where I like to be most of all. I spent a lot of time burning a lot of energy over the years in the rock world constantly being caught up in all the other crap that comes along with the music business, and primarily the word music is first.

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