›› MUSIC
This must be the place Marin a ‘Good Place’ to be for Texas rocker Danny Click by G r e g Cahill
C
all it the good house-rockin’ seal of wait outside for a while till someone could approval. find him a chair. Danny Click, a tall and lanky “Immediately, I started to get a little Indiana-born axeslinger who honed his nervous, because he is one of my heroes, chops on the beer-soaked stages of Austin, and he was sitting there watching me has been plying his Texas roadhouse blues play. I figured, you can’t not invite Carlos locally since moving to San Rafael just Santana to play. over a decade ago. “He hadn’t brought His SRO shows at the a guitar so he played COMING SOON Sleeping Lady in Fairfax one of mine through Danny Click & the Amerihave had fans lining up our keyboardist’s amp. cana Orchestra perform two on the sidewalk. It was very impromptu. sets—one acoustic, the other One of those fans is You can see on the video featuring “paint-peeling” roadCarlos Santana, who re[that someone posted on house blues—Friday, Oct. 28, cently showed up to jam YouTube] that he had a at 8pm, at 142 Throckmorton with Click. The Marin great time. It was a total Theatre in Mill Valley. $18-$25. rocker, who is married to thrill. 415/383-9600. Cindy Blackman, sister of “At the end, I had to Click’s backup singer Trablush because he came cy Blackman, had taken a back and said something shine to Click’s recent self-produced album really complimentary to me. I was humLife Is a Good Place, a strikingly strong set bled. I mean, this guy is a legend and one of of country songs reminiscent of the late, my heroes and here he is telling me what a great Chris Whitley. great guitar player I am—it was awesome. “He had listened to the album and “It felt really good. showed up unannounced,” Click says. Life is, indeed, a good place for Click “The place was so packed Santana had to these days. His album has been charting
The idea that Carlos Santana had to wait outside to get into one of Click’s shows made the San Rafael guitarist ‘a little nervous.’
well on country and Americana radio. His decision to self-produce the album was something of a leap of faith. Before starting the project, he’d had a deal with Warner Bros. that fell through at the last minute. So Click took a hiatus from performing to concentrate on writing and producing, even selling off a few prized guitars from a collection that still numbers more than three dozen. He’s rightly proud of the results. “I’m getting a little older now,” says the 50-year-old musician. “I figured that I’m
not going to cut corners. The record labels don’t give a damn anymore, so I decided I would just do it my way and spend the money. I scrimped and saved. “I decided I would do it the way a record label would do it. There’s a big difference in quality when you do that. After all, it’s so easy to record these days that there’s a lot of stuff out. Hopefully, folks will be able to find the nuggets and this will be one of those nuggets they find.” His singer/songwriter side has stepped into the spotlight, but the education he received watching his mother play lap-steel slide guitar with the butt of a butter knife and taking advantage of any chance to get on stage in one those fabled Texas roadhouses has continued to serve him well. “I like that music because no one really does it anymore and I grew up listening to it and playing it when I was a kid. So I just gravitated toward that sound. The thing I love about it the most is that it’s so raw,” he says, drawing out his vowels (he pronounces it raaaaw). “It’s so in your face, so real, so in the moment. I mean, in those clubs, these guys are playing their ass off right in front of you, two feet away. There’s no pretension, no room for error—if they make a mistake, it’s a loud and proud mistake. “I equate it to one of those down-home, old-timey Southern Baptist revival meetings where they’re having a rip-roarin’ ceremony. It’s the same kind of vibe—it’s real and it’s honest and it’s passionate. It’s like the people who are doing it like it’s the last time they’ll ever be doing it. “That’s what I learned in Austin: If you’re playing like it’s the last time you’ll ever play the guitar, then you’re doing it right. If you’re not doing it that way, it’s because you’re not living it. “That’s what I like about it—I play it because it’s real and raaaaw!” ✹ Get real with Greg at gcahill51@gmail.com. Tune up to the Marin music scene at
›› pacificsun.com/music 26 PACIFIC SUN OCTOBER 28 - NOVEMBER 3, 2011