Entertainment
BY R A N DY PAT T E R S O N, B O O M E R O C I T Y.C O M
Jeff Daniels J
EFF DANIELS. At the mention of
his name, fans and film buffs will think of one of his roles in one of his 61 movies. Or, perhaps, it’s because of his role as Will McAvoy in HBO’s The Newsroom or even his magnificent work on the stage. It’s safe to assume that most people have seen Daniels act in one role or another at some point in the past 35 years. What might not be known is that he is also quite an accomplished performing guitarist. I first became aware of Daniels’ guitar work a few years ago thanks to a cover story in Guitar Aficionado magazine. Precise. Prolific. Fun. All of this and more describes Mr. Daniels’ mastery of the six string. Daniels called me from his home in Chelsea, Michigan, to discuss his musical career and his then-upcoming tour. I asked him how the preparations for that tour were coming along. “We’re kind of doing something that we did before,” he said. “We just get to do it again. We went out initially in August. I said, ‘I’ve got some songs. I want to go out with just a band. Let’s get some old guys and do a Viagra band, like the commercial.’ Then I was like, ‘Wait a minute! I’ve got these twenty-somethings and early thirty-somethings right here, and they’re great musicians. The whole father/son thing… let’s see if it can work.’ And it did! It worked great.” Daniels has recorded a couple of solo albums and still records great music for appreciative fans. About that body of work, he said, “Yeah, 58
EVERYTHING KNOXVILLE September 2015
I do a lot of solo stuff. Keep It Right Here was an upright bass, a banjo occasionally, and a lot of fiddle and mandolin. It was like a trio with some other added instruments. Days Like These was fuller with more musicians. Daniels then answered the question about what fans can expect from one of his shows. “I make sure they have a good time. I make sure they’re entertained. I talk to them. They will do stuff at this show that they’ve never done at any other show, which may include getting up and doing a drunken dance that was made famous in the upper peninsula of Michigan. Any number of things can happen along with a song that stops the show and makes you cry. I love mixing it up like that. It’s a replica of my acting career from Dumb and Dumber to The Newsroom.” In the aforementioned interview in Guitar Aficionado, Daniels is quoted as saying, “I’ve found out that listeners don’t want me to demand they take me seriously as a musician or an artist or a rock and roll star. They’re not going to let me do that. But if I quietly lure them in with some behind-the-scenes acting stories – the whole ‘Here’s what it’s like’ thing – and drop the guitar playing on them and then the songwriting… by the end of it they’re on their feet or buying CDs. Or at least going, ‘No, he’s not William Shatner. He’s okay.’" I asked him if that all turned out as he had hoped and if there were surprises, musically, along the way.
“It’s gotten easier, because more and more people are aware that there’s this music side to me,” he said. “I’ve played and played well. I like the challenge of standing in a room with an acoustic guitar, knowing there are any number of good guitar players sitting in the audience. If it’s anything like Hollywood, it’s ‘I just bought a ticket to see you fail.’ The worst place to do a screening of a movie is Hollywood, because everyone is there waiting to say, ‘Oh, good. It’s horrible.’ “I’ve been working on the guitar since the late ‘70s. I’ve stuck to the acoustic guitar and continue to work with people like Stefan Grossman. Keb’ Mo’ has been a huge friend and has helped me a little bit. I’ll never be Kelly Joe Phelps. I’ll never be Keb’. I’ll never be Stefan, but I can try to get better every day. I’ve done that. I can lay that out there in front of not only the audience, but the guitar players in the audience.” As for what’s on Daniels’s career radar during the next five years, he shared: “I’m going to be busy as an actor. I thought it would slow down by this age, but it hasn’t. It’s only picked up. I just signed to do the Shailene Woodley Divergent trilogy. I’m in the third and fourth movies that we’re shooting in Atlanta this summer. There might be some Broadway. There are some other movies calling for 2016, so it’s good to be me right now.” Read the expanded version of this interview on www.boomerocity.com.