Welcome to the “Dan band” hall of fame!
I’ve been playing and performing music for longer than I’ve been a “business guy” so this is the page where a few of my old bands (the ones before social media) get to live.
I grew up playing (and almost decided to go to college for) classical piano. In middle school I picked up a guitar and have been playing fretted instruments ever since.
Q: Dan you still play?
A: Heck yes I rock out in the basement all the time when the kids let me. I’ve also been writing new music and playing a lot of guitar.
While I’m no longer pursuing music professionally it is still my favorite hobby. I mostly play keys and guitars, but these days I’m occasionally playing the ukulele and melodica with my kids’ favorite local artist, Little Miss Ann.
I can credit my touring Jamband for starting my career in digital marketing when I found a “side-gig” as a search engine marketing intern back in 2003 right when Google launched AdWords. Turns out that was good timing.
Like Jeffery Lebowski’s rug, this article totally ties my story together between music and entrepreneurship. Enjoy!
Buddha’s Belly
2001 – 2005
After college I spent a few years as a professional musician, touring with my college band Buddha’s Belly. Driving around the country playing original music with my best friends was a dream come true in a lot of ways. We spent most weekends jumping around midwest college towns and signed to a national booking agency shortly after graduating – all things considered it was a real thing for a while.
We had our fair share of rockstar moments and plenty of those humbling moments when you are loading into a cheap motel at 3am, 1,000 miles from home after playing a show where the band and bar staff outnumber the crowd. In 2004 we were nominated for best new artist at the Chicago Music Awards (nope, we didn’t win but I’m still bragging about it 17 years later so isn’t that kind of still a win?).
Some highlights included headlining gigs at the House of Blues and sharing the stage with some of our heroes opening for the likes of Umphrey’s McGee, The Average White Band, Burning Spear, Backyard Tire Fire, ALO and tons of other inspiring (mostly jam)bands and humans that we are lucky to still call friends.
These days, I’ve mostly traded in “stages” for the “music corner” in the basement next to my work-from-home desk. As for my bandmates, Jason & Pete still play around Chicago quite a bit and our saxophonist Evan traded in the hippy bars for stadiums and is currently on tour with Lauren Daigle and Eric Church.
You can stream our last EP The Governator on Spotify and writing this blerb inspired me to upload a bunch of old press and links from Archive.com to our Reverbnation profile since we were around before this whole social media thing.
Mediocre Fight
2008 – 2012ish
When Jason from Buddha’s Belly told me that the Mediocre Fight needed some more hands to strum guitar strings I said hell yea. The Mediocre Fight was a ton of fun.
Where are they now? We all have babies and careers and live on different coasts but in our own minds, we’re still in a band and planning to “do another show” soon.
Back in the day we played a bunch of fun shows in Chicago and even made it out west to co-headline a show at the legendary Hotel Cafe in Los Angeles.
Back in 2012 we recorded 4 music videos in one day, 3 of them I’m proud of and one of them (space caveman) is much cooler than you think it’ll be.
What are you waiting for?
Go indulge yourself in some Space Caveman!
Mediocre Fight Music Videos
The Snot Rockets
1993
I grew up in the beautiful pacific northwest when grunge was the thing. Kurt Kobain’s younger brother went to our school. We were issued plaid shorts as uniforms. It was a requirement to start a grunge band and play Nirvana covers.
Enjoy this high quality (slightly less than 4K) footage of The Snot Rockets playing our signature (and I think only) original song “The Wedgie Song” at the Fairhaven Middle School talent show. OK fine, it was the Frolics. The Fairhaven Frolics.
In our minds, the performance was as legendary as we were.
