This article was originally published on beingtheremag.com, an independent music and film magazine that ran from 2004 to 2007. It is presented here as part of the Being There Magazine archive.
By Adam Anklewicz | Being There Magazine, March/April 2007
Hobbling into Toronto’s Legendary Horseshoe Tavern after a raucous weekend in Boston and New Hampshire, Danny Walters, the frontman and organist for The Brown Hornets, was ready to cover the bar with flyers for their upcoming CD release performance. The Brown Hornets have become known for a live show that mixes great ’60s-inspired soul-punk-rock with a flare for theatrics that cannot be matched. The Brown Hornets want you to have a good time, and won’t rest until you do, even if it means Walters fracturing his foot while jumping over a drum kit.
With the upcoming release of their self-titled debut record, The Brown Hornets are ready to make their mark on the world. Danny Walters found time away from a non-stop whirlwind of promotion to sit and talk with Being There in the basement of the famed Toronto tavern that would host them and their antics just days later.
Being There: Let’s start off with some basics. Who are the Brown Hornets?
Danny Walters: Me, Danny Walters, on the organ and singing. On guitar Mike Tomlinson, on bass it’s Justin Heming, and on the drums it’s Robin Mason, and our manager is Chris McPeake.
BT: Where would you classify The Brown Hornets?
DW: I would classify us as something underground, but not subversive. We’re not underground by virtue of painting our tongues green or tattooing snakes on our faces. We’re not Il Divo or anything that’s marketable; we fuse classic soul with rock and roll and blues, last time I looked the kids weren’t digging that past 1969. We’re happy with that.
BT: How long have you known Mike, and how long have you two been Brown Hornets?
DW: Mike and I have been best friends since 1990. He’s starting to fossilize and so am I. People still think we’re in our early to mid-twenties, but we’re not. In 1990 we met and we skipped classes together; we weren’t even in the same grade, he’s a year older than me. We’d co-ordinate our timetables so we could rock out in the music room. During our lunch break we’d bring our ghetto blasters⦠kids nowadays dance to cell phones and fucking iPods, we had actual ghetto blasters and we’d crank Little Richard or The Rolling Stones.
BT: You’ve been playing music together since then?
DW: Since 1990, seventeen years, holy shit!
BT: When did you decide to form a band?
DW: Then, instantaneously. I played drums and trombone at the time. Mike was just learning to play guitar and I wanted to be Ringo Starr. Our very first performance was in 1990 and we played “Sunshine Of Your Love” by Cream. I had a big drum solo in front of the whole school, 500 kids because it was a country school. He started out on guitar and I started out on drums. It morphed into organ and then vocals by default because no one else in Newcastle played those instruments. The trombone just fell by the wayside; there wasn’t much of a market for trombone players unless we’re gonna play some Glenn Miller. I still might bring it out one of these shows and just let it rip. It won’t be good, but it’ll be interesting.
BT: How long have you been performing under the name The Brown Hornets?
DW: Since then too.
BT: Where did it come from?
DW: Fat Albert.
BT: That’s what I figured.
DW: It ran from 1972 to ’83 and we started in 1990, so it wasn’t really off the airways for that long. It was still relatively contemporary, and was on TV all the time. I started taping them and we’d get crazy and laugh at it when we’d take breathers from playing all day long. And now it’s all out on DVD. I’ll probably go home tonight, watch a few episodes and die.
BT: I still haven’t picked it up yet.
DW: It’s so worth it, but there’s one dud out there. They did a compilation of what they thought was the best episodes, but it’s horrible, you’ve gotta buy the seasons. It was good music, they had some serious studio musicians, Idris Muhammad on drums and Ron Carter on bass.
BT: Speaking of bass and drums, the current rhythm section wasn’t there a few years ago. Why the change and how did it improve the band?
DW: In every way possible, not to discredit Dezz and Brock. They were fantastic, but they stayed in Durham region. At first it was a geographical thing, really I blame the colonel, our manager. He said “if you want to keep going forward with this you’ve gotta get into a market, like Toronto,” so Mike and I moved here, the others started families. They were wonderful musicians, but the stars just aligned because Justin and Robin are fantastic players, it’s like I’m playing with CCR.
BT: How long have they been in the band now?
DW: Just a year and change.
BT: Describe a Brown Hornets show.
DW: Describing it now as opposed to describing it even a few months ago would be different. We get known for different things; I’m not the quickest at picking it up. It’s not just the bananas, Mike pulls the guitar into the audience, I play the organ upside down and backwards. I play guitar with my foot or Robin pours a beer on his head; we have our little mini stunts that happen along the way, but a Hornet’s show is like getting punched in the face by George Foreman and Mike Tyson at the same time, but in a nice way.
I’m such an egotistical person; if someone’s not paying attention to the band I take it really personally. I do everything I can to recalibrate what I’m doing at the moment so that it’s a fit with the bored person. It’s happening less and less, fortunately. We’ve played every chicken wing place in Ontario, and a little bit in New York. These are places with TV screens and dartboards and people would show up in their university Budweiser sweatshirts, NASCAR hats and acid wash jeans, they’d get loaded, not caring about the band. It didn’t feel good at the time, but I’m glad we came out of that so that we can command a compelling performance where people pay attention and get involved the whole time. It’s such a perilous path because you can be too boisterous and too forceful. I’ve learned that too, making sandwiches and chucking pineapples at people’s heads, it’s too much and people won’t want to come if I put them on the spot too much.
BT: Have you found that middle ground?
DW: Yeah, I think I’ve got it down.
BT: How can you capture the essence of a Brown Hornets show on disc?
DW: It was easy – for the first time ever we got some professional help (not that kind…). We were ridiculously lucky to score producer Sean Baillie (Lindi) and engineer Darius Szczepaniak (The Black Crowes & Sum 41).
Our previous attempts to record our music were comedic. I mean, how hard can it be to record your own music, right? We used to operate out of a big old chicken ranch about 2 1/2 hours east of Toronto. We’d drape microphones from the rafters, stick amplifiers in cow stables, and baffle the sound with birdseed & wheelbarrows. The end result sounded like the theme song to Simon & Simon – except it was distorted and shit. Every now and then you’d hear a chicken go, “Ba-KAW!!!”
BT: You can see obvious influences of hard rock, punk and blues in your live show, on the album there’s another layer of gospel that’s added. Where does it stem from?
DW: Awesome question. The Holy Spirit has always flowed through my veins, through my heart, and into the bumpy part of my brain. While the other kids were doing the “knees up Mother Brown” dance with Raffi, I was in my basement getting right with Jesus. I’d spin around and have gospel convulsions to Reverend James Cleveland, Sister Mahalia Jackson, the Norfolk Jubilee Singers, etc. I’d flop around like a half-eaten fish. I went so berserk that I broke an ironing board, a sewing machine, a record player, two dressers, two lamps, a couch, an organ, and a clay statue. Sometimes I’d get so dizzy that I would hallucinate. One time I saw the Hamburglar and the Planters Peanut duke it out.
BT: “Northern Light” is very different from the stage to the studio. Was this a conscious effort?
DW: Guilty as charged. “Northern Light” is much more melodic and Beatlesque than most of our songs. The contradicting force, naturally, is that it has an underbelly of gospel and soul. Not very Ringo-like at all. There’s an inherent push-pull dualism with this song. To execute it live would mean that all the monitors work and that we actually don’t speed up. Given that the Hornets never have working equipment and that we always like to speed up, we flat-bottomed the song for live purposes⦠that, and I kind of get emotional when I sing it, but I don’t want nobody knowing that. We have the world’s best publicist (Lish of Fuel PR)–and she has a wicked-good handle on these sorts of things.
BT: Who would you most like to be your mini wheat?
DW: Had you asked me that question when I was 8, I would have said Dolly Parton. When I was 10 it was Mindy Cohen (Natalie from the Facts of Life). Now it’s a megatronic supremely hot Doctor named Andrea.
BT: How have The Brown Hornets gone from playing an audience of five such as
2005’s CMW to the packed rooms like last year’s North by Northeast?
DW: Yeah, 5 people – that was weird, and now we’re packing rooms!!! Even weirder! What’s weirdest is that my dad just bought another motorcycle and I told him I’m coming to Newcastle to Evil-Knievel it around the backroads, he told me I need to find my HEAD BUCKET!!!!! HAAAAAAAAAA HAAAAAAAA! My head just caved in with laughter.
Oh yes, we try really hard now. We’re doing something band-centric everyday (flyering, postering, emailing, meeting, interviews, chasing gorillas…). I credit our number one hero, the Colonel (our manager, Chris McPeake).
BT: You promote healthy eating in your live show but it’s very fruit-centric. Do you worry about missing the other essential food groups?
DW: I’ll be very honest – sometimes I do, you know. I gave out bran muffins one time and everyone crapped their pants. I’m getting sick just thinking about it. I also fed a 79 year old man fun dip – and it crushed his skull into powder.
BT: What is your favorite fruit based recipe?
DW: Another jackpot question! Speaking of jackpot, my cousin Murray kicked royal ass on that show back in 1985. Strawberry Shortcake is my all-time favorite fruit-based recipe. I would float around like a ghost if someone brought me strawberry shortcake. I used to like Rhubarb pie until I discovered that dogs love to pee on Rhubarb. I still love it, though.
BT: What started the inclusion of fruit into your live act?
DW: I was starving my wang off during a show in Rochester. I inconspicuously slipped to the side of the stage to eat a tasty banana. And then WAM, the same floodlight they used in 3rd Encounters of the Weird Kind (or whatever that alien movie was called) scorched the top of my head. Next show everyone was asking for a banana. I spend all my money on bananas.
BT: Of all your covers, why choose “Neutron Dance” for the record?
DW: June Pointer would want it that way. And it’s the best song in the world to dance to. We ramped the tempo from about 110 bpm (beats per minute) to 300. No metronome went that high, so our producer had to build one by himself. The best part of our version is the gospel ending. I usually end up singing praise for Dale Earnhardt, Greg Biffle, Kevin Harvick, Elliot Sadler, but there’s no well-wishing for Tony Stewart or Jeff Gordon; they’re heathens.
BT: What’s the ultimate goal for the Brown Hornets and how long until you’re there?
DW: My short-term goal is to pee like a rattlesnake – I’m sorry Adam, I’ve been holding it for 10 hours. My long-term goal is to outdraw the Amazing Kreskin on Friday night (he’s performing in Mississauga).
As Danny Walters enjoys the sweet release of urination, the world prepares for The Brown Hornets to melt some faces on May 4th at The Horseshoe Tavern in Toronto.