BIOGRAPHY
Every time Singer-Songwriter Dan Randall puts out a CD, he has questions about the Nielsen Genre categories, and he thinks he’s in good company.
He often fits well enough in the range of his regional Acoustic roots-rock influence, with his own fiddle, harmonica, and bottle-neck 10-string guitar, and keyboard style. He calls it “Hudson River School”, but such a genre doesn’t seem to exist. Or even “Singer-Songwriter”.
He isn’t Country, Rock, Americana, or Rap- but that’s all they got. “Choose from the following—“
There’s probably a song here someplace; if you write it first, Dan won’t mind.
He calls it Folk Rock, for the moment. As for the Ambient style keyboard instrumentals on his “Beachrocks” CD, or the Rock-Ambient CD “Make Up Your Mind”, he settles for “Other”.
He’s not all that folksy, had a respectable education, but has often worked with his hands.
Day Jobs have included house painting or driving a Checker Cab, as well as a Mail Truck. People talk to Cab Drivers and Letter Carriers, about everything. Songwriters listen a lot.
His playing career actually started in New York, working in a Soul band with his brother Eric while dropping in on his classes at Columbia.
They are from a musical family; Dan grew up playing Fiddle and French horn in endless Pit Orchestras and Summer Municipal Bands. His parents produced Shows, and hired professionals from New York who taught by example, although Dan did once have a casual lesson from a former Harmonica.
Eric eventually left to play Bass with Jake Holmes, and recorded an album with him that included the song, “Dazed and Confused”, which “inspired” a remarkably similar tune of the same Title by Led Zeppelin. The nearly identical Bass part must have been particularly inspiring!
Dan Randall registers all his copyrights before anything leaves his studio, and urges fellow songwriters to please do the same.
More recently, Eric recorded 20 Tracks with Dan, most of which are on the “Could Be Love” CD.
In time, Dan went to Iowa City, drawn by the Writers’ Workshop and to revisit the Heartland where much of his family has some history. After all involved agreed to leave the Workshop to those “otherwise qualified”, he joined a 4 piece Rock Band called River Jenny.
They played around the Midwest for a couple of years, sometimes opening for Ted Nugent (before the politics, it was a good show), and once hosted Johnny Winter in a Des Moines club. Dan went through several now classic guitars he wishes he still had, though he prizes the ’71 SG he couldn’t afford at the time.
He began running the fiddle through his Hammond’s Leslie speakers, with the rotating horns. And of course the guitar effects were next. Synthesizers soon became necessary; he’s willing to try things. Even the purely acoustical combination of fiddle, harmonica, and bottleneck 10-string or high strung guitar fascinates him- and very few others seem to be doing such things.
Dan certainly has love and respect for the traditional forms; he’s taken fiddle lessons in Texas, and Slack-Key guitar lessons in Hawaii. It keeps one humble, but provides ideas and tunings,
history to draw from and possibilities to explore.
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Eventually, back East, Dan formed an Acoustic Trio version of River Jenny with his sister Pam, and Tim Mueller, the lead guitarist from the Rock version of the band. They hosted, and jammed with, local luminaries at the Marbledale Pub, and performed at clubs and fiddle festivals for a few years- creating better music and much better karma than the first River Jenny.
Dan retains a fondness for 3-part Vocal harmony, still a feature of his music. Along with their other musical training, he and Pam learned harmony in Church, and their mother was a singer and vocal coach.
When the River finally ran dry, Dan rehabbed a cabin on a small swimmer’s lake in Danbury, Ct., moved in the instruments and some gear, and continued to write and record. Hundreds of songs, and seven albums have followed, 5 of them available on CD. Of course, the individual songs are online everywhere.
If you are from the area, you’ve likely seen that 10-string somewhere, but Dan is especially eager to record the many songs he has at hand , and to pursue the ideas that do keep coming in. He remains as eager to try digital tools for sound design as much as what he has learned from Flatt & Scruggs, or Sonny Terry. It’s all Americana to him, and pretty close to home for most.