He is a sinner who has been saved, and Danny Brooks is fixing to bring his tales of struggle, loss, addiction, a near-death experience, love and redemption to Napanee, Ontario for a special ‘house concert’ show on Thursday, July 14, at Ellena’s Café as part of the non-profit Starstop Concert Series, along with his partner in life and on stage L’Il Miss Debi.
Brooks is a soulful, Gospel-inspired and blues-infused songwriter and performer who has been a fixture on the Canadian roots music scene since for more than 40 years both as a solo artist, in a duo with wife Debi and as part of his bands: Danny Brooks and the Rockin’ Revelators, Danny Brooks & The Austin Brotherhood and Danny Brooks and the Memphis Brothers.
He has released nine albums and has performed at some of the most prestigious blues and roots music festivals in North America, including the Southside Shuffle in Mississauga, the Austin City Limits Music Festival, and the Toronto Beaches International Jazz Festival. He has appeared on CBC Radio numerous times, as well as the talk shows Open Mike with Mike Bullard and 100 Huntley Street.
Although raised in a religious home, he rebelled and began playing in the bars, clubs and coffee houses of Toronto throughout this 1970s, embodying the existence of a hard working, hard living musician. Sent to prison in 1972, Brooks has said that the experience inspired him to begin composing his own songs. Upon his release, he went back to a more hedonistic and self-destructive lifestyle until he met Debi in early 1987. She convinced him to go into rehab and when he came out later that year, he was sober and very soon thereafter re-committed to his former Christian faith.
The experiences of both jail and rehab have impacted not only Brooks’ approach to music, but to the way he goes about his professional life, performing as often as he can in prisons and rehab facilities throughout North America, where he not only enlivens the audience with his heartfelt, sometimes raucous but always uplifting songs, but also his personal story.
“Wherever I go, no matter the audience, I am playing the music that people already seem to know and like. And I am also not coming across as preachy or holier than thou, even though my songs are meant to inspire and come from God. If anything I believe I come across as a person who still struggles – which is because I actually am an individual who still struggles. But I still happen to believe in God and that’s what I tell people,” he said.
“I say, ‘you know I am a Christian, but I might be one of the worst Christians out there, but God is no respecter of persons.’ And I always tell my audiences, ‘folks, if I can leave something with you it’s this: I don’t care what it is that you’re going through, if you ask him for help, even if you don’t believe in him, because you have asked him, he’s got to listen to you and help you and you will find your belief and faith that way.’
“When I started out on my faith journey, I may not be a perfect Christian, but I know one thing and that’s if I ask for help, he always
gives it and I know that’s why I get through everything. All God’s looking for is people to communicate with him. And I think that’s how it comes across in my music. I am not trying to be this super spiritual or godly man, I am simply telling my story.”
And regardless of where an audience is on their own personal faith journey, if they even have one, the authenticity of Brooks’ delivery, the veracity of his personal story and the power of his raspy, bluesy voice and memorable music makes for a show that is, to paraphrase a song from Brooks’ friends in the Downchild Blues Band – “good times, guaranteed.”
Brooks (real name, Daniel G.P. Middlebrook) and Debi perform between 175 to 200 shows a year, criss-crossing the continent. This has been their life for the past five years since Brooks had major heart surgery partway through 2010.
“I did a live record in 2009 {Soulsville: Live at the Palais Royale) and Alec Fraser was the producer. He brought in a bunch of recording gear and we played the show for two hours straight. When it came time for mixing the record Alec said ‘Danny, I guess by the end of the show you were getting a little winded. You were a bit pitchy on the song Hold Your Head Up, you need to come in and re-sing it.’ I didn’t think anything was really wrong but less than a year later we discovered that I had five completely blocked arteries to my heart and when I was told that I just shook my head and wondered how and why I was still here,” he said.
“So I had a quintuple bypass but I don’t even take any medicine of any kind. So it’s a miracle not only how I got healed, but that I am still around. But when I was set to go on tour again, Debi said she was coming with me to help out. I work harder now than I actually did before the heart operation and the doc said as long as I get rest and don’t burn the candle at both ends and I should be okay. So Debi wouldn’t let me go back on the road alone for fear that I would over-exert myself or not rest as much as I needed. She helps me do my set up, and we both tear down together. She also takes care of the merchandise, so we have a really good system and it works. Our last trip we logged more than 17,000 miles and this one where we’re coming to Napanee will be around 14,000 miles.”
And it’s actually only been for the last three years that Debi has become part of the show.
“She got pressed into service and one thing led to another and now when we go into prisons she really adds an important dynamic in a prison and in a rehab because people are hearing the side of the story from a spouse: someone who didn’t enable, someone who was part of the equation of someone successfully becoming clean. And people need to hear that. She speaks when the spirit moves her and I am glad that she is on board. It is tough on her sometimes because I know she likes to be at home, but she is enjoying doing music on the road and it’s because we’re making music together,” Brooks explained.
“She was bored stiff siting by the side of the stage with nothing better to do so she started singing along. And someone said she sounded good and to get her up on stage. So we set up a microphone and then she started using some shakers and an old drummer friend of mine gave her a cajon {a box-shaped percussion instrument of Afro-Peruvian origin] which she used as a coffee table for a while. One night I said, ‘Debi, you are bringing the cajon to the gig.’ And she was very timid with it at first, but now she hits it so hard that she’s on her second one.”
And the couple also made the momentous decision not long after the surgery to relocate to the community of Llano, Texas, which is a couple hours from Austin.
“I had started going to Texas regularly in 2008 because I befriended a songwriter who had written some hits for Willie Nelson and Jerry Jeff Walker and he was putting out a CD and wanted me to open up for him. So I opened for him at Antone’s [in Austin] and fell in love with Texas immediately. I went down there again in 2009 and early 2010. I was spending about 50 per cent of my time in Texas trying to build up a career down there and then I had my heart issue while I was there in mid-2010,” he said.
“We had already talked about moving to Texas at some point, but after the surgery I had a tour planned down there and that was when Debi said she was coming with me. Then we talked about moving and she said she would give it a try. She said she would give it a year when we moved into our house in 2011 and we’re still there.”
The duo recorded their first album together as a duo in 2015 called This World is Not Your Friend, and a follow-up is being written and recorded with Canadian songwriter Dean McTaggart (Amanda Marshall), which is part of the reason he is touring in Ontario at the moment.
And there are still full band dates in store for Danny Brooks, including next April at the Music by the Bay Festival in Pickering.
“I use the old band that I had before with Papa John King on guitar and Lance Anderson on keys, Dennis Pinhorn on bass, Bucky Berger on drums and Ed Zankowski on sax. When we do those gigs, Debi and I start off with a song and then we bring Dennis up and then we bring the rest of the band up and it’s a nice build and the audiences love it.”
As for playing smaller venues like Ellena’s in Napanee, Brooks said he and Debi love the intimacy and comfortable vibe associated with house concerts and coffee houses.
“When you do these house concert things the audience is there to hear the stories behind the songs as well as the songs. And most singer/songwriters are storytellers, so it’s a very nice way to share.”
Besides the show in Napanee on July 14, Brooks, who was nominated for a Juno in 1991 for Most Promising Male Vocalist and again in 2003 for Contemporary Christian/Gospel Album of the Year and is a multiple Maple Blues Award nominee, and L’il Miss Debi are also playing The Moonshine Café in Oakville July 15, and as part of the Water Tower Music Series in Smiths Falls on July 17.
For more information, visit www.dannybrooksmusic.com.
- Jim Barber is a veteran award-winning journalist and author based in Napanee, ON, who has been writing about music and musicians for a quarter of a century. Besides his journalistic endeavours, he now works as a communications and marketing specialist. Contact him at jimbarberwritingservices@gmail.com.
