Three Dog Night’s Danny Hutton Enjoys Touring Now As Much As Ever – Band Coming to Casino Rama June 9

Three Dog Night is proof positive that the power of good music – culturally significant and emotionally impactful music – can stand the test of time. And through all the trials and tribulations of a five decade career in the highly volatile music industry, the folk and soul-infused American band has also proved that perseverance pays off.

The band is as busy as it’s been for many years, according to co-founder/vocalist Danny Hutton, who also claims he’s having more fun than he ever has, performing between 70 and 80 shows a year. Three Dog Night is making one stop in Ontario this summer, a June 9 date at Casino Rama, where fans will be able to hear Hutton, guitarist Michael Allsup (who has been in the band since 1968, a year after its creation) bassist Paul Kingery (a 32-year veteran), drummer Paul Bautz (in TDN since 1993) and newcomers David Morgan (vocals, since 2015) and keyboardist Howard Laravea (since May of this year) perform a dazzling array of familiar hit songs.

Three Dog Night featured a rotating lead singer format for its recordings and concerts, with Hutton taking the lead on some songs and the two other co-founding singers, Cory Wells and Chuck Negron, taking the others. Wells was in the band until his untimely death in 2015 (more about that later in the article) while Negron left in 1985. That incarnation of the band released an amazing 11 albums in an eight-year span between 1968 and 1976, and one more album, It’s A Jungle, in 1983, after reforming in 1981 from a five-year hiatus.

From those albums were gleaned an incredible string of 21 Billboard Top 40 hits, including three making it to number one: Mama Told Me Not to Come, Joy To the World and Black and White. Other big hits, many of which are still played on commercial terrestrial and satellite radio to this day, include One, Eli’s Comin’, The Family of Man, Never Been to Spain, An Old Fashioned Love Song, Shamballa and Out in the Country.

“We’re doing lots of shows and I would like to do even more. I am having so much fun, and people in the audience seem to be loving it too. If you look at the reviews online from recent shows, they have been phenomenal, so obviously we’ve still got it,” said Hutton from his home in California, adding that the band is looking forward to getting back to Canada more often after playing in markets like New Zealand and Australia in recent years.

“And one of the things I want to do soon is something I’ve wanted to do my whole career and that’s do a club tour in the UK. Back in the day our management could have cared less about us playing funky little clubs in London and other places in England, but that’s what I have always wanted to do. So I told them recently I don’t even care how small the place is, I just want to do a full club tour of England like we never got to do back in the day. I just think it would be so much fun.”

The band’s catalogue is strewn with an amazing array of hit songs – songs that have gone on to become firmly ingrained into the popular culture and passed along like the venerated works of art that they are from generation to generation. Hutton said he is always thrilled to see fans of all ages at Three Dog Night shows.

“I guess for the younger people they maybe grew up with their parents or grandparents playing the records around the house, and we’re also lucky that we’re in movies and TV shows a lot too as part of the soundtrack. We were just in the new Lego Batman movie for example where they played One [written by Harry Nilsson and released in 1969] so things like that help keep the music alive too,” he said, adding that the seeming resurgence in interest in both new and vintage vinyl is also helping.

“The bad thing about vinyl, and it’s always been this way, is that it can scratch and warp and things like that, but that just means you have to take care of it; treasure it. But I love the information that an LP will give people, and the artwork, all the pictures and liner notes where you can read the lyrics and information about where the song was recorded and maybe some neat stories. And with the artwork, some of it is so good that you could actually frame it. It’s a little harder to frame a CD cover, and of course with streaming, there’s none of that. But to me, from the cover on through, an LP is a piece of art.”

He said that what is also winning over new fans or getting former, old-school fans out to the shows is Three Dog Night’s reputation as an excellent live act that puts on a highly entertaining and memorable show.

“I think one of the things, too, is that we covered a whole range of music under that ‘rock’ umbrella. I know even back when we were putting albums and songs out all the time a lot of critics, and even some music fans, didn’t really know how to deal with us because we were not an easy group to categorize. We have been on the country charts, on the R&B charts, pop, rock, easy listening – we cross all sorts of boundaries that way. And my whole philosophy has been that if you do a great song, it will last, no matter how it’s labelled,” Hutton said, adding that he doesn’t have a problem if Three Dog Night is tagged with the ‘nostalgia’ label.

“We’re not political, we’re not angsty. I want people to come in with their loved ones and sit down and when the show is over have them turn to one another and say, ‘my God that time went so quick,’ and just get lost for two hours and leave with a big smile on their face. That’s our objective and I think we pull it off every night. And I do believe that nostalgia has developed a very negative connotation and I don’t think that connotation is fair. Correct me if I am wrong but the word means coming home. [It derives from the ancient Greek words meaning ‘coming home,’ but for hundreds of years was considered to be a medical condition referring to extreme homesickness. In the last century, it has come to mean a more wistful, sentimental feeling.]

“I think there is a difference between something being corny and old fashioned, and nostalgia. There is something reassuring and peaceful about a fond remembrance of something from the past, especially if it’s done really well. Opera and classical music have been around for hundreds of years and people still enjoy it.”

When Wells passed away in the Fall of 2015, it was a shock to Hutton and Three Dog Night fans around the world. The tragedy was compounded as just a few months earlier, that Spring, original keyboardist Jimmy Greenspoon also died, leaving a huge gap in the legacy of the band.

“Cory just kept talking about his back being sore and said he was going to take six weeks off, have an operation and recuperate so told us to get someone to fill in for him. Cory knew about David Morgan [formerly of The Association] so we asked him to sit in and we talked to all the promoters and they said it was fine, so we didn’t have to cancel any gigs. Cory went into the hospital and was gone within a couple of weeks. I think what happened was he got an infection in the hospital and it went septic. We stuck with David because Cory had helped set it up and the promoters loved him, so there was no strangeness from the promoters or the audience, we did our best to keep on going out and working. Jimmy died of the same thing that Springsteen’s keyboardist {Danny Federici} died of in 2008, a little melanoma on his back that just spread,” Hutton explained.

“So absolutely it was a tough thing to lose those guys and it was weird to be on stage and look over and not see them there. I was with those guys for almost 50 years. But in some ways it has been good to get some new people in the band; a new energy and a new attitude. It’s like having a championship football or hockey team and sometimes players get traded or injured or retire, but there is a certain spirit that certain teams have, a certain personality that is constant and I think we have that spirit. All the guys in this band are excited every single night, to the point where when we get off the stage after each show we’re all high fiving one another.”

Although Three Dog Night has not released an album of new material in more than 30 years, Hutton says new original songs have been dropped in and out of the set list over the years.

“My sons have a studio here at the house and we are recording all the time. We will be doing a new song at the Rama show. It’s tough to put a new song into the set with all the hits that we have. I recently went to see a Paul McCartney show and he said he was going to do a new song and a bunch of people just popped up to go to the bathroom or get a drink. But when we stick this new song in there I swear to you it gets the best reaction of the whole night, and that’s crazy for a new song,” he said.

An interesting side note that cropped up in this conversation with Hutton was what he was doing during the time that Three Dog Night was on hiatus in the latter half of the 1970s. It turns out he managed the influential California punk band Fear during its formative years.

“Three Dog Night stopped working for a bit and I just fell in love with this band and with this whole punk scene that was happening in California at the time. We toured with the Go Gos when they first started and X and Black Flag – that whole scene. I was right with them on tour and I actually met my wife at one of their gigs,” said Hutton who managed Fear from 1976 to 1979. For two years in the early 1980s the band also featured a frenetic and talented young bass player named Flea, who left in 1984 after a two-year stint to join up with another fledging band called the Red Hot Chili Peppers.

“At that time there was so much craziness in the music business. You had the arena rock stuff with The Eagles and Kiss there was Disco and then punk came along. It was all over the place, which was perfect for my mentality because I love anything that’s good. I had a great time with those guys and being a part of that scene. People are surprised to this day when they hear that the guy from Three Dog Night, singing all these gentle, sweet, hippie songs managed a punk band. But to me they were the most real of all the punk bands from the U.S. at that time. They could kick everybody’s butt.”

While not proclaiming that Three Dog Night will kick people’s butts, Hutton is adamant that fans coming to see them at Casino Rama on June 9, or for any of their shows, will get more than their money’s worth.

“We’re a very good band, with great musicians and great people going up on that stage every night. Everybody knows how to do what they do really well. We’re pros, but we also love playing these songs. Nobody is faking it up here and nobody is bored and going through the motions; everybody is thrilled with what we’re going. I know I am!! Listen, it’s wonderful to bae able to do something you love, especially at my age {Hutton is 74]. I am healthy and I just going to enjoy every day that I get to do this.”

For more information on the Three Dog Night show at Casino Rama, visit https://www.casinorama.com/Live/Artist/Three-Dog-Night.aspx.

For more information on the band, visit https://www.threedognight.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.

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