{"id":1283130,"date":"2018-06-14T12:50:05","date_gmt":"2018-06-14T16:50:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/fnpsites.net\/playlist\/?p=1283130"},"modified":"2018-06-14T12:50:05","modified_gmt":"2018-06-14T16:50:05","slug":"alivefive-the-dan-mcguire-band","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fnpsites.net\/playlist\/2018\/06\/14\/alivefive-the-dan-mcguire-band\/","title":{"rendered":"Alive@Five: The Dan McGuire Band"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"1170\" height=\"658\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/tTgIs9qd9Hw?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"autoplay; encrypted-media\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s the first week in June and Dan McGuire is busy \u2014 he\u2019s busy with weddings, private parties and gigs around the city, from Bushwaller\u2019s to The Cellar Door. But he squeezes in time for me on the afternoon I call him because McGuire is an accommodating guy and I want to talk to him before he plays Alive @ 5 on Carroll Creek, which is one of his band\u2019s biggest shows downtown.<\/p>\n<p>When I interview the frontmen for cover bands, I\u2019ve come to expect a certain amount of showboating, which I can appreciate, because it takes a certain amount of chutzpah to hear a song like \u201cHey Jude,\u201d and think, \u201cYeah, I can do that.\u201d But McGuire is not a showboater. He tells me that he didn\u2019t start playing onstage until he was in college at Shippensburg University, which doesn\u2019t have a music program \u2014 and he was already studying communications, anyway \u2014 so he has no formal instrumental training past high school. Tyler Buisch, the drummer for the Dan McGuire Group, has a bachelor\u2019s degree in jazz drumming and piano and a master\u2019s in jazz bass performance. McGuire, though, has mostly picked things up on his own.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019m not that well-versed in music theory,\u201d he said. \u201cI guess I\u2019ve just always had good ears, so I\u2019m able hear things and figure them out. That\u2019s how I learned. But my band members are all very talented, well-studied musicians, so I like to surround myself with those people.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The group isn\u2019t his full-time job, but McGuire has still managed to become a fairly successful cover artist, squirreling away roughly $10,000 in savings to cover the costs if his band ever decides to tour. He prides himself on the group\u2019s repertoire, which spans from the \u201860s and \u201870s to the current day and includes songs by the Beatles and Stevie Wonder, as well as more contemporary artists including Alanis Morissette, Taylor Swift and Justin Bieber.<\/p>\n<p>There are plenty of artists that inspire him, but McGuire\u2019s dream has always been to write music, he said. That goal is complicated by the fact that he\u2019s already written five original songs but likes none of them \u2014 at least not enough to share them widely.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHe hasn\u2019t even shown me and we\u2019re good friends,\u201d Buisch said. \u201cI guess you\u2019re opening up your heart, you\u2019re opening yourself up to criticism, and that\u2019s scary.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThere was an open-mic night at The Cellar Door and I played them there,\u201d McGuire said. \u201cAnd I don\u2019t know what it was, but I was just extremely critical of myself. And I pretty much stopped playing them. I just didn\u2019t feel they were a good representation of what I was doing at the time.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>That was about four years ago, and the songs came easily to him then. He was in the middle of a relationship that was drifting apart, driven by his focus on growing the band on top of working a full-time job. His mother had recently been diagnosed with ALS, or Lou Gehrig\u2019s disease \u2014 a degenerative illness that targets the nervous system. It was easy to find inspiration.<\/p>\n<p>One of his songs, \u201cWaited,\u201d was about a girl he liked in college who had a serious boyfriend, who later came to Frederick \u2014 after that relationship ended \u2014 to ask for a chance with him (McGuire\u2019s then-girlfriend didn\u2019t like the song very much). Another song, \u201cProud of You,\u201d was about his father\u2019s struggles with addiction. Both took only a few minutes to write.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019ll never forget because I was in my friend\u2019s basement, we recorded it that night, and I listened to a copy of it as loud as I possibly could on my way home,\u201d McGuire said. \u201cIt brought tears to my eyes \u2014 it was just a sense of pride and accomplishment. And that\u2019s why, at the time, I thought I would keep it going.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Real life ended up getting in the way. His relationship ended and his mother passed away. His cover band was gaining traction, and he couldn\u2019t slow down to experiment with original songs. Around the same time, he met the love of his life \u2014 a girl named Becca \u2014 and proposed to her last November. The two just bought a house downtown and have a wedding planned for November, with a ceremony at Sky Stage and reception at McClintock Distilling.<\/p>\n<p>Plus, having the Dan McGuire Group pays the bills. He can save money and buy his own equipment and there\u2019s a comfort that comes from knowing that bars and private groups will always want to hire a well-run cover band. He\u2019s always booked \u2014 at the time of our interview, he had a gig scheduled every night this week.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI do still want to do original music,\u201d McGuire said. \u201cI plan to do it. But I\u2019ve also been telling myself that for a long time and I haven\u2019t done it. Because right now, I have no reason to slow down doing what I\u2019m doing. Right now, everything is good the way it is.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It\u2019s the first week in June and Dan McGuire is busy \u2014 he\u2019s busy with weddings, private parties and gigs around the city, from Bushwaller\u2019s to The Cellar Door. But&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":1283131,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[54],"class_list":["post-1283130","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-alivefive"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fnpsites.net\/playlist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1283130","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fnpsites.net\/playlist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fnpsites.net\/playlist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fnpsites.net\/playlist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fnpsites.net\/playlist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1283130"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/fnpsites.net\/playlist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1283130\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fnpsites.net\/playlist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1283131"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fnpsites.net\/playlist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1283130"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fnpsites.net\/playlist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1283130"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fnpsites.net\/playlist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1283130"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}