#TBT – The time I was in Daniel Johnston’s backing band

“Thanks for playing” – How Daniel Johnston signed his book for me.

 

A pic of the Rhume gang hanging with Daniel after our show in Ottawa together. Though he looks a bit sad in this pic, I think he was truly overwhelmed by the enthusiastic, sold out crowd!


Throwing back to the time I played guitar with Rhume, backing up Daniel Johnston!

Plus, a fun little story…

Though we knew we’d be playing many of his classics, I was determined to get Daniel to play the song he co-wrote with Jad Fair, ‘Some Things Last A Long Time‘.

The song is so haunting and beautiful and I was obsessed with it at the time. Sadly I had heard he didn’t want to play it anymore.

I seem to remember the song surviving soundcheck, and I thought it was good to go for the show setlist.

(As I recall, in all honesty, Daniel was much more interested in making sure he had time to hit comic book shops than sound checking with us!)

And sure enough, when it came time to play the song during the show, Daniel leaned over to Jon Bartlett and whispered in his ear. Jon looked over at me and shook his head…it was official…Some Things was struck from the list.

I was so curious as to why he was so against playing it!

Afterwards, Daniel’s brother told us that he had recently taken a dislike to the song after seeing an Axe Body Spray commercial.

The tagline in the ad was ‘Some things last a long time’.

Despite not getting to play Some Things, it was still such a thrill to play guitar while backing up this legend and getting to perform so many of his incredible songs with him that night!

 

 

 


If you’ve never seen it, check out the incredible, moving and powerful documentary “The Devil and Daniel Johnston“: