top of page

Bio &

Story

I am a songwriter. I still love how that sounds and feels, the process, the search for the perfect word, the melody that fits the phrase, the bolt from the blue that drops the rhyme into my lap."

SO, HERE'S HOW IT ALL WENT DOWN...

IMG_1117.JPG

  My wife Barbara and I lived in New York once. She grew up on Long Island; I was a Californian, just passing through on my way to an undefined, hippified stardom, where people on the bus would be singing my songs and I'd donate all my excess earnings to stopping war. We met, we dated, we skiied, we ate chocolate-dipped Carvels in the East Village. She wore red, skinny Pakistani pants with tiny mirrors up and down the legs. I wore striped bell-bottomed trousers and kept growing my hair longer and longer so the draft board might think I was crazy. 

  We got married in Barb's parents' back yard on Long Island and moved into a third-floor Manhattan walkup with a tub in the kitchen. The walls of our tenement building were constructed from millions of cockroaches with a little plaster to keep them warm. If you banged a nail into the wall to hang a picture, a cockroach would run out, shake his fist and run back.

We were city kids, but didn’t know it yet. Nature then gave us a sign."

TAKE THIS JOB

& SHOVE IT

  I loved New York. I drove a cab at night. I got robbed in Brooklyn, Manhattan and Queens. Meanwhile, my various bands played all over the city. We’d get hot, come to a boil, then break up. We’d start over, get hot again, come to another boil, break up again. The last breakup was too painful. I vowed: I’d be a Solo from now on.

  Barb got pregnant. We moved to a 12-acre farm in Pennsylvania where we lived in a picturesque valley for two years. Our son Dan was born. We renovated our 100-year-old farmhouse. We took home movies of diapers. It was nirvana, except for having nothing to do and no one to talk to. I got a job playing RMI electric piano in a coal-miners bar in Wilkes-Barre where they requested “Take This Job and Shove It” ten times a night.

DAK-family-LA-beach.jpg
JS-Blue-Band-rooftop.JPG

  We were city kids, but didn’t know it yet. Nature then gave us a sign. We had decided to raise chickens so we could eat fresh eggs. But one night a weasel with a white winter coat got into our chicken house and took one bite out of each hen's neck. When the hens were dead he ate up all the eggs. It was the perfect description of the music business.

 

We were on our way to L.A. 

...the unseen pathway, the truth pushing everything I had done, all the bands I had led or played in, all the musicians I had known and the record deals that came tantalizingly close and the songs that many people recorded for which I sometimes even got paid.

RIOTS AND LULLABIES

  Barbara, Baby Dan and I drove across the country. Somerset, Memphis, Oklahoma City, Albuquerque, Yuma, Studio City. I had grown up in L.A. so I felt at home. I wrote songs and recorded them. Our daughter Bronwen was born. I was happy, I wrote lullabies. That year they wanted angst. Then the Rodney King riots came. I was angry, I wrote songs full of angst. Now they wanted lullabies. 

  1992, we were living in EPark while Koreatown was burning. Keep that in mind when you listen to the Everybody’s Armed CD, which I finished on our last day in L.A. It was a treacherous time. 

 

  We moved to San Francisco.

e-park-cliff-DAK.JPG
Rosie playing ukelele

  Finally, when Rosie turned 104, the pattern came clear: the unseen pathway, the truth pushing everything I had done, all the bands I had led or played in, all the musicians I had known and the record deals that came tantalizingly close and the songs that many people recorded for which I sometimes even got paid.

 

  It came down to two rules, one of which is Always Say Yes. You can change your mind later.

 

The other is: Don’t Die.

And the whole point of the process is to get right here, right now. Remember that. If we’re here, we’re not…out there. 

LESSONS ABOUT LIFE AND LOVE

Big-Sure-DAK.jpg

  All the lessons about life and love and raising children and moving along an unmarked road towards an unnamed destination, all the stories about writing songs, and all the cockroaches and agents and publishers and clubowners and all those people I wanted to kill, but don't want to anymore, and all the songs I’ve recorded in people's dining rooms or garages or fancy-ass recording studios with people wearing glasses so dark you thought there might be somebody else in there, and even the magnificent roller coaster of writing the World's Most Endless Musical, all of it is simply a process. 


  And the whole point of the process is to get right here, right now. Remember that. If we’re here, we’re not…out there. 

DAK'S BACK

    I am a songwriter. I still love how that sounds and feels, the process, the search for the perfect word, the melody that fits the phrase, the bolt from the blue that drops the rhyme into my lap. There is nothing else I have ever wanted to do. I hope you love these songs and stories about gigging around the world as much as I do.

 - D.A.K.

DAK-bio-profile-pic.jpg
Douglas A. Konecky
bottom of page