It's hard for a solo artist to make a name on the local music scene. It takes talent, a crowd-grabbing personality, and a friendly bar owner who will take the risk of letting an unknown artist play.
Dan Crossland has all of these: a great voice as well as strong guitar and keyboarding skills. He also found a bar owner willing to take a chance.
Crossland used to play every Saturday night at the BruHouse on Brookside, a small, smoke-free, nondescript bar where the stage is really not a stage but just some tables and chairs moved out of the way.
Now Crossland has a busy schedule. With his guitar strapped over his shoulder, microphone in front of his smiling lips, he is ready to take on the music world.
Crossland can play covers from Maroon 5 and John Mayer and make them sound like his own. He plays his guitar like it was attached to him at birth. His voice can lull you to sleep, or it can pump you up and make you want to dance.
“I try and throw in one of my own songs," he said. "I never get much response from it though. People like to sing along, and if they don’t know the words, they usually won’t like the song.”
A few months ago he wrote a song called “Not Going Home."
“It was about a situation in my life where I was telling myself I wasn’t going back, and things were going to be better because of it,” he explained.
It's true that the worst breakups make some of the best songs.
Crossland cracks jokes about the bar and about himself to get people to pay attention to him. “It’s hard to get drunk people to stop talking about themselves and listen to me," Crossland said. "I mean who wouldn’t want to listen to my studly self?”
--Melissa Fulton
2 comments:
Got m-space?
Very well written. Thank you for sharing
Post a Comment