Artist description Dan Tyack first started playing out back in the early 1970's. At the time many steel players wore regulation cowboy boots which made an already challenging instrument almost impossible to play. When Dan showed up on stage in a pair of toesocks with a different color on each toe, everybody knew that he was no ordinary steel player. After a few years in small West Coast road bands, Dan made the pilgrimage to Nashville. Aside from some adventurous work by such innovators as "Sneaky" Pete Kleinow or Bobby Black (one of Dan's friends and mentors) and the relatively obscure recordings which steel players have always done primarily for each other, the steel was confined to playing country music. Dan insisted from the first time he touched the instrument that, however much he loved country music, the virtual imprisonment of the pedal steel in Opryland was a crime. Still, he had to make a living, so country music was what he played. Between stints in road bands for the stars, he used to take time in Nashvegas playing in the house band at a scummy little club called Dee Men's Den a few blocks from the old Ryman Auditorium. After midnight when the regular clientele had stopped throwing chairs and Jack Daniels and Jim Beam were too far gone to know whether or not the band was playing Margaritaville, they'd cut loose and play the blues. Some fine playing slithered across that beer-soaked floor, escaped into the night air, and headed straight for Beale Street or points further down river. By the early 1980's, Dan was touring with Asleep at the Wheel-- one of the most interesting regular gigs out there for a steel player at the time. Even that, however, was not enough to keep him on the road. By the late 80's, he'd married, had a couple of kids, and landed a management gig with a moderately successful software company in Redmond, Washington. Freed from the necessity of earning a living with his music, Dan's interest in playing non-country material has grooved and grown.

Music Style New Orleans R&B and Blues

Musical Influences Professor Longhair, Robin Ford, Dire Straits

Similar Artists Ben Harper, Ry Cooder, Little Feat, Robin Ford

Group Members In addition to being an innovative and talented player, the combination of Dan Tyack's easy charm and a soulful humility about whatever he does have earned him more friends than ten ordinary people. Fortunately for us, many of these friends are also among the most interesting players and writers around. Even before his discovery by the mainstream world during the late 1980’s, Paul Franklin Jr. had developed an unsurpassed virtuosity on the pedal steel. His technical mastery of the instrument is matched only by his infinitely good taste... and the list of musical greats he's worked with (including, to name only a tiny few, Mark Knopfler, Vince Gill, Sting, George Jones, Lyle Lovett and Rodney Crowell). Pete Wasner may not live in New Orleans, but if he's not a Piano Doctor, then he's one powerful practitioner of the keyboards’ alternative medicine! He's also either written for or played with Garth Brooks, Vince Gill, Emmylou Harris and a host of other musical luminaries whose most noticeable similarities include intelligence and a big heart. Wasner teamed up with lyricist and blues singer extraordinaire Randy Handley to write most of the tunes on Blackened Toast-- just like Dan Tyack to share the stage with a singer... and to attract one with Randy's vocal chops and depth of soul to the job! Bill Frisell, while needing to make no apologies to Nashville for his playing, is known to most of us as one of the central forces behind free and avante guarde jazz and primary citizen of the far fringes of new music. In addition to a stellar and extensive recording career of his own, Frisell has proved his almost unprecedented versatility and inventiveness while playing with Elvis Costello, John Zorn, Marianne Faithful, Wayne Horvitz, Ginger Baker, Bobby Previte and Robin Holcomb. Pete Wasner brought Tom Britt into the studio, and his tasteful playing fits perfectly wherever it appears. Without the band Toast, there would have been nothing here to blacken-- Rod Cook (guitar), Keith Lowe (string bass, electric bass) and Chris Leighton (drums) join with Dan Tyack on pedal steel and Pedabro to make up this unclassifiable Seattle band. If one were to attempt a genealogy of Toast, its ancestry and progeny would show an almost unprecedented degree of inbreeding-- Cook and Leighton have worked with maverick diva Laura Love, while Lowe and Leighton are currently touring with Bill Frisell in a band called the Willies. All three have innumerable independent projects with other artists and bands which run the gamut from Fiona Apple or Kate Wolf to Battlestar Dyslexia or Zony Mash. For something with a crisp name like toast, this band is the definition of musical plasticity. When you leave Toast in the toaster for a few days with the funky New Orleans flavored proclivities of Pete Wasner and Randy Handley, the result is bound to be truly blackened. In fact, most of this project is the result of live sessions without overdubs-- if its scorches your ears, its because the hot playing is the real deal. Still, while all the players involved are masters of their craft, it is their heart, soul, and funny bone which make Blackened Toast pop upjust in time to make your day!

Albums Burned Toast

Press Reviews The music on Dan's CD is only "untraditional" in the sense that it's not music that usually features steel. There's nothing at all untraditional about the parts Dan plays, except for the fact that they are being played on the ultimate blues instrument: the pedal steel guitar. If you've ever wondered what could have been ... if Elmore james had set his guitar on his lap ... if B.B. King got his vibrato from a bar of steel ... if Duane Allman had sat down and started pushing pedals ... if you've ever wondered those things, then you owe it to yourself to get Dan's new CD. I can't even tell which neck he's playing. There are no pedal steel cliches to tip his hand. It's just solid music. -- b0b Steel Guitar Forum "Dan Tyack is to the pedal steel, what Robben Ford is to the guitar! Dan's soulful interpretation of the blues opens a new door for the steel guitar." --Paul Franklin

Location Bellevue, WA - USA

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