Sharon Vanorny
Dan Walkner.
Dan Walkner: like a paramedic waiting for the phone to ring.
The memories of childhood often fuel adult artistic endeavors, and that’s true for Dan Walkner’s new album, Easy Going.
“It’s in my dreams,” Walkner says of his childhood in Two Rivers, Wisconsin. “It’s in my blood.”
At 13, Dan Walkner often gazed out the front window of his home on 17th Street. What he saw was as Wisconsin as it gets. Horseshoe courts ran parallel to the long stretch of his family’s driveway — amusement for the regulars who drank at Lee’s Never Inn, a tavern tucked inside the first floor of the house next door, that shared a driveway with the Walkners. A sign proclaimed, “Free Beer Tomorrow,” an offer that Walkner pondered on his way to school each morning.
Turns out Lee, the owner of Lee’s Never Inn, was always in. And whenever he called his carrier pigeons home to the roof of the bar he asked Dan and his middle school buddies to stop their driveway basketball game and move to the family’s back stoop until the birds flew in. “And then Lee would bring us a 12-pack of beer for our cooperation,” Walkner remembers. While these scenes don’t show up literally in his songs, they form the basis for them in less tangible ways.
His mother was a seamstress and his dad was a boat builder and a carpenter. He was also a musician with Two Rivers’ in-demand country rock band Rounder. His dad’s band practiced in the family garage and at bedtime Walkner and his sister would wait until a song finished, to say goodnight. “He picked us up and we’d get to yell something in the mic,” he says. “Then we’d go to bed.”
One bedtime, waiting to say goodnight as Rounder rehearsed, Walkner touched the metal buckle on his father’s amplifier handle. “I got shocked,” he says. “Then I kept holding it, and just let that electricity run right up my arm.” It jolted the start of his own music career. By high school he was playing through his own amp. His first band was called Mole Hill, with his dad on guitar.
Fast-forward 30 years. The electricity still runs through Walkner’s body. For many years now a Madisonian, Walkner has fronted bands including Clovis Mann and Wrenclaw. He spends his workdays teaching English at Memorial High School. His new album, Easy Going, was released early this summer and its eight tracks were inspired by his nutty childhood in Two Rivers.
The cover art of Dan Walkner's 'Easy Going' album.
The album’s title track is a big, boisterous, bartime salute to Two Rivers itself. “It’s about maybe they don’t want me to come back,” Walkner says. The tension that theme presents is offset by Walkner’s sung confidence that he’s worthy of the place — then and now. Walkner’s voice blends a rowdy-ass Commander Cody vibe with the choke and swagger of Greg Allman. The tune glides along on blazing twin guitars that recall the best of the Capricorn Records country rock era.
The album’s fifth cut, “Break Even,” revisits a recurring poker game from back in the day. “Only Child” is about Walkner’s son River, but it also streams back into his own childhood, one that seemed fearless and filled with freedom, but sometimes included dangerous choices.
Easy Going, available for streaming on Bandcamp and released on vinyl, was engineered and mixed by Mark Whitcomb at DNA Music Labs in Madison. Walkner will perform songs from the record at two upcoming shows: Aug. 26 in Mazomanie at Lake Marion Park and Aug. 27 at Madison’s Up North Bar.
Meanwhile, Walkner practices his guitar with a vengeance, a ritual that’s never stopped since those years on 17th Street. “It’s like you’re a paramedic waiting for the phone to ring, like somebody’s gonna call me and I’m going to need to, like, rip out a solo in E major.”
