An Article by Michael Townsend

Down on Water Street, where buskers scrape their fiddles and angels grace the sidewalks, we’re used to plenty of personal expression and perhaps even a bit jaded about it all. But when I heard Danny Deardorff sing a Robert Johnson song there at the crossroads, I knew that I would have to learn more about this man with the subtle guitar style, soulful voice and message from the heart. His father worked for Firestone in Akron, Ohio, and his mother played church music on the piano and organ, as she continued to do well into her nineties. The fifth of six children, Danny contracted the polio virus at seventeen months of age, leaving him with a serious physical disability. He was to find, however, that the ergonomic difficulties were easier to overcome than the social limitations. “When Dad decided to head west, we packed up the station wagon and moved out to Oregon,” Danny recalls. After brief stays in Beaverton and Tacoma, his family settled in Yakima when he was eight years old. His school years in the ‘sixties were a time when a whole generation began to experience popular music as much more than entertainment. “Elvis and especially the Beatles redefined the hero’s path. Pick up a guitar and you could set wrongs right and slay dragons, or go down trying.” When a broken leg left him bedridden for months, Deardorff practiced the mandolin constantly, crafting his music with renewed dedication. Like many young men before him, Danny longed to put his erstwhile hometown in the rearview mirror. In 1970 he joined two brothers in Seattle, later moving to Bellingham and starting his first real band. They traveled to Boston seeking the (nonexistent) folk scene, and Danny peddled songs in New York, but eventually they connected with more gigs back in Seattle. Realizing that Los Angeles was the next step for someone with big dreams, Danny set out to find two of his favorite musicians, Jim Seals and Dash Crofts, who he felt would understand his songs. “Sometimes naiveté is a powerful force,” he observes. Sure enough, after many coincidences and impromptu auditions, he was offered a place to stay and a record deal from Louis Shelton, legendary producer of Seals and Crofts. For eight years Danny was the popular duo’s opening act and went from playing for thirty people in a coffeehouse to singing for ten thousand fans in major venues all around the country.

His apprenticeship in the recording arts with some of LA’s finest studio pros gave Danny the confidence to hang out his shingle as producer in the Pacific Northwest. Tingstad & Rumble, Michael Tomlinson, Tickle Tune Typhoon, and Jim “Harpo” Valley of the Raiders are some of the regional favorites who sought Deardorff’s expertise. A producer’s job might include arranging songs, choosing the orchestrations, contracting musicians and booking studio time, but the real ingredients are less tangible. “It’s eighty percent psychology,” he says, “getting the best performance out of the individuals.” While living on Vashon Island, and later in Seattle, Danny was able to pursue a long-held interest in legend and myth. Influenced by poet Robert Bly and storyteller Michael Mead, he began to study and eventually write about mythopoesis (the making of myth), and is now a respected independent scholar in the field. Since moving with his family to Port Townsend in 1996, Danny’s infrequent performances have been a heady mixture of music, ritual, stories and even some laughs. His book The Other Within (visit mythsinger.com) will be a must for those curious about the underlying archetypes that shape our culture. And to illustrate Danny’s work at a more informal, grassroots level, let me describe a semi-regular gathering to which I was invited. Across the bridge, in a shack overlooking an organic farm, some dozen or so men convened one morning. A comfortable mix of fathers and sons, uncles and nephews, we introduced ourselves after a simple fire-starting ritual. While playing a syncopated drum pattern, Danny told a long, intricate folktale, and the group spent another hour discussing the symbols therein. Afternoon was the time for working together on a new meeting lodge, and with skills ranging from proficient to nonexistent (such as mine), we managed to cover the foundation and erect the twelve corner posts. The evening’s sweatlodge ceremony was full of songs and prayers and catharsis as we shared the mystery and grief of being human. After washing up, we sat down to a hearty potluck, our first meal of the day. Check out Danny’s words and music. Perhaps you’ll learn, as he suggests, to seek “joyful participation in the sorrows of the world.”