How much room do you have? Do you pretty much have total freedom to ... write how you want to and experiment how you want to, like when you're on stage?

Depending on the mood of things. You know, if people are digging on it, we’ll play longer. We’ll stay longer and let some more people play. You know, everything has a melody, a chorus and a verse to it, and we always get back to that. But then we get a little avant-garde from time to time.

Depending on the crowd ... I mean, I played this gig at a club called Spagatini’s a couple of weeks ago. And it was my best show ever. It was really great. I mean, I sat there and it got to the point where I really connected with the audience, which was only two feet away. Like I was in their living room. I had my elbow on my keyboard and I was telling jokes. It was just a fabulous experience!

I mean, we had this lady who drank too much and came up on stage. And I told the audience, I said, ‘You know, we actually bring her everywhere we go. Just in case the music is not doing so good, we can get a few laughs out of you guys.’ It was just fantastic. Just great. It was a great, great thing to do.

So there’s a difference between playing to 20,000 [people] from playing to a couple of hundred?

It’s quite a difference. I mean, you know, you could hear everybody. I play a lot of dinner theatres, these kind of jazzy venues. If I play outside, they bring families and it's outside, and it's people doing different things. So, in this particular case, you know, they had dinner. They had friends and they talked. And here I’m playing an intricate part to what I think to be a mellow part of the song and I hear this lady telling jokes or something over my left side. But then the guy next to her is, like, totally into the music. So I focus on the guy who’s totally into the music and try [to] tone her out. So, there is a lot of dynamics that go on, you know.

But, then when you get them quiet later on and they’re all yours it’s just, you know, it’s worth the trip.

It’s kind of a closer way to react, you know, you can see their reactions a little better.

Yeah. It’s kind of like, you always look to somebody to work off of. Like a public speaker or something. You try to find somebody that’s working and eventually you work your way around the room. And you hope that they're all going to look like that first guy, you know. (Laughter.)

So I haven’t had any bad ones yet, which is really good. There’s been some tough ones, but I haven’t had any bad ones.

Do you play a variety of different-sized rooms? Maybe just a few people some nights and a whole load of people another night?

Yeah. We’ll play from ... I guess Spagatini’s will have a couple hundred people maybe. Then we played the Pony which, I don’t know how many people that place will hold. Then we played a place called the Conduit in Trenton. That’s a pretty big place. And I think we’re booked into a couple small theatres. That’s gonna be interesting in itself.

I’m doing a benefit for my hometown’s school in September. Actually, I’m the guy, kind of like Bruce in a way. You know, he’s famous in Freehold [New Jersey], I’m kind of famous in Flemington [New Jersey]. That’s my hometown, by the way, that’s why the album is called Flemington.

They’re doing a "Welcome Home, Danny" day over there. So, I’m going to try and raise some money for the high school and buy some computers and some other stuff. And, that’ll probably be in the auditorium.

You know, so that’s gonna be different. I’ll be talking to a larger audience and probably won’t see as many faces as I’m use to seeing now.

So when you play those huge concerts, it probably isn’t as easy to connect, I guess. What’s the difference there?

You know, there’s always …You get to see about ten rows and there’s always those people in the first few rows that you can connect with. You know, some people I don’t know how they do it, but I see a lot of the same faces! At a lot of the shows.

As a matter of fact, I remember last year, there was a gal and couple of her friends that came to, it seemed like, every concert. Every other one. It got to the point where I was, like, I would look at her and go, ‘So you did something with your hair today, it looks different, it’s alright.’ Or, you know, ‘You’ve got sunglasses on today, what are you doin'?’

You get a personal thing going on with some of these people. They’re part of the family.

On your new CD, it sounds like there’s a lot of improvisation going on. Is that right? Did you guys improvise on the CD?

Yeah, actually, even Michael tells me, I have the tendency to not repeat myself. As I say, a lot of people design these songs with a verse, chorus and all that. I just played it, because I didn’t plan to put it out.

And then, after we did it again, I figured, I’m not going to change anything, it sounds fine. I still like the way it sounds. Yeah, there’s definitely that, you know.

Did you let some of your backup musicians do some improvisation? It kind of sounds like there’s some soloing going on between some of the other players and stuff like that.

Yeah, just a little bit. Guitars were actually the hardest thing to do. Now Nils [Lofgren] was playing on a song and, ah, it was funny because I put the guitar on last. I really didn’t know what to do with him, I don’t play guitar.

A lot of these … I played on a lot of these. Like, I have a lot of aliases on this record. Like Charles Slone [listed as the percussionist] is me.

Oh, really!

And, um, just because I didn’t want to seem to self-serving on my one record, you know, ‘Everything by Danny.’ Because I played bass, I played percussion. And, I wrote all the parts and I had people come in and play them. Pretty much everything, except for the guitars. And that was the most difficult part to do, because, as I say, I don’t play guitar. But Nils came in and in almost a half an hour, played his butt off, the most perfect thing.

The other guitar player, John DeFaria, also played great on it. And some of the new guys, Todd [Parsnow, guitars] and Juan Van Dunk [bass] on “Erica,” were just players that are used to playing this kind of music. So they play all the kinds of parts that you hear on smooth jazz records. Which is like the wah-wah pedal. All these things that I would never even think to do.

Yeah. Do you write a lot of songs on Cakewalk or do you just chart them out the old fashioned way?

I actually did it on Studio Vision. I recorded a lot of the stuff in my house. I have a little pool house and I did a lot of it on ADAT’s. A couple of ADAT’s and some Mackie boards. I brought the drummers in. And then we transferred all of the stuff from the ADAT’s to big tape. Gave it a warmer sound. That way, some of these pieces took forever.

I mean, some of these pieces were created a long, long time ago. When I first came to Los Angeles I was trying to get involved in the movie business and television. So I wrote a lot of instrumental pieces. And I started hearing very similar stuff on the radio going, ‘I could do that, this is what I’m doing already!’

So, that’s how the whole idea came about. It was like, ‘You know what, some of the people I hear on the radio, I can do better.’ So, I gave it a shot. It’s a very scary process though. It’s like sending your children out into the world and people are going to tell you, if they’re being good or not. Or, you know, they're going to critique them. (Laughs.)

So, that’s why, when I finished the record and didn’t put it out, it was a very easy thing to do. But then, when someone talked me into putting it out, that was a whole other ball game! Are people going to like it? What are they going to tell me about this?

So, and the few people that have heard the record have been very favorable. I’m lucky.

So when you first did the record, you weren’t planning to release it? You were just planning to do it for yourself?

Yeah. I did it and lined it up. I had my own record label at the time called Deadeye Records. Two of my friends that were involved in Deadeye, talked me into putting it out.

It’s not an easy process. It’s like building something. You need people around you to help you do that. To keep your enthusiasm going. That’s what Michael’s great for, with me. When I have downtimes, he’ll just pick me up and vice versa.

So, I work well with partners. You’ve got to force me to work. I don’t like to work. It’s very hard for a musician. To do just stop what you're doing, go in the studio and just start writing music. Bruce does it all the time. It’s an unbelievable amount of discipline.

To kind of psyche yourself into that, I guess, emotional mood that you want to create the album as?

Well, not even that. In the beginning just, ‘Let's get some ideas.’ Then you have those days when you go in and you can’t think of nothing. And then you have those days where you come in and what you thought of ain’t all that good. So, it could be very hard.

You’re going in, you think you know what you’re doing and you can’t remember a damn thing. And it just ain’t jelling that day and you’re like, ‘Ay, yi, yi!’

So, Michael was pretty helpful there? In kind of helping to get some ideas out.

You know, I think the best thing is. Is, you know, just to … I put stuff down all the time. That way you can go back and say, ‘Well, we’ve got a lot to choose from.’ And then you can go, ‘Well, that one’s not so great, but this one here, this is real good.’

So, as a matter of fact, we’ve probably got six or seven tunes done for a new album already.

So, do you plan on releasing a new one soon?

You know, Michael wants that to happen, but I’m lazy again. (Laughter.) He’s been really on me to do this. I would like to be able to do this before the fall.

How much of a challenge is it writing songs that don’t have words in them? Just writing instrumentals? Is there something you try to convey when you don’t have words?

That’s a very interesting question. It’s easier for me, because I’m more instrumental … I’m one that never really listens to lyrics. People will say, ‘You know what Bruce is talking about?’ And I’ll go, ‘I’m not sure what he means, but …’ I just don’t listen to lyrics. I listen to the music. I don’t have a hard time putting music together. But the hard part is … Some songs that I write, the only way I can recognize them is to give them a number. Like, say, number 35. And then, people say, ‘Well, you know, what’s that song about? Where were you and what were you thinking?’

And, I gotta tell you the truth. Sometimes, I just give them a story. Like … It was a really nice day and I was thinking about my father. You know, sometimes I’ll make up a story, because some people want a story. But some of them are totally created in four walls and they need a name. You’ve gotta give them a name.

I did “My Little Cow”, which is a story about my first daughter. This is a true story. And I was in Wisconsin …Well, what happened is, I did the song and I thought to myself, ‘I should have a song about my daughter.’ You know, most guys that write lyrics can put their name in the song. I couldn’t do that. So, I just happened to be in Wisconsin. And we went over to see this Indian cow, that supposedly is the next calling by the Indians. Anyway, this Albino cow, out in the middle of nowhere. And I’m thinking of my daughter, which she’s going to hate me for down the road. And she was just so little and so cute and I thought, ‘Oh, my little cow is a cute little thing.’ And there we go, number 35 ended up being, “My Little Cow.”

And now, I’m probably going to have to do one for … I have another daughter. I’m going to have to do one for Harley. Because when they get old enough to understand that Harley doesn’t have her own song, they’re going to be really upset with me. And the two girls are that way.

But that’s the truth of the matter. It’s easy to write the music, it’s just hard to title it.