Writers note: I wrote this story back in 2009. Things were much different for Chris back then. For those of you who don’t know, Chris is a battle for his life. I have faith his strength will get him through this battle. I have known Chris since 1984. I met him through my old friend and the Kings first trumpet player, Forrest Means. I was holding the story until my online paper went to print, but now I feel the story has to be told. Get well my friend; there are still too many tunes that need to be played. Know you’re loved.

Chris Daniels has survived 30-plus years in a business that has a life span, for many, of only a few years. Chris started to climb his way to the top of the Colorado music heap in the early 70s. He and his band, The Kings, have remained one of Colorado’s top bands for quite some time now. Chris has not only made it locally, but also on an international level. However, the climb hasn’t been without its share of free falls and slippery slopes.

Chris says his mother was from South Carolina and his father from Minnesota and his family traveled back and forth a lot during his childhood. Chris says he had this split existence of musical cultures. Up north he heard Polkas, but below the Mason Dixon Line he remembers a totally different type of music. He once went to a Southern Black Church and was introduced to Gospel, which left a lasting impression on him.

"It happened two times that I remember really well," Chris says. "Once after working in David Ritchie’s work camp in Philadelphia in about 1967 - but the first time I heard ’spirituals’ was around Christmas in South Carolina. It still gives me shivers. There was and is so much power in that sound. It is call and response and syncopation and a cry for freedom and an understanding that we have work to do, as the old spiritual says, ’Right down here.’"

Music was what Chris could relate to as a child and it became one of his strong points. One of his weak points while growing up was school. Chris was dyslexic and had learning problems all through school.

"I was first sent to a ’special school’ for dyslexia in Buffalo New York in the seventh grade, but by the tenth grade I had had it with that school and told my parents they could take me back home to the local high school or send me someplace else, but I wasn’t going back to Buffalo. I had left family and friends after sixth grade and that was really traumatic, but I guess it is why I have always been very independent and unafraid to do things on my own, like start a record company and raise a son. They just tossed me into it and you had to cope. No magic like Harry Potter, but very boarding school life."

What Chris could learn and do well was play guitar and sing. This made him feel good and not like a "dumb ass," as he put it. He had found something he could do well. Chris jokes his sister taught him some chords when he was in fifth grade and it’s been a downward spiral since.

"I call it respectable debauchery or a curse that heaven sent."

Chris played in many bands as a child and adolescent, "They all sucked, but were fun, that’s the point. The Chatramen was the funniest. We started out in pre-air guitar days using tennis rackets covered with paper to look like guitars singing along to Beatles records."

Chris says though he comes from a well-to-do family in Minnesota, he was completely cut off of any money when he dropped out of school and left home at the age of 17. He grew up near St. Paul with a bit of a wild side to him. Part of that wild side was being a free spirit and taking off on his own as a teenager.

"I was 15, but I was in Chicago for the Democratic Convention in 1968," Chris says. "I went there as a ’Clean For Gene’ kid. I took the train by myself from Minnesota. I ended up in Lincoln Park with the Yippies, (Hoffman and Rubin) getting chased around by Chicago cops with batons and tear gas. So when people now talk about this (the Democratic Convention of 2008), and 1968, I have to laugh. This is nothing like 1968. I also took the train to Milwaukee that year to see Led Zeppelin and Blind Faith at the first Milwaukee Fest."

His parents sent him to another boarding school in Englewood, CO when he was in the 11^th grade. His parents were shocked when he dropped out of school and hit the road to play music for a living.

"My Mother really went through hell because of that. I think she is almost over it now," Chris says.

Though Chris’s parents were not thrilled about him leaving school, they accepted his choice. He says his parents, "Were used to crazy musicians types in the family." They even had a family band. His uncle, David Daniels, was an award-winning Broadway star who had worked with Liza Minnelli and Bonnie Raitt’s father, John Raitt. He was also Chris’s mentor. Because of all this, Chris’s first public performances were for family, and he remembers it was a scary feeling. He says performing for friends and family is still the hardest thing to do.

"In order to give a great performance you have to inhabit a different person, at least different than my sort of normal introverted self - it’s a deeper and more naked person too - and in order to do that you really have to, as Randy Newman said, ’Become somebody else.’ You have to literally get out of body and that is pretty hard to do in front of family."

After dropping out of high school, Chris met up with guitarist Will Luckey at an outdoor concert dubbed, "Woodstock West," on the DU campus. He hoped to form a band with Luckey, and after a short stay at his parent’s house he struck out on his own to meet up with Luckey on Martha’s Vineyard. Upon arriving, he discovered that Luckey had hepatitis and wasn’t capable of playing in a band. So his first professional gig was an acoustic solo act at Martha’s Vineyard, then a duo with local legendary harp player Charlie Finnerty.

"So I got to the Vineyard and Will was sick so there was no band. It was June, so I bought a used tent and met a poet named Carmen Angelonie, and we started writing songs and living about a mile from James Taylor’s house. To survive, I was a carpenter’s helper, a hand on a fishing boat for the O’Gorman family, and I got so broke I almost went on welfare. Then I met Charlie Finnerty. He was a great harp player and we did a Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee thing and starting making money. That got me through the winter until I moved to New York and started playing with David Johansen for a month or two. David got the offer to join the New York Dolls and so I went to the big May Day anti-war rally in Washington (very Forrest Gump) and caught a ride to Boulder."

Chris says he still talks with Johansson every now and then, laughing as he states, "This is a guy who says he has made it wearing both his mother’s (New York Dolls) and father’s (Buster Pointdexter) clothes. We rehearsed at his parent’s house a lot."

Chris lived in New York for two months before his move to Boulder for a short time, where he re-connected with Luckey, who Chris says had joined an amazing acoustic band called Magic Music. After a brief stay in Colorado, Chris went to San Francisco, where he started playing with Finnerty again.

"I got a little money from my folks and lived with my brother and sister for six months and bought my first real car, a 1951 Chevy pick-up truck. It’s hard to believe, but I still have that truck! It was the hippie thing. Magic Music was living in communes with old school buses that had come from the Hog Farm and Woodstock (the real one in New York) and teepees and even a doughnut truck for shelter. Anyway, I ended back up in Colorado in 1971. Charlie was in school and I was classified 1A and the draft was looming. So I watched the lottery and my number was 285. I lucked out. I drove the old ’51 back to Allens Park and rented a cabin called Tiptoe for $25 a month and cut wood for a living and wrote songs."

Chris did a number of odd jobs back then, including being a carpenter, and he even bucked bales at six cents a bale. Chris said he was broke and hungry quite a few times. He played in two bands in those early days, Rosewood Canyon and Magic Music, when he finally settled in Colorado. Chris was in Rosewood Canyon when the members of Magic Music asked him to consider joining the band in 1973. Magic Music was formed around 1970 by George Cahill and Lynn Poyer, and had a number of different incarnations and brushes with fame, including being courted and scouted by Columbia Records. Chris says in hindsight they probably should have taken the deals, but he was not in charge of the band, just a songwriter at the time.

"I’d always wanted to play with Will and I finally got the chance. We toured in a few school busses, very ’merry pranksters’ and lived in communes and played from Nashville to LA in one form or another."

Still living the hippie lifestyle, at one point the band moved to Pagossa Springs commune, as Chris laughs about it now, saying, "It was not really a music hub," and they actually played at San Luis High School for 100 pounds of beans and $25. "So I can actually say I’ve played for beans."

Chris was a multi-instrumentalist in Magic Music, playing guitar, banjo, mandolin, flute and pedal steel guitar. The band had a sound like Leftover Salmon meets Pentangle (famed British band with Dandy Denny), and probably was Colorado’s first jam band. The band played the early years of the Telluride Blue Grass Festival in 1975 and 1976, and had legendary Colorado concert promoter Barry Fey as a manager for a while. Another legendary Colorado promoter Chris met back in those early days was Chuck Morris.

"Chuck Morris gave me one of my first gigs with Magic Music. He was booking the Sink and Tulagi in Boulder in 1971 to 73. I’ve known him that long," Chris says. "He’s a good guy and has survived the music business with class and with humor…He also booked Magic Music at Ebbets Field, and he booked me with Russell Smith at the Rainbow…I think I’ve worked for Chuck in just about every venue he’s run."

The first time Chris played in front of a big audience was for Chuck Morris, opening for Randy Kershaw (Doug’s brother) at Tulagi in Boulder around 1971, and then opening for the Dirt Band at the Greeley festival.

"By that time I had become addicted to the ’out of body’ thing that happens when you really inhabit your performance. And though I was scared shitless, I remember the sound of the crowd. What a rush. And I learned something I still do, it’s a focus thing -- to watch for one ’moment,’ just one thing I do better than I’ve ever done at each show. It’s pretty powerful if you train yourself to do it. So far in all these years, averaging 200 gigs a year, it happens every night. I look for it every night. Singing a note better, playing a lick better, telling a story better or a combination of that."

Magic Music was about to get a contract from Flying Fish when the breakup came in 1976. Chris said the band had a good run, and this was at a time when he was at one of the crossroads in his life. Two events happened to him during the 70s that would be life-changing experiences. His son Cedar was born in 1973, one of his happiest moments, and in 1976 Cedar’s mother, Judy Starr, would be diagnosed with breast cancer. She passed away when Cedar was 9 years old, one of Chris’s saddest moments. Upon Judy’s request, Cedar went to live with Chris full time in 1976, and in 1978, she gave him full custody.

"I had a 3- year-old son who was in my total care and not even a high-school education. My uncle David was a graduate of Julliard and told me, ’You don’t know anything about what you are doing.’ And he was right. So with a kid and no education, I figured it was time to go back to school, so I gave the band notice. It was probably for the best, we were playing jam band music, very Leftover Salmon with our buddies from New Grass. And about that time disco hit."

For that reason, and because of his uncle’s advice, Chris began to rethink his career and decided to go to college. He ended up going to Macalister College in St. Paul and got his degree in music and journalism in 1979. During his years at Macalister, he also attended Berklee College of Music in Boston for a year in 1978 to get jazz and theory training, but he came back to Macalister to graduate.

"My folks were helping me with Cedar and all, but it was time to finish up and stop having fun at Berklee and get home to take care of my son. I was with a woman named Jill at the time, and she was helping out. But that relationship was crashing, so it was time to get on with things."

In his graduating year he worked for the Fergus Falls Daily Journal and The Minneapolis Tribune. He actually got fired from the Tribune because of his dyslexia.

"You never really get over it. I had to take dictation from a sports reporter covering the Vikings. It was before the fax machine and internet so my spelling sucked, it still does. When the editor got the story at deadline, he blew his stack and I got fired. So far the only gig I have lost that way, but I keep my fingers crossed."

In late-1979, Chris found himself back in Colorado hoping to land a job with one of the papers. Instead, he formed what eventually became a four-piece rock band "Spoons," in Boulder. It started out as a band with two female singers, and they recorded with Merle Berganttie from Loggins & Messina, but the record didn’t go anywhere. So the group was stripped down to a four-piece rock band along with Sam Broussard, Andy Peake and Greg Overton from Rosewood Canyon. They recorded a live album at Mountain Ears in 1981 called Defiantly Live, and Chris said the record still gets airplay every now and then on Meredith Carson’s show on KGNU.

The band came to the attention of A&M Records. The main reason was A&M had signed a Canadian band named Spoons and Chris had the rights to the name.

"It was my first endeavor into the music business and it paid off," Chris says. "What is so cool is that people in Colorado really helped one another back then."

Chris’s friend, entertainment lawyer Ed Pierson, who is now an Executive Vice President of Legal at Warner Chappell Music and Henry Root, pointed him in the right direction when it came to selling the name to A&M. Chris sold the name for $20,000 and paid off his studio debts. He had just enough money left over to buy an old used car that he still has, a 911 Porsche, which has been restored from the "wreck" it was.

The band had come to the attention of Michael Barnett, who managed Cheech & Chong, Muscle Shoals Studios, Levon Helm, Mink Deville and The Amazing Rhythm Aces.

When Russell Smith broke away from the Aces and their Grammy award winning run to do a solo project, Barnett hired Chris to play guitar, banjo, mandolin and peddle steel. The lineup included Louisiana piano player Steve Conn, Randy Barker on lead guitar, Brian Grassmeyer on bass and Cactus Mouser, who was later replaced by Andy Peake, on drums. In 1982, Chris and the boys hit the road in support of Smith’s Capital Records release, and they toured for two years with him.

"My favorite shows were all over Alaska. We called ourselves The Dawn Patrol because the sun never set, and that tour was the Alaskan Circle Jerk tour, because of how we were catching halibut on our days off."

When the tour was over, Chris thought the band was so good he couldn’t see breaking it up, so he formed Chris Daniels & the R&B Kings for a one night party on March 14, 1984 at the Blue Note in Boulder.

Chris borrowed Steve Conn’s horn section for the show. Conn’s band, a New Orleans funk band called Gris Gris, had a, "killer horn section." Since Berklee, Chris always wanted a band with a horn section. After that first gig, the band just took off. Nobody was doing that sound. The Horney Guys, Forrest Means, Fly McClard and Steve Owen--later Jim Waddell--joined the Kings. Chris started booking shows opening for Matt Guitar Murphy from the Blues Brothers and many other acts.

Living the hippie life and being a musician, Chris was no stranger to drugs. In the early 80s, cocaine had become the drug of choice for many. The band’s success led to easy access and excess use of the drug.

"We did a lot of cocaine in the early 80s," Chris says. "I should probably be dead, or I wouldn’t have a music career if I had not cleaned up. It’s the idea of taking care of yourself, ’cause no one else is going to do it for you. A number of things changed in 1984."

Chris says he was in serious denial back then, and his "monster" was off the leash and running wild. One of the actions of his denial was telling people he was attending AA meetings while he was still using.

"This one guy, Fred Shellman, the guy that started the Telluride Bluegrass Festival, called my bluff," Chris says. "He took me to a meeting and I knew I was in the right place. I was doing so much and drugs had become such a crutch that I thought I needed them to write and perform. You don’t know until you hit bottom. You have to get to the point where you admit you have a problem."

Chris attended his first AA meeting in 1984. Realizing he had a drug problem was only part of it. Realizing he was all his son had to depend on was the biggest reason for Chris’s road to recovery. Cedar’s mother had died of breast cancer in late 1983. Chris said, though he was there as a caregiver in making sure Cedar was off to school, clean, clothed and fed, he just wasn’t functioning as a father.

"It didn’t take long for me to ’get it,’ that I was flying solo with Cedar and that I had no backup. My relationship with Cedar is the best thing that ever happened to me, and I would not have it if I’d kept using. Hell, I’d probably be dead or in jail."

Cedar grew up and got into sports with Chris cheering him on from the sidelines, and graduated from Colorado Academy, something his dad didn’t do and that they laugh about, and then got his BA and Master’s degree at colleges in New York. He is now living in New York and is a movie editor. He got into it by doing a film on his mother Judy for his Master’s project, which led him to establish a new and close bond with his mother’s family in New York.

"I love that," says Chris. "He’s gone full circle, from growing up on a commune in Colorado to going back to Brooklyn where a lot of Judy’s family still lives. It is really remarkable."

At the Cannes Film Festival in France in May 2008, Sean Penn introduced Third Wave, a documentary that Cedar edited. This past February, Cedar and his wife Filomenia had a little girl, Ila, making Chris a grandfather for the first time, another one of Chris’s happiest moments.

In 1984, Chris’s life and career started to come together. He decided it was time to go into the recording studio. Chris Daniels and the R&B Kings first record was a 45 cover of Jimi Hendrix’s, "Cross Town Traffic."

"No one was doing this," Chris says. "We wanted to prove you could do a Hendrix tune with a horn section."

At the time, Chris was also playing in other bands. One of the bands that "backed" him was New Grass Revival, which had the legendary Bela Fleck, of Bela Fleck and the Flecktones, on banjo, Sam Bush on mandolin, John Cowan on bass and Pat Flynn on guitar. Daniels would continue to perform at the festival with members of New Grass, eventually backing John Cowan as the closing act on a Friday night in 1990, and backing Sam Bush in 1991.

"Don’t let anybody tell you different, blue grassers love to rock ’n’ roll. You give Sam a Firebird or John a soul tune and they will rock. Bela played his electric banjo the very first time he ever played it in public at the After Hours Jam with the Kings and Lyle Lovett."

The next move was putting out an album. The first album, Has Anyone Seen My Keys, received a lot of airplay, not only because it was good, but also because of the new format Chris decided to go with.

"We shopped the album, but no one would pick us up. This is a time when bands like Duran Duran and White Snake were popular, no record company wanted to sign a horn band. We got an indi deal with Harmony Records out of Los Angeles. They had some of the TV stars of the day on the label, from Star Trek and Dallas. But most actors make shitty musicians, and visa versa. There’s exceptions to the rule, but all you have to do is think of Captain Kirk singing Strawberry Fields and you know what I mean. But the sales were enough to fund our second record."

They changed the name to Chris Daniels & the Kings, with Chris saying, "The term R&B means something different to every generation, and it was limiting us." Chris hired Jim Mason, producer to Firefall’s biggest hit records and writer of, "I Dig Rock N Roll Music," to producer their second album, When You’re Cool.

Chris, Mason and Daniels’ managers Tom Holzer and Denny Bruce (The Fixx, The Beat Farmers and John Hiatt) shopped the album to every label in LA, but White Snake was on top, and according to Chris, "I look really shitty in spandex or on a Jag." Chris was left with no other choice. He decided to put the album out on his own label, Moon Voyage. His other choice would be a very wise one concerning the album.

"We were the first Colorado band who had their album come out on CD instead of cassette tapes," Chris says. "I thought, ’Hey, this format might just take off.’"

Chris says there were not many CDs going to radio stations, as they were barely starting to convert to the CD format. The Boulder radio station KBCO started to play the album on a regular rotation. Soon, they were getting airplay in large cities like Chicago and San Francisco. The song, "When You’re Cool," took off.

The band’s popularity also took off. Chris and the Kings won the Best of Westword Rock Band Award in 1985. Not long after, they were opening for another King, BB King, plus touring with the FIXX and headlining shows in markets where the CD was on top of the charts.

"Touring with the FIXX was a trip. While we we’re playing our songs, the crowd would be spitting at us and giving us the finger," Chris says. "We thought they hated us. Then they would applaud when we finished. I found out later this was how they complimented you. It came out of the British punk scene. It was pretty wild."

Popularity comes with great opportunities. David Bromberg heard Chris and the Kings playing the closing concert at the Telluride Bluegrass Festival while they were headlining on a Friday night. Bromberg had been thinking about quitting the music business up until he heard the band. He liked them enough to return the following night at the After Hours Jam at the Nugget and sit in. Shortly after, he wrote the song, "Testify," which Chris and the Kings recorded with him in 1987 on When You’re Cool. The band also recorded on Bromberg’s 1989 Sideman Serenade album for Rounder Records. Bromberg started using them for his back up band, playing such clubs as New York’s Bottom Line. While playing at the Bottom Line for Bromberg’s annual February birthday show, Chris’s uncle David was in attendance. Another man in the audience was record producer Al Kooper.

"He sat in with us and said he loved the band," Chris says. "So I asked him if he’d produce the new record and he said yes at the Bottom Line that night."

Kooper, who had produced Lynryd Skynryd and Talking Heads, produced Chris Daniels and the Kings third CD, That’s What I Like About The South, in 1989. Kooper produced the CD for a percentage of the sales, or ’points" as they call it in the business, plus an up-front fee.

While working on the album, Kooper brought along a black Fender Stratocaster. He was staying at the Harvest House in Boulder, but was afraid to leave the guitar at the hotel, so he had Chris keep it for the month. Chris fell in love with the guitar. When he went to LA to complete the album, he played the guitar again and asked Kooper if he wanted to sell it. Kooper laughed and said it had belonged to Jimi Hendrix and he couldn’t part with it. It had been a gift from Hendrix when Kooper played on the Hendrix albums.

"It was an interesting tradition. Bromberg gave me a Beatles Gibson electric/acoustic when we recorded with him."

Kooper only produced the one CD for the Kings, but both Bromberg and Kooper used Chris and the band as their backup band for about three years.

"In about 1990, Kooper took us to play the Roxy in LA for his annual Supper Session concert, and we were his band with Was Not Was, Bonnie Raitt, Warren Zevon, and the guys from Little Feat sitting in. That’s how I met Bill Payne, and later asked him to co-producer our fifth album. Bill and Paul from Little Feat have both played on two or three of our CDs, and that came out of that night with Kooper in LA."

Bromberg quit the road for about 10 years in 1994, and Kooper moved to Nashville but all three artists played together at the Boulder Blues Festival and Telluride.

After the Kooper sessions CD was finished, they started to shop it around, but like before, this was a time when Guns N’ Roses were popular and Nirvana was turning the world upside-down with the grunge movement. No one wanted to sign a horn band. However, the record did make it over to armed forces radio in Europe.

One person who loved the CD was Tommy Tornado, a crazy German "performance artist." Tommy sent the CD to the president of Bertus, the largest independent CD distribution company in Europe and owner of a new Record label called Provogue in Rotterdam, Holland. Jan signed a wide variety of artists to the label that year, including King Sunny Ade, Walter Trout and Chris Daniels & the Kings.

In another stroke of luck, Dutch radio was structured around a three-network system like BBC in England, with AVRO, KRO and VERONICA being the three networks. The number one rock n’ roll show in Holland at the time was Count Down Café hosted by Alfred LeGarde, or "Big Al" as he was known.

"Big Al was like Casey Kasem on really good drugs, he was just wild. Pinki and I went to the first interview and the guy was yelling about how ’f% great these guys were,’ and drinking vodka as he sat at the radio desk. Al loved Tower of Power and he flipped when he heard us. I think we recorded five live shows for Big Al and two tracks from one of them we were able to put on the Live Wired. That is live, no overdubs, that’s the power of the band."

Count Down Café gave Chris Daniels & the Kings a huge push, and it lead to their appearance at the Dutch Festival Parkpop in 1994, which had an attendance of 450,000 people.

"Alfred kept pushing us until he died in 1997. You can guess why. The last time I saw him was about 4 months before he died. He came to stay at the hotel we were at and brought this beautiful woman and a ton of ’candy’ to make them both stay up all night. They rented the Honeymoon Suite and came to every show."

Like Tommy’s nickname, the records and the tours and the band’s popularity in Holland took off like a whirlwind.

Back home, Chris married Colorado native Kelly Bates in 1992. They met, where else, but at the Little Bear in Evergreen and started going out after Chris called her the next week.

"We were doing a gig with Jack Mac and she came to see them. They got a bigger billing, but I think I was the lucky one."

The Kings did a second record for Provogue and signed with Rounder/Flying Fish in the states, the label that is the home of Alison Krauss. That album, In Your Face, proved to be one of their fans’ favorites, but critics had a hard time understanding the combination of really hard rock, almost metal, with horns.

Their next record was co-produced by Bill Payne, and featured Sonny Landreth. In 1994, Chris and the Kings toured with Sonny Landreth in Europe behind the Is My Love Enough album, which came out on Virgin, France and Rounder. That same year, Chris and Sonny also played at the Paradiso in Amsterdam and festivals all across Belgium.

"It was an amazing tour with Sonny playing with us. And now he’s out with Clapton."

The album put Daniels on the map in other countries in Europe, and it also afforded him the opportunity to record with his friend, and Colorado local legend, Hazel Miller.

"That was so much fun. Hazel was and is one of my best friends and one of my favorite singers to do duets with. Plus, she understands what it’s like to run a band. When I’m feeling crazy because of the business, I call Hazel and she talks me off the ledge. She’s really my hero!"

Speaking of Hazel Miller, Chris produced the great vocalists Icons album in 2005 in the States, which was also released in 2006 in Europe. Chris said he had a blast producing Hazel’s album. He got his start in this area of the music industry by producing an album by Mark Flett back in the 80s and worked with legendary engineers and producers over the years. But according to Chris, producing Hazel Miller’s album was very special for him.

"The Hazel sessions were some of the most fun I have ever produced. The real trick with great players like that is to get out of the way. If they get stuck and need you for something, for an idea, you have to know your stuff and be able to jump in, and that’s great too. But the most important job of a producer is to get the very best performance out of the players, their very best ideas executed in tune and in time and with feeling. And when you have somebody as gifted as Ron Miles on trumpet, what you need to do as a producer is get it totally set so he can relax and get really comfortable with the tracks and the room and the sound, and then what he or Hazel will do is get to the heart of the music, and of their art. When the real honesty comes out, then you know you have done your job well and have something."

In 1995, Chris earned the Master’s Degree at CU that he’d been working on since 1990. He did all his studying while on the road with his band. While the rest of the members would go out and party or do whatever musicians do while on the road, he would go to his hotel room and study.

"I even remember studying for exams on breaks at the Little Bear. What a goof ball, sitting in our favorite Colorado music hall and me sneaking into the sound booth to study!"

That same year, Chris was hired by Swallow Hill Music Association as their Executive Director.

"I’d known Harry Tuft from the old Magic Music days, and when I read about the position being open, I tossed my hat in the ring. I think it scared them at first, a rock n’ roll guy amongst the folk flock, but I think I was able to really do some good there."

Over the next five years, under Chris’s leadership, the team at Swallow Hill won the Mayor’s and the Governor’s Award For Excellence in The Arts. As Executive Director, he helped with the move into their new building at Yale and Lincoln. The main concert hall is called Daniels Hall, named for Chris and his family’s contribution to Swallow Hill. Deciding to ease his workload, Chris resigned his position of Executive Director in 2000.

Though he had taken on a demanding obligation with Swallow Hill, Chris still made time to put out two albums, one in 1996. Live Wired came out on Flat Canyon Records, a Colorado record label. The album was recorded live at different venues, Herman’s and the Little Bear in Colorado, and venues in Switzerland, Italy and Holland at the Parkpop Festival.

The following year, Chris and the Kings would tour all over Europe with the great Dutch blues guitar player Jan Rijbroek. This would also be the first time the Kings played in Paris, and in 1997, it was the last time he recorded live on Count Down Café. That year, Chris began work on Louie Louie, a tribute album to Louie Jordan, Louie Prima, and Louie Armstrong. It came out of a conversation with Big Al after the Parkpop Festival when Al said that "horn band" music was "for the happy few," and not like in the old days when everybody loved it, the days of Armstrong, Jordan, Ellington, Prima and Goodman.

In 1998 and 1999, Chris toured Europe again, and Louie Louie, which was released on Chris’s label Moon Voyage, was distributed by BMG Europe. The album won the Westword Music Award for Best Jazz Band in 2002.

"It came out and won awards all over the place," Chris says. "It was crazy. We were the Denver Post’s Best Funk Band and Westword’s Best Rock Band, and then we beat Ron Miles for Best Jazz Band. Nah, Ron should have won it, but it was nice to get an award from them."

In 2000, Chris signed a nine-record deal with K-Tel records (remember the Slim Whittmen ads on TV and all there other ads). K-Tel put out Choice Cuts, and took "An American Tragedy" to number 5 on the AC Radio Charts. But K-Tel went bankrupt when they sunk too much money in their online store, going head-to-head with Amazon. Chris says he lucked out, because he had sent them a letter 31 days before the filing saying they were in breach of contract for not getting CDs to the stores. He got his master copies back and K-Tel ended up owing him $20,000. Chris says, "It was a close one. As the song on Choice Cuts says, ’It could have been worse.’"

The following year Chris toured with the Kings in Europe, and also started teaching at Arapahoe Community College, where he was able to add courses in History of Jazz, Music Business and in Digital Recording to ACC’s music department.

"I’d taken a year off from doing two jobs to write. That was the year I wrote most of the song for our next CD, The Spark, and I thought that the K-Tel deal was really gonna kick us into the mainstream. The CD was at #5 and the stores could not get the CD, go figure. So I took a look around and realized I wanted to do something to help young musicians coming up. This incredible man at ACC, Dr. Mat, took my info and then called me the next day and asked, ’When can you start?’ He was a real mentor to me and he gave me a lot of room to help him build the ACC program."

In 2002, Chris met up with his future European backup band, The Bluesmasters. Their first album came out with four Chris Daniels songs on it. He first met their lead singer Hank when they played a festival together in 1991.

"Hank had a band called Dem Rite, and they did all Tower of Power and James Brown covers. It was great. I went over for the CD release and played with the band and stayed in a houseboat in Amsterdam."

In 2003 and 2004, Chris toured with the Bluesmasters, and put out his ninth album, The Spark, which came out on Moon Voyage in the US and on Music & Words in Europe. The album won awards that included the Happi Skratch Record of The Year and a number of design awards for the work Gregg Carr did with the packaging. The Spark featured Sonny Landreth, Bill Payne, Sam Bush, Mollie O’Brien, Richie Furay and Hazel Miller, among others, sitting in and recording on the songs. In 2003, Chris and the Kings’ horn section did their first tour with the Bluesmasters, headlining the Under The Sea Festival just outside of Amsterdam. Daniels notes, "The Dutch have a pretty keen awareness of global climate issues. I mean their airport is actually 3 meters below sea level. Rising oceans make them pretty nervous."

Chris put out his tenth album with 10 songs on it, which was aptly entitled 10. The album was listed as one of the Best Albums of 2005 by the LA Times, and it was released on Moon Voyage, but sold more on iTunes than it did actual CDs.

Chris applied for another teaching job in 2007, and was hired by University of Colorado, Denver, as an Assistant Professor.

"Since I started teaching, I’ve been lucky enough to help some great new talent in Colorado. I’m really jazzed about CU. It’s an incredible opportunity to give back to the community that gave me so much. I’ve had members of so many different and very, very successful bands and solo artists come through my classes. ACC, and now CU Denver have both been homes for some of the best new bands, and I’ve got a ton of respect and admiration for the new generation. I’ve had players from Boulder Acoustic Society, Front Side Five, Rob Drabkin, Atlas, Skimp Killer and a ton more in my classes, and have to say the new generation of musicians coming out of Colorado are really exciting and incredibly talented."

Always being the road dog, Chris toured with the Kings and Bluesmasters in 2007. Local news station KUSA used one of Chris’s songs, "You Made It Through The Week," for their Friday news theme when the Kings won a contest that KUSA ran.

"Plus, I have sung a zillion commercials and that helped me design the tune for them. I’ve sung for Ford, McDonalds, Coors, you name it, some local and some national. I got started when Coupe Studios had me sing, ’Success is just a phone call away, call 650-50-50.’ Remember that ad? It ran for 15 years and I got paid a total of $125. But it was worth it. It got me into the studio and singing a ton into a mic and a tape machine and it really improved my singing and my mic technique. Hell, now I can sing like Bob Seger or Garth, and I’m fast, which is why folks hire me."

Chris Daniels and the Kings latest album, Stealing the Covers, is the band’s 11^th record. He says they’ve always put cover tunes on records in the past. In fact, one of their first records was a cover of Jimi Hendrix’s, "Cross Town Traffic," which Chris said was the toughest one to get permission to use. The other cover tunes are from the past ten records, plus new songs recorded this year, some cuts they did for local radio, and even a Christmas song written by legendary TV personality Steve Allen.

"A DJ in New York called me and told me she played it for Jane Meadows, and that she loved it. That meant a lot to me."

Chris is on his 16^th tour of Europe. He recently recorded another new album with his European backup band the Bluesmasters, who are from Holland. The record is scheduled for release in November on the Dutch record label Ambience. He also had a song, "Cho Cho Ch’ Boogie," from his album Louie,Louie purchased by ABC for the TV show "Men In Trees."

Chris hopes to finish a book he’s writing on self-managing bands, and there are two more albums he wants to do: one of which is a jazz/bluegrass project with members of the Kings and his bluegrass buddies, and the other is a solo songwriting project. He’s enjoying the thought of being a grandfather, saying, "It is the best thing of all, love that little girl and can’t get enough."

According to Daniels, he’s lucky. He’s been playing a guitar for a living since he was 17.

"I remember sitting in a little restaurant in a town called Dre Bergen on our first European tour 17 years ago. I don’t drink or do drugs, so sometimes in the middle of things happening I can actually reflect about it as it is happening. Weird, I know. But I remember thinking, ’Jesus, I’m sitting here having brought 10 other guys to Europe and about to do a two month tour all over the continent in support of a record I recorded with Bob Dylan’s keyboard player, and this all happened because I followed my heart and my sister taught me three chords on a guitar. Wow!’ So I’m lucky. I’ve gotten to play with the best musicians in the world like the Kings, and Sam, Bill, Al, David, Sonny, Bela, and even Bo Diddly, all because I just kept after it, I didn’t give up the dream. I laugh when people ask if I’m going to make it; I’ve already made it."

The following is Chris Daniels’ introduction of The Kings

Dean LeDoux: on keys and vocals, has been with the band 21 years, toured together though Europe and all across the States and made 9 of the 11 records. "Not only is he a remarkable player, he’s also done all those years with humor and style. He’s just amazing."

Kevin Lege: on bass, joined the band about 3 months before Dean. He’s got that Rocco -- Tower of Power groove in his playing and has made every gig. In Europe, he impressed the border dogs and fell in love with his native Italian food. He comes from an incredibly musical family starting with his dad Pete, who is a local legend on piano. With the nickname of Bro, he’s never had a harsh word for anybody in 21 years of slogging though the trenches of Rock n Roll -- which is just amazing.

Jim Waddell: was one of the original Kings and left the band in 1990 to tour with Steve Taylor (Christian Rock) and Firefall, and to do sessions and shows with some of Nashville’s best. Jim is the Bill Murray of the group, amazing at what he does but with the "one line" humor that just hits it out of the park. He and Dean both have that -- it’s great.

Colin ’Bones’ Jones: I first met Bones in about 1971 in Allens Park. He was playing with "Michael from Mountains" (Joni Mitchell’s supposed love) and a Berklee grad. He’s played with them all including touring with Fly, our legendary Barri sax and chart godfather when they were out with Albert King. He did things on an acoustic guitar that floored all of us, including Sonny Landreth, who lived just down the road. He’s been in the Kings about 16 years and is the "secret sauce" in the sound.

Darryl "Doody" Abrahamson: Doody joined the band about eight years ago. He was a legend we heard about from our first wonderful trumpet player Forrest Means. Doody was in the Psychedelic Zombies and toured and recorded through all of their "almost hit the big time" years. He’s the one to watch for "quotes," the jazz trick of quoting a famous musical lick in a solo. My favorite was after a bad pre-gig meal when we were all feeling a little sick on stage and he starts quoting, "plop plop fizz fizz" from the Alka-seltzer commercial -- it laid us out.

Chris Songle is the "new kid" -- which means he’s been with us almost 4 years. The addition of Chris may be one of the best things that ever happened to the Kings. His attitude and smile on stage drive the energy of the band and his drumming and singing are the backbone of the new force that pushes us farther. We’ve always been a jam band. S. Watson, "Pinki," Soell, the drummer who was with us for most of the 90s and Randy Amen also had a gift for horn band music. Chris has taken that and added the ability to listen to a solo and hear a riff as it is happening in real time and start playing off it and adding to it -- and Kevin and I dive in with him -- it’s really magic.

Awards

New York Film & TV Festival
- third place for Best Rock Video 1987 (it was the year Peter Gabriel one for his breakthrough "Sledgehammer" so I felt pretty good about it. The video still plays on VH-1.

Denver Post 1989 Best Band

Best of Westword Awards:
- Best Rock Band 1985
- Best Blues Band 1990
- Best Jazz Band 2002


Boulder Daily Camera
- 1997 Louie Louie Best Swing Record

NARD Award Best Indie Record of 1994 (national award)

First round of the Grammy’s for three CDs
- Louie Louie
- The Spark
- Is My Love Enough


"The first round is pretty cool, but it is not the round that everybody puts on the ’poop’ sheet saying ’nominated for a Grammy.’ It is the preliminary round -- but hey, that’s still pretty good. You figure that there were 40,000 new CDs put out in 2005 and we made it to the first round of the nominations with probably 800 out of that 40,000.