The Danny Joe Brown Band

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article does not cite any references or sources. (December 2006) Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unverifiable material may be challenged and removed.

The Danny Joe Brown Band (DJBB) was centered around its lead singer, Danny Joe Brown. The rest of the act consisted of Bobby Ingram (Guitar/Slide/Vocals), Steve Wheeler (Guitar/Slide), Kenny McVay (Guitar), John Glavin(Keyboards/Vocals),Buzzy Meekin(Bass/Vocals) and Jimmy Glenn (Drums). At the time that the band was formed, Danny Joe Brown had just left the by now famous Molly Hatchet. Molly Hatchet was a southern rock act that had followed in the footsteps of Lynyrd Skynyrd and The Outlaws to achieve considerable fame in the southern rock genre of music.^{[citation needed]}

Danny Joe formed this band in 1980 and kept its musical emphasis quite close to the original style that his former band, Molly Hatchet had originated. Interestingly, at the same time, his former band was starting to lean more towards a straight ahead hard rock approach. In contrast, DJBB kept with the almost no frills southern rock approach expected by fans of the music genre. This included songs about southern/western flavored topics such as gambling and The Alamo.^{[citation needed]}

The band was signed to the same label that Molly Hatchet was on, Epic Records. It released its only self-titled album in 1981. The album featured the almost cliché cut that started out a slower more serious chord progression that evolves into the three guitar lead jam exactly as Lynyrd Skynyrd's famous song, Freebird had done. The Danny Joe Brown Band's contribution to this format was the song Edge of Sundown. Clearly, this song demonstrated the Florida southern rock acts recognition that a song based on the Freebird format was sure to be a crowd pleaser. The Outlaws had similarly done the exact same thing with their song, Green Grass and High Tides which became their most famous and requested song.^{[citation needed]}

The Danny Joe Brown Band toured nationally to promote their album to noticeably smaller crowds than Danny Joe had experienced with Molly Hatchet, although they were billed as the opening act for Blackfoot on that band's highly successful Marauder tour in 1981. Danny Joe Brown replaced the entire band during the Eastern Seaboard leg of the band's US solo album tour from February through May of 1982. The new members were a three-guitar lineup featuring Al Tuten, Jimmy Polston and Billy Poovey, bassist Ronnie Able, and drummer Shane Bressette, all previously known as Revelation from Beaufort, South Carolina. At the completion of the album tour, Brown returned to Molly Hatchet after giving this latest touring outfit his blessings to continue on under the name of Bounty Hunter--which continues on to this day.

And while the Danny Joe Brown Band achieved limited success on their own, mulitiple members of the original band would eventually go on to join Molly Hatchet and eventually dominate that more well known act.Ironically, at a point in the 1990s, that decade's version of Molly Hatchet was being captained by a veteran of the Danny Joe Brown Band, Bobby Ingram, while three the original members of Molly Hatchet that had made the band famous were legally forced to perform under the name Gator Country (a song off Molly Hatchet's first self-titled album)) due to legal contracts. So in that limited sense, the Danny Joe Brown Band has bested its lead singer's original act by gaining legal control of the copyright name Molly Hatchet. This somewhat lessoned when Bobby Ingram rightfully invited original guitarist, Dave Hueblek back into the band in 2005.^{[citation needed]}