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THE NEW YORK TIMES by Karen DeMasters
ASBURY PARK
DANNY WHITE wields a mean guitar as he prances around the stage or jumps off an amplifier to dance with someone from the audience in a tiny, dark New Jersey club. He has style, and he has a better-than-average three-piece band behind him.But at any of the clubs along the East Coast, you can find 100, or 1,000, front men for good bands that match the same description. What Mr. White, a 27-year old from Matawan hopes will make him stand out are the songs he writes.Mr. White's tales of teen-agers from blue-collar families who grow up with big dreams, only to lose them out in the real world, are often set to upbeat, even catchy music. He is a storyteller whose characters strike a true note in the heart; at the same time, the songs make the listener want to dance.Like any other singer, songwriter and guitarist from the Jersey Shore, especially one with a scratchy voice and a passion for screaming some of his lyrics, Mr. White has to put up with the inevitable comparisons to Bruce Springsteen. Although he would like Mr. Springsteen's fame and money, Mr. White is realistic enough to know that kind of success doesn't come overnight."Some of the guys in the band get disappointed," he said. "We'll play for a couple of hundred people one night and everybody is jammed in front of the stage, and then the next night we'll go to a club and there'll be a handful of people there. Some people think they don't want to play to that, but you have to keep doing it."Mr. White has been playing since he got his first guitar when he was 13 and formed a high school band. Since then, he has shuffled band members, sometimes on a weekly basis, but kept writing and singing. He is now backed by Rob Michael of Atlantic Highlands, who shares the lead gui- tar position with Mr. White; Joe Can- zano of South River, the bass player, and Steve Carter of West Caldwell, the drummer, who has been with the group only a few weeks, all from New Jersey. The four play in clubs in New Jersey, Greenwich Village and Philadelphia, as well as clubs and colleges in Washington, Virginia and the Carolinas.Mr. White has released one self-produced album on the independent label Speak True Productions and expects to have his second album ready for release this summer. Unlike some Generation X music, Mr. White's songs pack a punch without resorting to harsh, depressive melodies. Even some of the more somber of Mr. White's lyrics, like those in "There She Goes Again" ("Never settle for love," she said/" 'Cause you never known when it'll be dead") are set to hummable melodies."That's just the way they come out," Mr. White said of his quirky songs. "The songwriting is the most important thing. That's what people will come back for, it it's good. A lot of the bands out there are just copying each other."His first album, "Is That All" opens with a hard driving song about suicide with a warning to fathers to lock up the guns and proceeds through tales of lost love and aimlessness to dead-end jobs and grabbing the moment "down where the prophets scrawl, their works on the sea-stone walls."In concert, songs featuring the band are interspersed with Mr. White's solos on acoustic guitar and harmonica that combine classic protest rock of the Doors and Cream with the uncaring attitude of grunge. A song about apathy, "Attaching Without a Sound," changes nightly onstage with lyrics temporarily borrowed from Mr. Springsteen or Elvis Costello, or ad-libbed lines added as the mood strikes. A half-hour later, Mr. White doesn't remember what he put in the song; it just felt right at the time."The first time we played the Saint in Asbury Park, there were two people here on a Tuesday," Mr. White said. "But you just have to go out and get the audience and turn them into believers, and then they tell their friends."So far, the largest audience Mr. White and his band have played to has been about 500 people at a college. They will have a chance to top that on Saturday when they play at the PNC Bank Arts Center in Holmdel on the same night as the veteran rock groups Journey and Foreigner."We get 1,000 CD's a season, and we can book about 50 bands," said Jim Steen, marketing director for the arts center. "That shows how good the local music scene is. We booked Danny White because of the following he has built up in the local clubs."
