hey guys--most of you probably know this by now, but danny federici passed away late thursday night. i'm blogging my bulletin from friday at the suggestion of a couple people who noted the ephemeral nature of the myspace bulletin. good point. here also are a couple pictures of me and danny onstage at the tune inn in new haven, ct, in 1998. these were taken by my good friend tony piccirillo.
http://ap. google. com/article/ALeqM5jWBL8bwtky7ejPHSACIDibAWnHwAD90424SO0danny had been fighting cancer for a while, but i talked with him in the winter, and he was in good spirits.
as many of you know, danny played in my road band for several months following the release of "when the night is through" in 1998. i considered it an honor then and still do. he was an amazing musician, and the fact that he was willing to crawl into my VAN and roll around the country playing with a baby band on the "folding chair circuit," sparsely attended gig after sparsely attended gig, speaks volumes about what really drove him. of course, i heard some cool bruce stories, which he was nice enough to share for probably the thousandth time, but i didn't press the matter. what was more important to me was i got a sense of what makes that band one of the best, if not the best, bands of all time. those guys pushed themselves HARD. if you're in a band right now, you can pretty much rest assured that you do not push yourself that hard. no, no, whatever you're thinking, you're wrong. there's a reason they're the e street band and you're not. i was fortunate enough to get a cup of coffee in the majors, as they say, and i learned things like that many times over, but never harder than when danny--aka the world's most unassuming man offstage--put on his game face.
rest well, brother. i'm glad our paths crossed...mary c