Daniel Swan: From Punk Rock to Yacht Rock

A conversation with the UK Punk ’77 drummer turned industry booking agent

I first met Daniel Swan in the 1980s improv comedy scene of San Francisco. His journey is pretty remarkable, from playing drums in British punk bands that opened for the Damned and the Stranglers, to running Swan Entertainment, the leading West Coast agency which books tribute bands. Other than a brief chat once at a comedy festival, we hadn’t spoken in nearly 40 years. But I always liked him and his sharp sense of humor, he can quote full passages of “Beyond the Fringe,” which impresses me greatly. And of course, he’s a “valued subscriber” to this Substack. Some people will dig at the idea of a tribute band, that it’s not original material, but I think that can be short-sighted. People enjoy experiencing all kinds of music in different ways, and there’s room in show business for a wide variety of things that can be quite successful. You and I will learn more about this as you read on. This interview references everything from early UK punk to New Zealand diplomacy, The Who Live at Leeds, indie pop, She Na Na, East Bay speed metal, Noah’s Bagels, Green Day and Primus, the British love of melody, Andy Williams, Neil Diamond, soft rock, and fake mustaches. Thanks for reading, and please share it around!

I was trying to remember how we met. Do you have a vague idea? When did you move to San Francisco? 

Yes, early-’80s, mid-’80s. We met at Jim Cranna’s improv class. I was a musician looking to do something different. I tagged along with a friend to one of Cranna’s Saturday afternoon classes at Fort Mason. And it was just an incredible, wonderful time in San Francisco. Jim was an institution. He had been with The Committee group in the ’60s with Howard Hesseman. He was endlessly generous and patient and the atmosphere in his classes was informative, and there were a lot of comedians who would just go there to chill and have a good time. I have a vivid memory of first of all, meeting you at the improv class and then chatting with you. I was impressed by you for a number of reasons, but I actually went to your first, what was the name of the improv group you had, that played at Lipps?

Oh, god, Stage Left. Wow.

I was at your first show there. I’m a fan of yours from way back. 

Ha! There were probably like eight people there. But thank you for coming! It was that era where improv groups were forming all the time, and little shows going on here and there. I have a vivid memory of hanging out with you in the ’80s, I think it was Theatersports’ first show in San Francisco. The theater was packed, you were sitting in the first row, and we chatted during a break, you were always very amusing. I had a sore throat, and you, Daniel Swan, had a paper cup filled to the brim with port wine. And you said, “Try some of this, it might be pretty good for your throat.” I’d never had port wine before, but it was exactly what I needed. And I remember thinking, “He’s so sophisticated.”

[laughter]

So here’s another funny memory I have of some of those first improv shows. A small theater, I think on Divisadero Street. Greg Proops was there and he said, “Oh, come across the street. There’s a place that does Philadelphia cheese steaks.” I was newly arrived in the country. I said, “What the hell is a Philadelphia cheesesteak?” He said, “Watch me.” And he ordered it, and I watched it being cooked and prepared. For the uninitiated, it’s fairly primitive stuff. Anyway, they scraped this greasy slop onto a bun, and Greg looked up at me and he said, “You have to excuse me. This is gonna be messy.” And he dived into it.

Welcome to America. This was at the same time as the standup scene explosion in San Francisco. Now it’s hard to believe there were so many clubs, so many shows going on. When we met, were you currently involved in a music group, or were you in between groups? 

In between. Yeah, I just got here and I had a job. I was actually driving for the Consul General of New Zealand in San Francisco, and my schedule was a bit crazy. It was this gentleman, a consulate general whose name was Barton Finney. And I used to drive him around, we’d pick up George Shultz and take him off to the Bohemian Grove. I was in a Secret Service motorcade one time when the prime minister of New Zealand came through. That was a trip. I ended up working in the trade and tourism marketing stuff for a few years after that. And that’s when I stopped doing improv and got back into doing music again. 

Excellent. So I want to backtrack a bit now and talk about where you grew up. I’ve never been to Bristol, but it seems like a quite pleasant place. Also the hometown of the artist Banksy, and the bands Portishead and Massive Attack. A lot of military production, the Bristol cars were manufactured there. So how did you fit in when you were growing up? 

Bristol was a city that had been bombed a bit. The center had been bombed pretty badly, but a lot of the old part of town had remained intact. It was part of the post-industrial decline after the Second World War. So in the ’60s and ’70s, it was just getting back on its feet. 

My parents were both artists. My dad was a painter and a teacher. And it was like pre-gentrification. The artists moved into the old houses. And so my parents bought this old house in an old part of town on the hill. My parents were very social people, not hippies or beatniks, but kind of an arty crowd. I’m one of five kids, lots of brothers and sisters. Bristol was great. A lovely place to be brought up in. There was a big community from the Caribbean there, a lot of students, a big university. A working class community, but also a thriving artistic community. Just like everybody else in the ’70s, we were all music fans.

So your first band was the Cortinas, I gave a listen. I love the Cortinas. It’s a great example of the fast, fast, angry punk of that era. People still listen to the band today. Your big song was “Fascist Dictator.” And then I read further and realized, you were all 15 years old. 

The Cortinas, 1977

I was 15 going on 16, the rest were a year older than me. We all met at school. We formed a band initially because it was ’76, before the punk thing made its way down to Bristol. We were kind of a fast pub rock band, like Dr. Feelgood. Those were our kind of inspirations. 

Were you already playing drums? 

Yeah, yeah. I was drumming up from age 12. I was fascinated, just completely infatuated with drums. You know how it is when you’re a kid. All you do is draw pictures of drums on your exercise book at school, and you think about drum, and you go to the drum shop. I just love the drums. 

Can I bring this right before, sorry to interrupt, this is really my only point of reference for British bands and drummers. The album Live at Leeds, by The Who. With the incredible drumming of Keith Moon. You must have listened to this.

Yes. His drumming on that is probably his peak. You listen to his fills on “Amazing Journey” on Live at Leeds. There are photos. This little sound system. The audience is a bunch of students sitting cross-legged on a parquet floor, in the lunchroom! It’s just four of them. And they make this album that is both thunderous and symphonic in scope. 

It’s outrageously good. Pete Townshend once described Moon’s style as like marching drums, he would throw in these fills that are kind of cheesy showbiz patterns? 

Yes, the “shave and a haircut, two bits,” fill. 

Shave and a haircut! 

But if you watch The Who live at the Isle of Wight festival, it’s an ongoing dialogue between Pete and Keith. They’re just cracking each other up, playing off of each other. There’s so much you can say about the musicianship. They were inventive and ballsy, and they defined the modern rock touring ethos. They worked really, really hard. 

So you’re blessed with all of this music history around you. And the Cortinas, for being very young kids, you got a major record deal, didn’t you? 

Yes, it went like this. Right after we started playing, we started hearing about these bands in London, how they were taking from the New York scene. You would read about it every week in Sounds, Melody Maker, New Music Express. So we went up and saw the Ramones at the Roundhouse. Sex Pistols, The Clash. And this was it. This is for us. We quickly started to shed the covers and write originals. And by that summer of ’76, we’re wearing blood-splattered t-shirts, and plastic sunglasses.

We hit a couple of very lucky things. The guitar player from the Stranglers happened to have friends in Bristol. He was sitting in a park, and the guitarist from the Cortinas bumped into him. This 16-year-old schoolboy said, “Hey, you’re Hugh Cornwall, can my band come and open for you in London?” And Hugh Cornwall said, absolutely. And he sent us a postcard and it just said, “You are gonna open for us at the Roxy Club in January, 1977, be there.” 

We coerced some parents to drive us up. We played the first show with the Stranglers at the Roxy. And they booked us back immediately for three shows after that. It was heady stuff. We didn’t expect it to take off so quickly. And within a few shows, we got offered two record deals. One from a company called Step Forward, which is a guy called Miles Copeland, who was partnering up with a guy called Mark P. who ran this fanzine called Sniffing Glue. Also we had an offer from Stiff Records. This is, like I say, within just a few plays. So Miles took over us. 

That’s insane, you’re all still teenagers. And this is Copeland, the CIA family. The guy who played in the Police, right? 

His brother. Stewart plays drums in the Police. Their father was in the CIA. And his other brother ran an agency called FBI Booking. I think together they ran, what was the record label they had in the States? IRS, that’s right. All puns: the Police, IRS, FBI. 

So I read somewhere that one of your first Cortinas singles, the cover design was very punk rock. An image of two parents, very disillusioned, and in the background, there was a kid vomiting?

The song was called “Defiant Pose.” Get this, it was Hipgnosis. 

Wow. The same people who were designing album art for Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin? 

The singer had an idea of a funny thing—a kid vomiting because he can’t stand being around his parents. Right? Got applied into our youthful image. And I just remember this guy Storm Thorgerson turning up at a show, came backstage, opened up this sketch that he did. And we all looked at it and our singer said, “That’s perfect.” It came out, and there was a scandal about some of the newspapers that didn't want to run the ads. Because one ad was just an isolated picture of the kid’s vomit stream. 

Perfect! 

That is perfect. So that year we got so busy. The Cortinas were playing all over the country, eventually in France too. We played with everyone, the Stranglers, the Damned. We did a tour with a band called the Chelsea, played with XTC, Split Enz, the Vibrators. Lots and lots of bands. It was a very busy year. 

Our first two singles, they sound fantastic. And we recorded incredibly short bursts in eight-track studios, basically live. A lot of the singles from ’77, like from The Damned, Elvis Costello, and The Clash, were all recorded very quickly, and they have a wonderful immediacy to them. It still hits my pleasure buttons listening to anything from that period now. And it can’t really be reproduced. 

Wow. So the culmination of that occurs when, and what happens?

As we got through 1977 and came into ’78, everyone was worried whether the punk thing had been overdone. Now, everyone realizes it’s like a genre. It’s like reggae. But at that time, everyone thought it was meant to be kind of, shock and move on. We were trying to craft a little bit more of a trajectory that a band like The Undertones would ultimately do later on. You come out, you have that schoolboy vibe, and then you get into more of a poppy melodic vibe. We recorded an album for CBS, and they started to give us a lot of pressure. “We don’t hear a hit single,” and all this stuff. We were like, “Oh, but we’re a punk band. Does that matter?” And they’re like, “Yes, it does. We are CBS.”

Oh, that is typical. “I don’t hear a single here.” 

Yeah. I know. It’s a cliché. Honestly, we had that meeting and I just think we all hit a wall.

So the Cortinas lasted only a couple of years? 

Couple of years. But it got us all going. It had its effect on us having a brush with a certain degree of fame, albeit cult fame. Nick, the guitarist, ended up being in the Clash later on. He replaced Mick Jones. The bass player Dexter Dalwood is a very renowned artist. The singer is now a professor in Edinburgh, and the guitarist, I’m not quite sure what he does. 

So where were you after the band broke up? 

I was back in Bristol, playing in different bands. I got a job in the Middle East for a year or so. And then some friends moved out to California and I came to visit, and got a job that gave me a visa to stay. And then I met you doing improv, and then I got back into being in a band again.

Right. So The Sneetches formed in San Francisco in ’85. And can I just say that your drumming on the Sneetches records is amazing. You have this really interesting way of putting fills in places, sneaking them in, and your harmony singing was great. I watched the CBGB’s gig that you guys did on YouTube. I’m thinking, man I am fucking stupid. I was living here, and I never knew that’s what you were doing. So anyway, congratulations 39 years later. 

The Sneetches

It’s always nice when people point out things you put some effort into. Yeah, we were a little bit out of step, not as commercial. We were playing pop, but it was indie pop, and we just didn’t quite get the breaks. We tried really hard. We made four albums. We toured the country a few times, played in France and Japan. The bands alongside us were either kind of shoegaze-y or aggressive indie rock. And we were in the middle, earnestly singing these very melodic pop songs. We were influenced by, we used to jokingly say, all the B bands: the Beach Boys, Big Star, the Beatles, the Zombies, the Easybeats. 

Was it a tough time to be a poppy band? Were The Sneetches a little too early?

Well, there were others that had more success with it, like Crowded House or maybe Jellyfish. But they had hit records and lots of fans. 

Right. This reminds me. It’s something that I always notice every time I go to England, there’s so much melody in the air. I don’t know what it is. Maybe other countries are like this as well. But everywhere you go in England, there’s some kid on a street corner singing away with a guitar. Can you speak to that at all?

No, no, you’re absolutely right. England is the size of Northern California. It’s small. Everybody knows what’s number one. When I was growing up, there were just a few radio stations. So you’re all aware. Things make a more profound cultural impact. Yeah, people are very much more melodic. If you read Chrissy Hynde’s book, she talks about moving to London in ’75 and she says, on the bus, in the pubs, in the cafes, the radio is playing and everybody’s singing along. That’s the first thing she noticed. And yes, they do. I sometimes wonder why I remember so many songs from my youth. I don’t know where I heard them.

Yeah. The thing I remember so distinctly, one year I stopped in London and saw this soccer match of the team Fulham, and the entire football stadium started singing an Andy Williams song. This American song. I guess it was their team song or whatever.  

Was it “Moon River”? 

No, it was, um, hang on….“I love you, baby, And if it’s quite alright, I need you, baby, to warm the lonely night…”

“Can’t Take My Eyes Off You,” Franki Valli and the Four Seasons. 

Yes, that’s it! Every single person in the stadium knew the words, and they were singing their hearts out. And to me, that was an Andy Williams song. He was this conservative, sweater-wearing TV host from the ’60s, super square. He was responsible for putting the clean-cut Osmonds on television. That experience really stuck with me.

The English people have a way of sometimes taking another look at an artist and endowing on them some sort of cultural importance. I guess people in England think of Andy Williams as a little bit cooler than that. I don’t think his show made it to quite such a saturation that it was in the States. They just think of him as this easy-listening kind of giant, in the cool way, in the guilty pleasures way. 

A guilty pleasure!

And you know what? His voice is insanely good. But if you grew up with it, yeah, you would have rolled your eyes and said, “Can I watch Midnight Special, please?”

Right, exactly. So after the Sneetches, what did you do? Were you still playing in other bands?  

The Sneetches never really ended formally. We just kind of peaked, and we all had to keep our day jobs. What happened for me personally was, I ended up getting a job working for a music management company in Oakland called Cahn & Saltzman. And that’s led me to where I am today. 

Right, so let’s talk about that. Elliot Cahn, former founding member of Sha Na Na. I mean, that’s amazing. When I was a little kid, we would see Sha Na Na on a cheesy TV variety show and you were like, who are these guys? They’re acting like they’re from the ’50s. And then of course I later learn they had a huge career, they were a big hit at Woodstock, and everybody loves them. So he ends up having a music management firm in Oakland. 

It was a very small office. It was Elliot and a guy called Jeff Saltzman, both lawyers and managers, and a guy called Dave, who was a drummer in a band called The Naked Into, and the Smoking Section before that. 

I remember Dave. He used to run Lost Weekend Video in the Mission District. 

I’d seen Dave at many shows. And one day he said, hang on, Daniel, maybe you’d be good to come and work here. They need some help with the system. The day I started working for Jeff and Elliot, I was so happy. They were such great guys. At that point, they had had some success a few years before with Testament. The Oakland-East Bay speed metal scene. 

Oh, that was a big scene. A lot of bands. 

They were managing Testament, and then legally representing a bunch of the other bands. Doing lots of legal work, as well as management and running a booking agency. I came in to primarily help with the booking agency, but I ended up working on everything else. The legal stuff was fascinating. Bands like Nirvana, Soundgarden, Tad, Primus would all call up, to work on little contracts here, quick bits of legal advice there. They were these cool ex-musicians with legal training, who knew how to work with musicians who didn’t have very much money and needed stuff done on the cheap. People like Wayne Kramer were always calling up. Dexter from Offspring. Any given day at that office, there would be Green Day or Rancid or Primus just sitting around my desk, shooting the breeze. It was kind of a little epicenter of activity. 

Right, right, right. As a younger person I often ended up gravitating, and I’m sure you did too, to that older generation of people who, my friend Michelle described it to me as, They’re still in it for the boogie. They’re not super cutthroat capitalists. They still love to hang out and be in the mix, right? 

That is exactly what they were like. This was not a grift for them. They were doing it because they love music. I remember the first day I worked with Elliot, I helped him type a letter and I said, “Sincerely. Should I say sincerely, Elliot?” He goes, “Sincerely to you, ’cause I love you so dearly.” And he started singing this song. I thought, I’m going to enjoy working here. I’d worked in very uptight offices up to that point. 

Right. So what Cahn & Saltzman is eventually best known for, their big success is the band Green Day. 

They had signed Green Day on as a management plan. They worked for them legally before that. And they had helped them get a deal with Warner Brothers. The band had just recorded the album Dookie, downstairs from where I’m sitting right now, in the Fantasy Studios building. But it hadn’t come out yet. 

Right, so nobody knew, it’s just a Green Day album. It seems to be pretty well produced, but what’s gonna happen? 

Yeah, I feel trepidatious talking about Green Day. I was just an assistant in the office. I had no claim to any special involvement in them. Green Day had big hopes. I remember one of the guys in the office saying to me, “I think they might be as big as Primus.” What little things I remember was that they were all really nice guys. We went to all their parties and their weddings, and they were just super cool guys. 

I did this book about the punk scene in the Bay Area. And I interviewed Billie Joe Armstrong. Really nice guy. He was very frank about the weird backlash the band received from the East Bay punk scene, this very rigid sense of punk identity, of not selling out. Did you witness any of that at all? 

Oh, absolutely. But the East Bay is pretty bad on that. I think the Counting Crows had to move away, because there was such a resentment against somebody that’s seen as going mainstream. We used to get these Green Day t-shirts, as samples. I went around to Noah’s Bagels on Gilman Street. I had a Green Day shirt on, this was early ’94. And I forgot I was wearing it. I go to Noah’s Bagels, and the guy behind the counter goes into a tirade about what sellouts they were. And I’m just trying to get my breakfast. They got it pretty bad from the local scene. And they had done nothing wrong. They were sort of exploited a little and, they came through it, I think, with their integrity. They really did. 

Yeah, I think so. Wildly successful. And they really do give back to the community. So can we talk about this other band? I saw them first at a backyard party in Marin. We were gathered around a swimming pool, it was a birthday party. The band was called Super Diamond. Like, wow, a tribute to Neil Diamond, that’s an act? And it was entertaining, and well thought out. Tell me how you first came across Super Diamond.

Jeff and Elliot had always had a wing of this very small company that did booking. And I kind of took over that, kept that humming along. We were representing a show band called Big Bang Beat.

Right. Yeah. They were from the ’80s. 

Exactly. But by the ’90s, they were still super strong. A show band playing hits, that specialized in playing society events. Concerts, but a lot of corporate events. I threw myself in on working on that project. One day a guy came in trying to get a deal for his original band, Baby Snufkin. This guitarist called Scrote. 

Scrote? 

Yeah. He’s now one of the chief arrangers of the David Bowie appreciation tour. He’s quite an industrious man. He was in a meeting trying to get a record deal. And he looked into my office, “Do you do booking?” I said, that’s right, I do. “Oh, I also play in this Neil Diamond tribute called Super Diamond.” And I said, you’re kidding me. You play all Neil Diamond? He said, “It’s all Neil Diamond.” I said, sounds fascinating. And I went to see them and they were just wonderful. 

Did you hear Neil Diamond in the UK when you were younger? 

A lot, yeah. He’s kind of like Andy Williams, a guilty pleasure. Can’t deny the beauty and the simplicity of his music. His unique baritone singing style stops him from being too syrupy. I remember listening to his lyrics as a very small boy, finding them quite intriguing, “I Am, I Said,” and stuff like that. 

A big star at the time. They used to call him the Jewish Elvis. There was this classic bootleg documentary Heavy Metal Parking Lot, about the fans of Judas Priest partying in the parking lot before a concert. Very entertaining. I interviewed that filmmaker, Jeff Krulik, and he eventually made a sequel called Neil Diamond Parking Lot. With interviews of these middle-aged ladies, waiting to see Neil. Have you ever seen that film? 

Yes. The 930 Club in Washington DC played it on New Year’s Eve before Super Diamond played. 

Oh wow! 

By the time you saw Super Diamond, they were selling out the DNA Lounge, then they sold out Slims, the Fillmore, they sold out Bimbo’s. They appealed to this young crowd that dug the kitschy irony, who grew up with their parents playing Neil Diamond. And it wasn’t until the band really started playing outside of San Francisco, that there would be a portion of salt-and-pepper original Neil Diamond fans. But they built up through a young business crowd, the 25-to-45 people who like to party. 

So was that your first client that you brought in?

One of the first, yeah. I was booking them as a live act. They weren’t looking for a record label. And they were self-managed. I wasn’t sure which route Super Diamond would find success in. And it ended up being a little bit of everything, but a lot of rock clubs at the beginning. 

In the ’90s when I would see acts like that, Bud E. Love was one example, bands that were doing tributes, it was always about the live show.

Yeah. One thing that’s clear, if you see a good tribute band, like any genre of music, there are good bands and there are not so good. I feel fortunate that I work with musicians that have a good mindset. The best tribute bands have to be a lot in love with the artists you’re celebrating. I look at it as a celebration. The audience has come to celebrate it with you. And together it’s a big love-fest, in honor of that person’s music. 

Now inside of that, you act a little bit like a crazy fan, the bands act a little bit like a rock star. But there’s no illusion, everyone knows what’s going on. And it’s purely a fun live show. It’s like people go to the symphony to celebrate their love for Mahler. Everybody in the orchestra loves Mahler. The ticketgoers love Mahler. Mahler’s not in the building. Now, am I equating a tribute band playing in a nightclub with a symphony? Not exactly, but they’re both performing cover songs. 

Right, right. So what really works best in a tribute band? It’s a performance and it’s a show, but I’m curious, you must have some insights into this. 

As a musician, I tend to like the bands that do things musically very, very well. And I think the best cover bands, when you go and see them, if you’re a musician, you go, well, they’re not just bashing through the hits. There’s actually some really good playing. The regular people, they come for the show, the sense of gathering place. They just love to hear their favorite songs one after the other, and served up in a way that’s really entertaining. And they vote with their feet. So they either come back or they don’t.

What’s the difference between a tribute band that really kicks ass and one that is not that great? 

I don’t think there is a particular ingredient. Some bands, they look alike, sound alike. No denying, that’s pretty effective. Others do an interpretation. They know, “Well, I can never look like somebody exactly, but I’ll just get up on stage and do a salute to their music.” It just depends. But they can both be done very well. It’s complicated. Randy from Super Diamond does sound a lot like Neil Diamond, but he doesn’t look like him. He looks like a young Marlon Brando, he’s just a great looking guy. But he comes on with sequined shirts and just throws himself into it. Within the presentation, you have to show some confidence.

For instance, the singer in Petty Theft doesn’t look like Tom Petty, doesn’t really sound like Tom Petty. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. Because you could say that Tom Petty is somebody like Bob Dylan. There’s a fine line between honoring somebody and parodying them. So imagine doing a Bob Dylan tribute, with a curly wig and a nasally voice. There are some people where it’s best to give your own interpretation. 

Yes, that totally makes sense. So now you have your booking agency, Swan Entertainment. You have a full roster of these tribute acts, from David Bowie to Pink Floyd, Tom Petty, Michael Jackson, Duran Duran, the Bee Gees. I’ve been told that tribute bands often share musicians just because they know how to play with each other.

Not as much as you think. Most of the bands have a pretty rock solid lineup. Occasionally, there’s one that will fill in on another band. But most of the bands have separate and solid lineups. 

So there’s a wide variety of genres that you represent. Do some bands work better in a certain market than others?

You know, it’s always a surprise to me, if they take off in certain places. Super Diamond were lucky early on, in that they broke out and have been touring nationally for many years. For the initial part of their career, they were playing 1000- to 2000-capacity ballrooms in most of the major cities across the country. Super Diamond was on David Letterman in 2008, a whole week of tribute bands. They also do casino work and a lot of performing arts theaters. So coming up this year for them, they’re in DC, New York, Boston. They’re playing with the Boston Pops Symphony on Nantucket Island in August. They’ve been playing with symphonies. One of the band members got the sets charted up for orchestra. And so for the last 15 years, they played about 30 shows with symphonies around the country. 

Amazing. Is Super Diamond your top number one act? 

Tainted Love’s success has also been sensational. Unbelievable success they’ve had, for a local ’80s band. They have the most amazing players, the most amazing singers, and they’ve headlined San Francisco a lot. I had a joke with somebody. I said, who’s the band that’s played the most headlining dates in San Francisco? And they said, Steve Miller. Because he played 70 times at the Fillmore. And I said, well, I think Tainted Love is more than that. 

Interesting. Why do you think that is? The execution of the idea? Or is it that specific era of the music? 

No, it was a tough start for them. When they came out, people weren’t really celebrating the ’80s. They were still into disco and stuff. So they took four years, just doggedly playing. They used to play in a lounge on Van Ness Avenue every Thursday for like three years. So they slowly built a following, just bit by bit. Hard work, many nights, banging away in these small, sweaty clubs, to people spilling drinks on the stage. And what they’ve done, for the past few many years now, is being purely a headliner act. Very, very exclusive. It’s only ’80s. They’re not cheap. They only play the best clubs around the Bay Area. 

Wow. Okay. 

Foreverland is a band I worked with for many years as a Michael Jackson tribute. And I’ve never seen them do anything other than a fantastic show. It’s 12 people onstage. It’s just a lot of entertainment. One of the more recent bands is called Fleetwood Macramé. 

Fleetwood Macramé, 2023

A Fleetwood Mac tribute, and they’re called Fleetwood Macramé?

I met them a few years ago. And we agreed to work together, they were playing mostly the Milk Bar, the Rickshaw Stop, the Ivy Room, these smaller venues. They had a huge LGBTQ following, which is unusual for a tribute band. I just thought it was so cool. They had such a great relationship with their audience. And I thought, I’m not sure, I don’t know. But I really liked the people in the band. I could tell they were great musicians. The girl who sings the Stevie Nicks, Linda, is a brilliant songwriter on her own. They just had such a cool vibe. And now they’re headlining Bimbo’s, Great American, selling out everywhere all around Northern California. 

So when you work with these bands, is there any sort of input from Daniel Swan’s history of your own music career? Do they ever ask you for advice, like, do you think we should add another guitar, or what have you? 

Being a former musician myself, I’m of the opinion that the best thing to do, is to work with musicians who know what they’re doing. Then you don’t have to tell them what to do. I’m not very good at telling people what to do, because I used to be in a band, and I didn’t like it when anybody told me what to do. So I attribute all my success down to the fact that I offer my opinions only when asked. And I stick to the business of being encouraging, just finding out what I can do for them, what venues can I call and email. Give them advice on ticket prices, and is this a good deal, is this a bad deal. 

I understand what you’re saying. It’s your job to help them, but also kind of stay out of the way.

I can’t be un-opinionated, but you’ve got to let them flush out their ideas. I mean, of course, sometimes you have to ask them to face certain facts, and you have to be the bringer of news about things. And that’s tough. That’s the work that I’m involved with. Planning the shows, talking about deal points, marketing, introducing people to the band, just getting the word out there. There’s a lot to do. It’s a very busy job. 

So can we talk about the popularity of Yacht Rock? One of the acts you represent is Mustache Harbor. There are several such bands around the U.S., but by a mile, they definitely have the best name!

Mustache Harbor, 2018

Mustache Harbor has been very popular locally. That was a complete surprise, because nostalgically it was out of step. The only thing I can equate Yacht Rock to is, you remember when swing was popular in the ’90s? 

Oh yes, the swing revival. The movie Swingers included a live band that was very popular, Big Bad Voodoo Daddy. Royal Crown Revue was another. The music, the clothes, the cars. That was really the happening thing for awhile. 

Yacht Rock is a little bit like that, it’s kind of out of sequence, right? You would think that at the time, people wanted to hear the ’90s and the early 2000s. So people took a step back and went back into the soft rock, the ’70s. A lot of it started as a satirical YouTube run of videos, where the phrase “Yacht Rock” started to get used. This was 15, 20 years ago.

I’ve seen those. Yes, you’re right. The videos were comedic and fictional, but they brought together that style of music, with the aesthetic of being on a yacht. 

Now there are people in their late ’20s, who were born well after any of those records were ever put out, they come and sing along with every word. People know about nostalgia differently these days. They learn about it from Sirius, from Pandora, over the sound system, from shopping at Trader Joe’s, from movies, from Glee. There’s all different ways that younger people absorb nostalgia. The reverence for that golden period, the ’60s, ’70s, ’80s, it’s not fading, it’s growing. It is an interesting job I have, where I have to say on the phone, “Let me talk to you a little bit more about Mustache Harbor.” 

So I saw Mustache Harbor once at Slim’s, and it was hilarious. They really played up the nautical theme. The stage was set with props like fish netting, life preservers, a captain’s wheel. All the band members wore mustaches and white pants and aviator shades. There was an electric fan set up in front of the guitar player, blowing his long hair for the entire show. People were handed toy mustaches as they came in. There was a bit of “yeah, we know, wink wink,” to the approach, but they played the tunes extremely well. The audience was singing along. Christopher Cross, Doobie Brothers, Hall & Oates, Little River Band, Boz Scaggs, I knew every damn song. It’s amazing. 

I heard an observation that ’70s soft rock is one of the closest that rock ever got to jazz. Those bands included some very complicated chord structures and harmonies. So firstly, it’s hard to do. And then secondly, it’s not been beaten to death too much. There’s just something about it. I don’t know what Yacht Rock means. I mean, not everybody was from L.A., and not everybody had a yacht. But are there pictures of Crosby Stills and Nash, or Loggins and Messina, or the Eagles, on yachts? Yes, there are pictures of them on yachts in the ’70s. It’s this odd sort of evocative word, rather than being exactly descriptive. I just love music from that period. It’s not even a guilty pleasure. It’s a pleasure. It just is. 

It was such a recognizable sound, it’s in all of our DNA. And you’re right, there’s a degree of musical difficulty, it’s not just banging out straight blues or rock and roll.

It is music that the parts need to be in place. The guitar licks, the guitar solos have to be kind of precisely done. They do a lot of homework. They rehearse the harmonies. Go and watch Mustache Harbor, just watch the drummer alone. The man is insanely good, Jeff Mars. So it may seem like a fun, wacky party, but there’s a lot of work behind it. And they really care about what they wear, and set the atmosphere. 

Have there been any instances where people join them onstage?

One year at Outside Lands, Mustache Harbor was hired to play the comedy tent. They played sets in between the comedians. Who’s the guy from The Nerdist? Chris Hardwick, and the comedian from Anchorman, with the cowboy hat, David Koechner. The two of them sang “We’ve Got Tonight,” by Kenny Rogers and Sheena Easton. They ended the song lying on the ground in a loving embrace, with the guys in Mustache Harbor backing them. It was very, very funny.