Should ever you get the chance, I highly recommend securing a neighborhood rock star. We here in the Piedmont have been blessed with the presence of one Chris Daughtry, who turned a celebrated stint on a certain reality show into a viable career as the modern day Bon Jovi. In fact, I’m thinking of naming him the Official Recording Artist of Viewfinder BLUES. (Hey, no OTHER globally known vocalist stops his sound-check to ask me about my blog. I’m looking at you Jack White!) Anyhoo, where was I? Oh yeah, the bald guy with the blistering pipes. Shannon Smith and I first met Chris shortly before American Idol made him into a household name. Suddenly, the dude who used to write up service orders at the local Honda dealership was silencing his own idols with weapons-grade swagger and propulsive vocals. Not bad work if you can get it.
These days, Chris doesn’t need a news crew to get him some press, but he still throws us locals a bone whenever he can. Such was the case yesterday, when Shannon and I met the band at the Greensboro Coliseum, where rehearsals for a new tour were winding down. That’s where we pulled up a couple of equipment cases and got down to the business of interviewing the local boy done very, very good. Shannon did most of the heavy lifting; I just huddled behind the camera and tried not to yell “Freebird!” That became even tougher a few minutes later, when I joined Chris and his crew onstage for a bracing round of ‘Let’s deafen the cameraman’! That they nearly did, though I’m always up for a little hearing loss whenever the Daughtry gang wants to bring the thunder.
Sorry, my frontal lobe’s been spewing out classic rawk standards ever since Daughtry singed my eyebrows with his blowtorch of a throat. And that was before he showed me his six page spread in this month’s Muscle and Fitness Magazine. (Dude, put a shirt on!) And while you’re at it, Chris, remember what I said about recording a cover of ‘Tie Your Mother Down.’ Not only would you do Freddy Mercury proud, but you’d turn a new generation onto the early Queen canon…
I even know a guy who’d shoot the video… Cheap!