windsor | Outsider Rock

Canadian band TEAZE returned after nearly 40 years in 2019. Since that first show in Windsor, Ontario (which I was at), the band played many more shows, both here and in Europe. Last year they released the live album Live At Leige, underwent a change in drummers, and this year, they’ve more recently released the outstanding Rev Your Engines album! The band’s first release of new songs since 1980! And you haven’t heard it – get it! The band sounds energetic, rockin, and ready to go. I posted an interview with guitarist Mark Bradac a while back, and a few weeks back I had the privelage to speak with singer & bass player Brian Danter. Having recently turned 75, one would not know it from hearing this album! Brian and I talked about the band’s comeback, the new album, as well as some of Teaze’ past with getting signed, their early popularity in Japan and his reasons for leaving the band following the Body Shots album. Check it out. Check out the links below, and check out the new album!

The band’s third album was the live In Japan album (Tour Of Japan). What lead you guys to that popularity over there, and being able to go over there and get a live album out of it, so early on?

That’s something that the record company had planned. At that point we only had 2 albums out, our first album and On The Loose. It was probably all, kind of over-flowing to kind of keep the ball really rolling fast. So, it was a great idea. So, we practically did most of everything that we had in the two albums with, I think, a few new songs. I’m not sure off the top of my head, but yeah, it was a great experience.

Did you guys ever go back there or was that it?

That’s been our plan since we got back together. So now we’re hoping Kevin with signing with Deco and with Escape, we have some promotion. It looks like it’s really doing well in Europe right now. And Canada’s kind of a slow go. I don’t know if Mark shared, like, it’s just, you know, being kind of out of action and back in action for 45 years, trying to get the momentum going. I mean, the momentum is good with the audience, It’s just, it’s a whole new gamut, now you’re facing the internet, and everybody can do an album or a recording, on their computer and that. And I’m not against AI, I know has some benefits, but we were really proud in the fact that all the songs on the new album, Kevin, are all generated and created by us. There’s work put into it, which I’m grateful for.

Of those early albums, did you have any kind of favorites as far as…I often think that One Night Stands should have been the album that did it for you guys, but it wasn’t. So, what were some of the ups and downs for you?

You know what it was, It was like, this was one of our biggest budgets that we had gone in at the time. We were recording at Le Studio, which, the Bee Gees, Nazareth, Rush, so many groups had gone there. And when we did it, we knew that this is a first-class studio. So, we really got an opportunity to really shine. Now, we had been spending months at a recording studio in a basement that our sound guy had, a really nice one, writing and recording stuff as a demo for it. So, when we went in, we were really well prepared and we like to be prepared, you know!? So, some favorites. Oh, geez, when I go back, the first album, I’m trying to think right now…It’s so far gone, so far back there. But I think on the first one, the slow one (“Open My Eyes”)

We’ve written so many songs now over the years and we’re kind of so focused on the new album and we’re already getting ideas for another album. And I don’t know if Marco explained to you that, in his words, we kind of knew that our only step forward from what we’ve done in the last few years was to do new material because we found, I don’t know if it’s political, we can feel like it, but I understand all of a sudden coming back on the scene, we’ve been out West two or three times. We’ve been to Europe twice.

We did the live album and at least was a good step forward for us. That night went off phenomenal. I think in the whole album, I corrected one line in “Reach Out” because I got a loss for words, so the camera went away and we were able to put it in. But it was like four or five words. That’s about the only thing.

Yeah, I like “Sure Thing”. “Back In Action”, off of One Night Stands. There’s just so many good songs, like one after another.

And I really liked, because we had released “Sweet Misery”, which was a great song, but at the time, I know Marco probably told you, it didn’t really help us because we were a Windsor-Detroit band. We grew up on the Amboy Dukes, Ted Nugent, Grand Funk, SRC, a lot of Detroit bands. Alice Cooper. So, our sound really kind of mimicked those raw guitars with not a lot of processing and everything. And we’ve tried to get back to that. I think Charlie kind of (with Marco), marries the two sounds together, which is nice. Charlie has a little more spread on his pedal to do those kinds of things, which is nice. But we try to keep everything to that, Windsor Detroit rock area, because when we moved out, we moved to Toronto first, we weren’t really even aware of how big the Canadian music scene, we were just really isolated from it, because all the music we listened to were concerts. We went to Detroit; we had that privilege. So, with the new album, that’s what we’ve really tried to go back to.

Everybody’s had a hand in it except the new drummer because we lost Mike a little over a year ago. He just felt it was time. And then we got a phenomenal drummer, Jimmy Bonventre who just fit in like a glove.

In that era of the late seventies, early eighties, there was a lot of Canadian bands that had three or four albums out and they kind of fizzled out because they didn’t kind of cut it in the States. Is that kind of a fair statement for you guys and part of the reason you left?

Yeah. Actually, when I left, they were working out a deal. We were supposed to go and do some dates. We had done three dates with Blue Oyster Cult and there was talk of that, but the big one was we were supposed to go down to Texas and do some dates with Peter Frampton; that’s the thing I remember.

And then I know Marco shared, I just got really tired of, in the industry, the promises and a lot of stuff that came along in the industry in that time. A lot of drugs were around free, and I can just be upfront with you. The girls throw themselves at you and it’s just a lot of people just hanging around the band because of who you are. And I got really disillusioned. I love the guys in the band. I love playing, I love writing, and I love recording, all that. But unfortunately, all the other stuff came with it back then. And I think you have more control over it now than it was back then, because when you’re thrust into that level, within a year or two, we’re playing over in Japan, we’re a Windsor band! So, a lot of that high-life and everything, like when we landed at Narita Airport, there was hundreds and hundreds of Japanese girls and kids already with dolls, mimicking us and flowers and everything. We weren’t used to that over here. We more or less experienced stuff after the shows when we would go back and sign albums and greet people, but nothing like Japan, because we broke on, there was a wave, I think we were on the second wave that went over to Japan. We went over at the same time Cheap Trick went over, Kate Bush, a band from England called UFO. There’s so many other bands. We kind of went over on that. At the time, we were the only Canadian band that were part of a package deal. So, we got our foot in the door, Kevin, really, really quick. And we were grateful to that. So, then we came back, we shot a movie of the whole thing. And then we were using it and splicing it for advertisements for tours that we were going on. And so apparently there was a flood at Donald K. Donald and where our record company’s office was, and we were told that all that got destroyed completely. I mean, Marco believes that one day it might surface, but I don’t know, it’s like 40, 50 years.

Did you guys do a lot of extra stuff in the studio? Were you kind of like a studio band where you record like 15 songs and leave four or five off?

We had songs, like I’ve been writing for years, and I don’t know if Mark told you the story on our first album when we got the opportunity to go to record. I’d already been a local musician. I’d done recording in the States, recording in Windsor a few times. I was writing music. I was in other local bands. So, at the time when the band, when we launched our career, the record company saw that was about a six- or seven-years gap between the other guys and me. So, they put me more in that and, a few years older than them, but I had like, if you go back to, this is probably beyond you, but I remember when they lowered the drinking age to 18, everybody went into the bars. And if you make money, a lot of the high school concerts and everything just dried up; the ones at colleges and everything, everybody was in pubs and bars. So, I had to go in there, for two or three years to make money and keep playing. But then I got really fed up with it, because I would look out in the audience and you have the diehard people there to hear the band, but just everybody talking at the tables, the guys were there to pick up girls, the girls were there to pick up guys. And I said, ‘You know what? I’ve had enough of this life’. So, I pulled out of the band at the time that I was in. I was working part-time at a music store, and people didn’t know, guitar players and drummers and all that, because I was bass player back then when they were coming in and trying out instruments, I was auditioning them. I was listening to how they played, talked to them, but they didn’t know anything. So, when I finally got the guys together and had a meeting, we went and rented an abandoned warehouse in a factory, the whole floor. We had a freight elevator. We got it for a really good deal. I had a manager that I’d worked with in some bands before that, he’s passed now. We went in there…and think of this – back then we bought double stack high watts. I bought high watt, and both Marco and Chuck, they had two double stack of Marshals, or High watt. Think of what they would be worth today. So, we just rehearsed for about nine months. And then we played, and we invited a whole bunch of the student body presidents. We invited them one night. We had lights set up. We were in this big room. We had drum riser, everything! And we played like a 30 minute set for them. Well, that night, we booked a whole bunch of high schools, because high schools had kind of dried up. And then we invited all these student presidents out; we had about six or seven of them. We played around Windsor. The last one we got was actually the biggest show. We went back then when nobody was hardly using lights, because I’m an admirer of Pink Floyd way back, when nobody was using lights. And we got our light guy to go rent scaffolding. We got two follow spots behind, on stage, coming down on us. We had a follow spot out in the audience. We had flash pots. I mean, back then, that’s like 1974, 75. And just so happens that the Stampeders were in town and played a concert. Well, the guy who was the road manager for them, he came out, he heard about it. For some reason, he just ended up at Sandwich High School. It was a fairly new high school, big auditorium, big gym.

And he talked to us after, and he went back and talked to Mel Shaw, he was the owner of the Stampeders, or the main manager. So, he said, he’d bring us to Toronto and record a demo. So, we went down there, and at the time we had zip! We had no songs ready in this band. We were just rehearsing a lot of Deep Purple. We were doing “Man On The Silver Mountain”, which we brought back after all. We were doing some, because Kiss was just…I’d opened up – before this band, I opened up in another band with Kiss’ first Canadian tour that went to London. And I got the pictures to prove it.

Can I ask, was that a band that included Joe Konas?

Yes! The band ‘Joe’, you remember that!?

No, but I know Joe because I’m a Uriah Heep fan. So, I know his connection with them through The Gods.

So yeah, we played that gig.

I’d been doing stuff before I put Teaze together. And originally, we weren’t called Teaze, we were called ‘Ontario’, because I had been in a three-piece band with a girl drummer, and we kept the name, but then when we signed a record deal, we found out that we couldn’t get a legal right to that. I don’t know how Chicago did it, maybe it’s different because it’s a city, So, anyways, that’s when we came up with the name. We changed the name when we moved to Toronto.

I know you went into the ministry and did other stuff, obviously. What was kind of the catalyst or the deciding thing for you in getting the band back together?

Like I always tell Mark, he had 45 years to put another Teaze together, but he was running his own shop, he was playing with his wife for quite a while, in the band ‘Lynn and The Rebels’. He was doing country stuff, which he’s very good at, but I can’t get him to do any country now. I’m trying to get him, ‘Let’s do like a country rock song’. He said, ‘No those days are gone’. But then for years, he had a gig in Windsor at the Yacht Club, him and his wife just played and played.

So, my wife, when I finally retired, I was in ministry 33 years. At 25, I was the worship leader at a big church in Windsor. I had the double-stacked Fender, I played flying V’s every week. I mean, it was a thriving church. I was kind of bringing, and I’m not trying to brag at those, but I was kind of bringing a new edge to Christian music and that. And I was really blessed in that. I did that for 25 years. Then I passed the baton to another guy I’d kind of trained up through youth. And then my wife and I did youth ministry for five years, and I enjoyed that. We had as high as 140 teenagers out on a Friday night.

We did summer camps, youth camps. I had all that experience. So, I’m leading up to what it’s saying…. So, then the last two years, I did a lot of hospital and home visitation. When I finally retired, my wife said, ‘You know, the guys have been wanting together to do a concert’. So, I was going to rent, at the time my brother-in-law, Lynn’s brother, he has a street church down in a real rough area of Windsor. And it used to be a bar called ‘Mongo Murphs’. He turned it into ‘New Song’. And he’d get all kinds of street people coming in and everything. So I asked if I could use the place; it holds about 200-250. Anyways, then we thought, we were just going (to) send it out for, because none of my kids had ever seen Teaze, obviously. A lot of other friends never got to see Teaze, because we never came down to Windsor. The closest we ever got several times was coming to London, when we did a tour, Canadian tour with Aerosmith, then we did a tour with Blue Oyster Cult, then we did a tour with Cheap Trick. We just never realized what would happen… All of a sudden, we’ve got local press involved that we were doing this show. So, we thought, ‘Maybe we better go to rent a bigger place’. So, we went to the theater downtown, it holds about, I think about 600-something. And we thought, ‘We won’t fill that! But it’ll be a nice stage and we’ll have nice lighting’. So, Kevin, we sold it out two weeks before, the venue. And that night, we found out people had flown in from Vancouver, out West. They’d come from Montreal. Some had come from the East Coast, Upper Ontario and just filled the place!

My buddy and I came up from the Falls.

Oh, you were there!?

Yeah.

Oh, wow! And I heard that night, there was about 70 people at the door, didn’t have tickets. So, they brought them in and they have an area where they have stand up tables.

That happened, and then all of a sudden we started getting invites. We had all this press, we were in the newspaper, we were in local magazines…Even the CTV came down and at the theater, they had interviewed us. We went down there and did it during the week before we set up.

Then we went out to the East Coast, and we played with Honeymoon Suite, and we were getting these invites. And the problem that happened is that COVID hit. We thought that was the end, you know!? We went about a year and a half and we just thought, we had our little stint and everything. So, we started talking, let’s get together and we can put the mics at four areas. So, we started rehearsing again all through COVID. We were meeting twice a month and we didn’t tell anybody. And the band was getting tighter and tighter, and we started to get ideas. Mike never wanted to do new music, he felt it was like kind of ‘Let’s focus on the old stuff’. Well, we only really had one AM hit. We had a lot of FM songs. So, when Mike left, it just really opened up the door for the new album.

I got it.

Oh, good. So, what do you think of it?

Like a lot of people, I didn’t know what to expect, but it surpassed whatever I expected. I think every song on it is good. And the lead off track is just a great, obviously a great opener.

That’s our new opener! Now for that album, really there’s songs that I automatically liked, but now that the album’s done and there’s four songs that we’ve already added to our 90-minute set. We’re playing August 22nd at a big venue in Leamington. It’s down by the water. It’s like an amphitheater. They got a great stage and everything, and we’re headlining. We’ve got two other bands opening. I don’t know if Mark told you that.

Actually, Rick Labonte told me.

Oh, what a great guy. I got to meet him.

And I love the sound of the album because I think those older albums, they were kind of between hard rock and AOR. I think they could have been heavier, guitar-wise, but this one sounds really up to date and heavier.

We really saw, a lot of the bands – great music, but a lot of the rock bands are very heavily processed. So, you get a lot of like foot pedal and stuff. We wanted to bring a little bit of that in, which Charlie does, but we wanted to keep everything kind of raw. I think if we go too out in right field, we’ll sound like a lot of other bands. And I think the people that know aren’t disappointed. I think that we really hit it. And I think Charlie, his skills just…what we would do is we would go into a studio, record basic tracks, then we had all the time in the world over the last 10 to 12 months to hash stuff out, change stuff. We’d record at Charlie’s because he’s got Pro-Tools, which is the standard in the industry, which the guy we went to, he’s done two or three songs for Metallica. So, he really knows his stuff. I think the song that’s really standing out to me now, live and it’s going to be in the set is “Gotta Rock”.

Yeah, I like that one. Obviously, I like “Man Of Vision”; I think that’s a classic type of….

Like a “Heartless World” song, eh!?

That’s exactly what reminded me of, and your vocal, I thought, Wow! That’s like kind of like not a ‘part two’, but in that same ballpark.

Yeah, and on the opening and in the middle, that’s my daughter, Bethany, who sang when we played in Windsor. Like I had my wife, I had Mark’s wife and my daughter, Bethany, who’s younger. When we played all three concerts at the Walkerville Theater, we all brought the girls up, we added, but now we’re trying to just be the four-piece because now Jimmy sings, Charlie sings, and Marco does a little bit.

What are some of the songs you had a hand in as far as songwriting?

I wrote “Wonder” and I wrote “Can’t Stop Loving You”. That’s actually a song I wrote about 15 years ago. I used to do it when I did outreach and I did prisons. I used to do that. And so Charlie came along, we added a bridge to it.

And then “Wonder”, I kind of co-wrote with another friend of mine, but the lyrics, Charlie ended up changing the lyrics on it a bit, from my friend I used to write with. I’ve written about 70 to 80 songs over the years, and I’ve got them in the can. Obviously, a lot of my stuff is very faith-based without being super religious, but that’s just coming from, like Kevin, I on Sunday, I just turned 75 and I’m very grateful, I have seven children, I have six grandkids, I have two on the way. And Marco probably would tell you, I’m very much a family man, and I just love it. I love being back with the band, playing music again. And I have to be very, very grateful. I just did a funeral for an old friend that used to play bass with me at the church. Phenomenal bass player, played a fretless. He got cancer and died. I’m a former pastor; I was licensed and everything. So, I was privileged. I just went there to go to the funeral. I just heard about it last night. And so, I showed up and then the father or the brother just said, hey, would you say a few words?…Marco always jokes with me. He said, “If I get sick, I don’t want you showing up in the hospital!” He said, “It seems like people die when you show up”. I said, “Marco, they don’t all die. I go there when the friends and that, when they’re approaching death”.

I have a big heart for people. That’s what, I try to reflect that even on stage. Teaze is very, very much a relational band. And I’d like to keep it that way. We realize in the business, you have to be business. But if we don’t have that core, we love playing together. We love being together. It’s great. The bands we played with seem to really chum up with us. And of course, we’ve gotten a lot of promises that never materialize.

I think, because of the size of our country, there’s almost like a certain fraternity amongst the bands from that era, the late 70s and 80s, that you guys all meet up and play a lot of these festivals together. Some guys interchange bands and that.

Here’s the thing, and I don’t know if Marco shared this, and this is just speculation, Kevin. We’ve gone out there and done that. And Marco always says to these bands, ‘Throw us a bone, we’ll open up for you’. And they do make promises, but I realize someone’s working for them, getting gigs. But it seems like in Canada right now, like a lot of the bands, you’ve got Honeymoon Suite, you’ve got Streetheart, you’ve got April Wine, you got all these Canadian bands that have stayed around, and they’re old material, they’ve got a lot of material that was popular. But to get into that, it can almost seem political. You know what I mean? So, Bernie Aubin from the Headpins was really instrumental in getting us out West and putting gigs on us. And now I really think that next year, I think we’re going to be doing a lot of dates in Europe because Europe – they’re taking off with the new album.

And we have places in Canada. ‘Please come to Montreal’. ‘Please come to the East Coast’. ‘Please come back out West’. But it’s all up to the promoters. A lot of them, they’re younger, they’re new. They don’t really know us, and that we still got the energy on stage, Kevin. We do.

I see that.

I guess they maybe say to themselves ‘Why do I want to invest in a bunch of old guys who just came back!?’ And when they’ve seen us…. But a lot of times, they have these group meetings among the people that are putting on the festivals, and they just seem to keep going with the bands that have been steady. And that’s understandable. I’m not resentful. So, I think that we’re going to be plowing ground in Europe and England, and maybe Japan; there’s a chance because the music has a connection there. I think then, when we come back to Canada on our own, it’ll open up more doors.

That’d be great! For me, as a fan, I like listening to bands that still have something new to offer, not just doing the same 12 hits for the last 40 years. And there’s a few out there that do that. It’s good to keep it moving, right!? You got to move forward, or you’re just a nostalgic act.

Kevin, have you seen the AI video that was done for “Rev Your Engines”?

Yeah.

We were like, kind of, ‘Oh, I don’t know’. And even my kids, I’ve got three of my kids are very musical. And they said, ‘Oh, Da!’, But when they saw what we did with it, we purposely made it kind of cartoonish and AI. But it really sends the message. There’s nothing lewd in it or anything like that. It’s just, it kind of explains where we grew up; all the drag racing and the stock cars and everything. We had them here too in Windsor, but It kind of just really sets us out there, what we are.

As far as the stuff you grew up on, as a singer, bass player that, what were some of your influences?

I grew up loving the Beatles’ music. I liked the harmonies and everything. I loved Hendrix when he came along. I loved Cream. I didn’t dislike them, but I didn’t really follow the Stones in the early years. Pink Floyd in the very early, early years, won my heart. I loved the creativity. Nobody was doing theatrical stuff like that, with the heartbeat and surround sound PA. But I think the one person I’ve given a lot of credit to this, when Grand Funk came along, and they were under a lot of criticism from the music industry, but they were drawn huge crowds! I liked Mark Farner, because he was not only a good writer, but he was a polished, great singer. I used I used to compare, you’d have guys like the guy in Aerosmith and Mick Jagger – to me, they’re “stylists”, they have a great style, but Mark Farner had a voice. His range was unbelievable, the clarity. I remember I used to put on Mark Farner albums, the first two, and I would sing along with him. And actually my own range opened up Kevin just to mimic his playing, learning his songs, learning his vibrato and his technique. I just said, “That’s how I want to sing like!” And of course, Ronnie James Dio, when he came along.

Some of the interviews we’ve done, and the writers, they’ve said, “Boy, you were stepping on dangerous territory to do something like that”. There’s two places you either do it like Dio, and a lot of times, he can’t be duplicated. Or you change the song completely, which would be murder to do that. So, I just said to the guys, “I just want to sing it like Dio would have sang it, but with my voice.” And actually, it was a piece of cake. It was the one song on the album. Honestly, Kevin, I think I did three takes.

It’s a classic song.

Now, that’s actually a song that we used to do when the band first got together. And Marco’s the one that came forward and said, “Brian, you think you still got it!?” We were looking at covers and that, and so one day at practice, Marco just out of the blue started doing the chords in it. I thought, ‘Boy, is that tough sounding Mark’, he just opened up his amp. So then we just decided to do it. And because we wanted a cover on it, we thought that would be good and healthy for us to show that we could kind of dip into something, someone else that kind of fit us.

I did interview Mark Farner a couple of months ago for his latest album.

Did you!?

He’s a very interesting. Very talkative guy. I could just listen to him all day because he must have 1001 stories.

Like me, Farner ended up really giving his heart to the Lord and serving. That’s kind of like when I came on, I didn’t know. I wear this hat (Puts on red ‘Jesus’ cap), and I get a lot of comments, a lot of – “What are you doing? “ When I’m at the signing table, I’ll put it on. I’m not ashamed of the gospel and who I’m serving. And that’s kind of what drives me. I don’t push it on anybody, but I like them to know that I’m real and who I am. I’m a Christian and I can play rock music and have fun with the guys. A lot of the other stuff that was in the past, is gone for me. The stuff is around you, but you don’t have to be part of it. Wherever I go, Marco jokes I’m still a tourist. I mean, not with the camera or cell phone, but they’ll often go off and sometimes party a bit, and I’m off and I’m in the street meeting people. And I just love meeting people. I love hearing their stories. It’s just me. I’m the same guy at 75!