Dave Glannon has been a fixture on the greater-Manchester, New Hampshire scene for about ten years now. Glannon began his career, in earnest, playing in the Kantu Blues Band at KC’s Rib Shack in Manchester. He said he wasn’t that good at the time, but that Kantu jam host Jerry Paquette saw something in him and told him to keep coming down to his Tuesday night jam.
“I loved playing with Jerry, but kind of wanted to do my own thing,” Glannon said. “I had been playing with Jerry for about two years with Kantu. I’d just gotten divorced. I wanted to get back into music. About 2006, I’d written some songs.”
Glannon had been going to the Sunday night jam at Strange Brew Tavern where he had met drummer Lee Sevigny, guitarists Tim O’Connor and Jesse Twarjan, bassist Joe Zangri, and many others. Those players eventually became part of the revolving cast of musicians who supported Glannon’s band Downtown Dave Glannon And The Deep Pockets. The current configuration is guitarist Mike Rivela, bassist Joe Zangri, and drummer Dan Denahy. Before Denahy, the Deep Pockets included Leroy Piña and the mighty Rick King.
“We started rehearsing down at the Mills,” he said. “We started going over some the stuff.” The band didn’t have a name for a while. But they had had some gigs coming up soon, and they we’re scheduled to record a demo CD. The last minute name came about because the band likes to “keep in the pocket,” or groove. Hence, the Deep Pockets.
Being called Downtown Dave was a nickname that came about in the same way many Manchester area musicians were nicknamed. The sobriquet was given to Glannon by Kantu leader Jerry Paquette. Once Paquette named someone, it remained their name. Paquette had observed that Glannon was a city person who spent a lot of time hanging around the Elm Street area of the Queen City.
“Everybody had a moniker when you were with Jerry, and I was Downtown Dave,” he said.
Downtown Dave And The Deep Pockets eventually became the hosts of the Sunday night blues jam at Johnny Bad’s. They took over the Elm Street jam around the same time Manchester’s Strange Brew Tavern ceased their own Sunday night jam, creating a void that Glannon and his lineup at the time were smart enough to fill. In keeping with the traditiona of his rotating cast, Dave Guilmette became the band’s bass player and Chris Noyes became the latest guitarist. Guilmette was eventually replaced by Joe Zangri.
“We did some three piece stuff, and we did some four piece stuff,” Glannon said. “At Karma, we used to do a three piece thing down there at the coffee shop. At that point Joe Kocalis was in the band.”
The original purpose of forming Downtown Dave And The Deep Pockets was for Glannon to be able to do his own thing. He’d been playing with some other bands and to do something with his own original songs. “I wanted to do some different kind of grooves, change it up a little bit,” he said.
At one point, Glannon and Sevigny had started a spin off band side project called Squish Mitten, also featuring guitarist Pat Herlihy and bassist LauraJean Zangri. “So we had two things going on at the beginning,” Glannon said. “We had the regular blues thing going on. Squish Mitten was kind of like a funky, jazzy thing. Squish Mitten fizzled out. We went with the Deep Pockets thing instead. I just wanted something up tempo, groove, soul, blues, R&B type of thing. I want to get people up dancing, have a fun time for the night.”
Glannon and his Deep Pockets have been known to play their own special covers of standards to change things up a little to keep things fresh. As for their originals, they’re doing some recording these days with Pat Herlihy, a guitarist with Mighty Sam McClain. Herlihy has a home studio that he’s been using to help up and coming talent. “We actually did some recording Sunday there,” Glannon said. “That went very well, and we’ll be doing a little bit more, so hopefully soon we’ll have something.”
Glannon got into blues after he saw blues artists credited to songs on albums by Aerosmith, The Doors, and Led Zeppelin. “Muddy Waters’ Hard Again was the album that hooked me on the blues; made the transition from Zeppelin, Stones, Doors to the blues and it’s fascinating origins,” Glannon said.
Glannon is also a huge fan of The Red Devils and Lester Butler. Butler brought influences like Little Walter, Paul Butterfield, Rick Estrin into a more groove, swing feel, up tempo, lively. Glannon is actually self-taught on harmonica, mostly, which he began around 2002 when he first became involved with the Kantu Blues Band at KC’s Rib Shack.
“I did take two lessons from Jerry Portnoy, when he was in Somverville,” Glannon said. Glannon began studying Portnoy’s instruction kit called The Master Class that was challenging and difficult. After Glannon was on the final CD in the instruction package, he had to contact Pornoy for a replacement disc. The two talked about lessons, and it lead to the two lessons.
“It was kind of intimidating, as you can imagine,” Glannon said. “He’s a really nice guy, really easy going. We sat on the couch and he asked me what I wanted to do. I went back six months later for another lesson. At the end of it, he looked over at me and he said ‘Wow, man. You’re serious.’ That propelled me a lot right there, when somebody like that says something like that.”
Once of Glannon’s most meaningful experiences was when Downtown Dave And The Deep Pockets hosted a Sunday night jam at Johnny Bad’s on Manchester’s Elm Street. His jam picked up a lot of people who were looking for a place to go to after the Strange Brew Tavern on Market Street ended its Sunday night jams. A few years later, when Johnny Bad couldn’t renew his lease, Glannon and his deep pockets moved their Sunday night jam to Penuche’s on Hanover Street. That lasted about a year.
“It was nice to keep a good tradition and open mike philosophy open,” he said. “There are people who don’t have a band or can’t play with other people. It’s their only opportunity to play in the course of a week or a couple of times a month. So, it was nice to be the house band, open up, play our four songs, and let other people come up and do their thing and watch and interact with them. Sometimes you get to play with them, sometimes not. It was just good to see music living on with people who don’t usually get a chance to play.”
Downtown Dave And The Deep Pockets can be seen at rooms like The Tap House in Hooksett, New Hampshire, Tower Hill Tavern in Laconia, New Hampshire, The Iron Horse Lounge in Fitchburg, Massachusetts, and BBQ New in Manchester, New Hampshire. The group used to play the Purple Pit in Concord, New Hampshire before it shut down, and they used to play a unique gig at a cigar store on Manchester’s Elm Street.
“We played Karma for a couple of years. That was pretty steady. We had played the Pasta Loft in Milford for a while,” he said. “Now, we’re trying to get down into Mass, just to spread it out a little.”
Glannon has some future plans for his band, like finishing up his CD, playing some festivals, and continue getting gigs in Massachusetts and further up north in New Hampshire.
“The skies the limit as far as we can go,” Glannon exclaimed.
www.downtowndaveandthedeeppockets.com
