Daniel Davies on the much-rumored Kinks reunion: “Well, I don’t know ...” Really? “Well, I know the whole story. But I don’t know how much I’m supposed to say.” Probably not very much. But the fact that there is a story means something.
The most annoying thing, says Daniel Davies, is when journalists tell him, “You don’t sound like The Kinks.”
Davies usually politely says, “That’s because we’re not.”
Daniel is the son of Kinks guitarist Dave Davies, but his three-year-old band Year Long Disaster is no swinging ’60s redux. Disaster’s powerful self-titled debut is a filigreed, driving hard rock LP, topped by Davies’ terrific banshee howl.
Growing up in London and Hollywood and, at 14, secretly teaching himself to play guitar, it took a couple of years before Davies finally had the confidence to come out as a musician.
“I didn’t want anyone to know I played unless I was really good,” he says.
When his father first heard him play he was amazed and asked where he learned all those chords.
Still, when he asked for a tip, Daniel was on his own.
“I once asked him, ‘How do you solo?’ My dad just sat there and looked at his guitar and said, ‘I don’t know. You just do it.’ I thought, ‘Great, thanks dad’,” he says sarcastically at his father’s response.
Now he understands: Davies senior meant it was something to feel, not learn.
What clinched the deal for Davies Jr., was when he played a song in the biology room at school and, “This girl leapt across the room and threw herself on me.”
He knew he was onto something.
“I think it’s just really trying to communicate with people and be accepted,” he says. When he met YLD bassist Rich Mullins in a convenience store, Davies says he found a bandmate and friend. “But we started getting into trouble,” he murmurs, “and went to rehab.”
Once clean, they enlisted onetime Third Eye Blind drummer Brad Hargreaves and the deal was sealed.
Does Daniel feel pressured? After all, Dave Davies created some of pop’s most iconic riffs. His reply is immediate: “If I felt like that, I wouldn’t do this,” he says gently. “All I’m trying to do is pay the rent.”
Burning Brides
with Year Long Disaster and The Last Vegas
Tonight, 9
Middle East Upstairs
472 Mass. Ave., Cambridge
MBTA: Red Line to Central
$10, 18+, 617-864-3278
www.mideastclub.com