The Dangerous Dan Toler Quartet

Rained Out

(WallyGator Music / Bearsloth Publishing)

Guitarist Dangerous Dan Toler left an indelible mark on a good amount of great rock ‘n roll by his “dangerous” but sinuous style of playing. In the mid-1970s, Allman Brothers guitarist Dickey Betts recruited Toler to take part in his solo project, Great Southern. They recorded two albums together. Betts then invited him to join the Allman Brothers Band. That aggregation of the legendary group cut three albums and toured extensively for four years until fracturing into Allman and Betts solo endeavors. Toler went with Allman and played on his hit album, I’m No Angel. Throughout the 1990s, Toler led a succession of bands including the fine ensemble represented here. He briefly re-joined Betts in Great Southern in 2001 before passing away of A.L.S. in 2013 at the age of 64.

The Dangerous Dan Toler Quartet, featuring keyboardist Wally Gator Sirotich, bassist Gregg Voorhees, and drummer Gary Guzzardo, was slated to headline an outdoor festival in Albany, New York one night in July of 2000. But the city cancelled the concert due to nonstop rain. Toler took the band to his friend Tony Perrino’s home for a visit which turned into a party and a jam in Perrino’s studio. If just one of these five muscular, magical, one-take workouts survived, it would be cause for celebration. Fortunately, Perrino Sound captured the entirety of it and captured it well. Recently discovered, Sirotich edited, mixed, and mastered the tape, and added electric piano to fill in a few spaces. He titled the resulting five songs for phrases Toler used to goad his bandmates. The appropriately dubbed Rained Out now stands as Dan Toler’s finest album of the several that bear his name, and certainly the most surprising.

This group crisscrossed the world playing impeccable takes of the songs of The Allman Brothers Band, but southern rock this is not.

Dan Toler and Wally Sirotich each grew up enamored with jazz from an early age. Although they dabbled in it with this quartet at rehearsals, they had never played any of these arrangements prior to this night. Astonishing, because although they are improvising on the spot, these complex pieces each possess a fully formed structure and exquisite, catching melodies that seem well thought out. They rode waves here in the directions of Jeff Beck and Larry Carlton’s jazz-fusion, obviously feeling each other, and knowing exactly when to step into the spotlight. The music is wonderfully original, and the album is as much about delightful washes of keyboards, intricate but robust drums, and gnarly and elastic bass, as it is about fantastic, lyrical guitar.

“I’d Rather Owe it to Ya” feels like the sun rising on a country church, the relaxed groove building in orange intensity. With a neat flip of Toler’s switch, it lights up and settles into a colorful sermon of jazz, blues, and underpinnings of rock. Jimmy Herring comes to mind. Sirotich shows himself to be one classy organist, his swells revealing a love of both jazz/soul great Jimmy Smith, and Gregg Allman, at their Hammond B3s. All the while, Toler plays like a dancer dipping and gliding, his notes daring and graceful.

A funky New Orleans beat pumps “Anything I Can Say to Help Ya?” The title of this number ideally exemplifies one of Toler’s jabs at his mates as well as its groove full of flippant, surly, and “Hog a Rootin’” gallops relentlesly, the hard bebop jazz at its rhythmic core vying for attention with southern blues intensity, the latter electrified by Toler’s ratatat, but gorgeous notes. Sirotich shimmers on organ and slips in a quick solo on piano that best displays his tough, nimble-fingered soul.

“It’s Been a Real Pressure” features twice on the album, the eleven-minute “Revisited” version a crowning achievement of inventiveness, and another that builds its head of steam gradually. A relaxed pace ensues that takes the players forward. Each makes himself known, subtly but surely. Voorhees and Guzzardo work a basis together that reveals their personalities clearly and forcefully. Sirotich swirls with soul, and Toler puts on his Roy Buchanan beret and wears it well in this smoldering, proper finale.

The gravitational pull of this music should prove impossible to resist for any jazz-fusion music fan. And any Allman Brothers fan worth his or her salt must hear the Dangerous Dan Toler Quartet’s Rained Out.

Tom Clarke for MAS

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