By DAVID DUPONT
BG Independent News
Terry Davidson has been rockin’ for more than 50 years, and he has no intention of stopping now.
“Unless,” he adds, “something stops me.”
At 65, he’s experienced his share of losses, including a drummer who played with him from childhood.
Not that he keeps rockin’ in the same way. Every few years, he said, he’ll switch gears, to keep it interesting for himself and the band.
The latest iteration of Terry Davidson and the Gears will perform Saturday, Nov. 16 at Howard’s Club H. Doors at 8.
This is a return engagement for Davidson. Back in the late 1980s into the 1990s, he played the club three or four times a year. The band would get to settle in playing extended engagements. “It was like a three- or four-day party,” he said in a recent telephone interview. “ It’d just be packed every day. … We had some great times back in the day, crazy times.”
But it’s been 25 years or so since he’s been in BG.
Davidson started playing guitar as a 9-year-old in Columbus, and as soon as he learned a few basics, he and some friends started a band, The Barracudas. “Everybody had to be in a band back then,” he said.
Those were the days of Beatlemania. The Barracudas played a little stage in an arcade, at “all the fun festivals and fairs,” even appearing on local TV.
He stayed around Columbus. Back in the 1980s and 1990s Columbus had a handful of “killer bands” playing blues, rock, rockabilly, and the like. Musicians moved from band to band.
Columbus is a musical crossroads on the touring routes of a lot of bands, and The Gears had the opportunity to open for acts including Buddy Guy, AC/DC, and Muddy Waters. More recently they backed Mitch Ryder and “Magic Dick” Salwitz, from the J. Geils Band. Playing “Whammer Jammer” with Magic Dick “is like a dream,” Davidson said. “I can’t believe I’m listening to this on stage.”
Why promoters keep calling on Davidson is simple, he said. “It’s like any other job. You do a good job, and you’re reliable and consistent. That’s half of it. Then it’s whatever you can come up with on stage to keep people interested.”
Back in the early years, the Gears were more pub rock in the style of their heroes Nick Lowe and Dave Edmunds. Now the Gears will bring a more soulful sound with a saxophone and trumpet augmenting the basic guitar, bass, and drums.
“I just enjoy doing little different styles instead of just regurgitating the same thing over and over for years,” Davidson said.
The band has recorded eight albums, mostly of original songs. Davidson said he started trying to write songs soon after picking up the guitar.
He’s always open to a new idea, jotting down embryonic lyrics and riffs. Sometimes he’ll listen back to it and wonder, “what was I thinking?”
Many times though, he’ll think: “There’s a song.”
He’ll bring the skeleton of the tune into the band. “I try to tell them what I’m looking for, and they come up with their own parts that they’re more comfortable doing.” That gives the musicians a better feel for the song.
The exception is if “the bass line is dominant and important to the whole song, then I’ll come up with bass lines.”
Having that back catalog opens up another avenue to generate money. His music gets picked up for use in movies and TV shows, he said.
Someone doing a documentary on the connection between “Hang On Sloopy” and Ohio State needed music in the styles that inspired the song, but the filmmaker didn’t want to pay the royalties for the original hits.
So Davidson and the band got together and created their own versions of early rock.
Sometimes a producer will just ask to use a song from Davidson’s catalog, other times, he’ll get asked to do an instrumental version.
He contributed music to a NASCAR production. “It was expensive cars crashing together with my music playing in the background.”
Fans have their favorites. “Snake Handlin’ Woman” and the bluesy rhumba “Leopard Girl and Monkey Man” are crowd favorites.
Sometimes he’ll get a request songs for something he hasn’t played in a while. One fan really wanted him to play “Quittin’ Time,” and “couldn’t believe I couldn’t really remember it.”
Some songs just don’t fit with a new style, or personnel.
Recently revisited “Wack Job.” Originally composed as a throwaway track on a compilation disc. But he was doing a radio show recently and a couple people asked for it. “I guess we’ll need to start playing that song,” he decided.
Davidson said it’ll likely be on the setlist when the band makes its return to Howard’s.
Davidson said the band will be heading home from Chicago on Saturday after a series of gigs, including at Buddy Guy’s and House of Blues. “We’ll be hitting on all cylinders.”
