Danny Addicted, a ska punk bassist in Canada

Danny Addicted’s story between stage and radio in Canada

Sitting in my Kingston apartment, I don’t have to look far to find inspiration to write about what it is to be a bassist in two underground ska punk bands in Canada.

Old show posters on my wall, a box of unsold merch in the corner, a stack of vinyl released earlier this year in the midst of a pandemic, an accordion I inherited about a year ago from my late aunt, and several small pieces on my wall that capture past moments of epic shows. Like a piece of signed toilet paper from a night opening for White Cowbell Oklahoma about two hours down the road from our hometown or an artist’s painting of myself performing at a music festival in the area with Sofa King Addicted.

The punk rock music scene in Eastern Canada is one that requires hours of sacrifice, time on the road, driving through/playing to snowstorms, often times arriving at a destination that you would be quick to remind yourself that it is not a destination, rather the departure point to another gig. Peaks and valleys, success and failure.
The product of years battling it out in these trenches is a sense of unskepticism – both as a musician and as a person. My goal is to be real and honest as a musician and journalist.

There’s a quote I heard in my earlier days,

“If you have never reached rock bottom, you have never attended the school of greatness”
– Matshona Dhiwayo

I’m sure different people interpret something like that differently – which is alright in my opinion. And I’ve experienced both ends of that spectrum on my journey.

I certainly can identify the times in my life where the former was a reality, as both a musician and a person. I often recall shows in my early days playing in a band long before joining Sofa King Addicted, and travelling three hours to Toronto to play The Horseshoe Tavern (one of the most iconic venues in the country) to nobody.

And, I often think about a specific moment in my life.

In the dead of winter in 2015, in a snowstorm, sitting in a car in the parking lot of a gas station with nowhere to go, it being full of all my possessions, with my family at the time heading towards a devastating loss and unable to help me out. Just sitting there for hours hoping that someone would answer the phone and give me a couch for a few days, a night even. That friend eventually did pick up the phone, and I lived in a little fort behind his couch I made. Then, it got worse before it got better.

I picked up a DUI about a month later (driving home the day after a rural party). It doesn’t matter who you are when sitting in a jail cell, it’s a pretty low feeling. The day of my sentencing I was kicked out of my old band. On stage nonetheless, being pushed backwards over a monitor during a dispute.

The latter aspect of the above quote, well, it really depends on how you view it. In general, I’m a pretty humble person. What is great in my view, is that I picked myself up off the floor of that venue and didn’t give up on myself.

At the time we had just started running shows in a 55-capacity old cigar room bar in downtown Kingston. The formula was simple: three punk rock bands and kick ass party every month. We wanted to have shows that were like the punk rock shows we grew up going to in small towns in Canada. Five bucks at the door, give the money to the bands, and have a time.
Ultimately, those shows lead me to booking some punk bands for the local Roller Derby team at their home games and a chance to go in to the Queens University radio station CFRC 101.9 FM to spin some tunes every week.

When I started in radio, the best piece of advice given to me was: tell a story.
So, instead of telling my story, I started bringing in musicians from around the area to tell their stories. I had a one-hour show and a different co-host every time that brought with them a personal history of their music projects, influences, whatever. I left it up to them what they wanted to do with the hour. The concept worked pretty well. All of these artists, you don’t see their full body of work in the context of one show at a club. You may have seen them in a bunch of different bands over the years. But it’s kinda cool to experience that artist compress their body of work in to a single hour of radio.

As early as the second show, we were broadcasting live sets on air. I constructed a team that got together and worked on the live sessions, most notably Roswell Rehearsals that were the backbone of the sessions doing sound.

This is where I felt that things were starting to turn around. I had ideas that were working and solid people that believed in my ideas.
That’s when Sofa King Addicted came in to the picture. I was familiar with SKA beforehand, as the band has been going now for 19 years playing up and down Eastern Canada. And the small little town they started in just happened to be the same small-town home of the band that I got kicked out of on stage, Napanee. I’m not from that same small town, In fact, I spent much of my early years living in the rival small town of Gananoque.

I booked Sofa King Addicted to play a punk show in a tattoo shop in the basement of a building in Downtown Kingston. While SKA’s then bassist was being sentenced on 27 charges, they had stand in bassists playing for them. I didn’t know this until SKA showed up without a bass player. I said “I wish you had have told me, I play bass”. ‘Master Nate’ said “You play bass?!!!””. I’ve been in the band ever since.

For context, Sofa King Addicted had just recorded ‘Life in the Trench’ (2016). It had not been mastered yet (it’s mastered by Roger Lima, Less Than Jake / Moathouse Recording Studio). After I played it on the radio just before that show in the tattoo shop, I got a package containing four albums, stickers and a two-page thank-you letter for supporting the new SKA record.

It was a pretty easy decision to join Sofa King Addicted. And with the band being around for so long and going through hell and back along the way, it kinda feels like my journey has been a part of that as well.
So that’s where things start to get cool. As much as I found a new passion for punk rock radio and interviews, listening to others. Deep down inside the fire is to play shows and make records.

We caught a few breaks. We drove through a brutal snowstorm – 15 hours on my first road trip in the band – to the other side of Quebec, a town called Rimouski. I ended up on St Laurent Blvd in Downtown Montreal on New Year’s Eve at the end of that trip.

We then were invited by The Mahones to open for them in Toronto for St Paddy’s. And the show just so happened to be at The Horseshoe Tavern. The iconic venue in Toronto that I had played to nobody many years before with my old band.

Then another show at The Horseshoe Tavern, this time we were opening for The Planet Smashers and Big D and the Kids Table. Sold out well in advance and we brought up a bus load with us. Forty plus on a bus for 3-4 hours heading to ‘The Big Smoke’ (The Big Smoke is a nickname for Canada’s largest city, Toronto). I remember going outside during Big D’s set and asking why were more than 15 of our friends hanging around outside. The answer was simple, they got kicked out.

Just before the show, there was an issue at the door. We gave the lady a list of our friends, but she was saying they had to have tickets. We were never given these tickets to distribute. So, as a solution, I stood right next to her with our list as they started letting people in. When the doors opened, the line up was out the door and down the street in Downtown Toronto. She says to me “Okay, it’s alright, you don’t have to stand here, you can just give me the list”.
“Lady, I used to come up and play this club to nobody. I don’t fucking mind standing here and shaking everyone’s hand on the way in”.

That show is around the time that I became aware of Melanie Kaye through Master Nate, Melanie is a very prominent punk rock publicist for many bands and record labels. They had met previously in Montreal when Nathan was shooting a documentary film. We saw that she was on the show. So, I introduced myself as the bass player of Sofa King Addicted and that I had a radio show.

Since then, The Northern Underground has interviewed bands like Bad Religion, Teenage Bottlerocket, Killswitch Engage, Atreyu, The Exploited, Cattle Decapitation, Corrosion of Conformity and a whole bunch more.
After four solid years of The Northern Underground on CFRC 101.9 FM, I’ve decided to leave the station and embark on a new challenge.

The Northern Underground is going to a podcast format and available on Spotify, Amazon, Deezer, I Heart Radio, Tune In, Player FM, and iTunes.

— Danny Addicted
Photo credit: Natasha Noble, taken at Bathouse Recording Studio (Bath, Ontario, Canada).

If you want to send us an article, drawing, photos, etc., see here how to do it.