Jeff Daniels loves the high he gets from performing live.
“Live performance, when done well, will always be exciting,” Daniels told The Park Record during a phone call from his home in Michigan. “You certainly feel it right before a gig. And you feel it on Broadway when the curtain is down and you can hear the buzz of the audience.”
Daniels knows, however, as a performer, a live production has a different meaning than it does for someone in the audience.
“They get to live vicariously through the characters we bring to life,” he said. “It’s an escape, and can be a literary one with well-written songs and scripts.
“It isn’t like a movie where it’s screened six or seven times a day,” he said. “We’re making it happen me on stage and the people in the audience. It’s not just live, but alive.”
Daniels should know. He has appeared on Broadway, in movies, on TV and is a touring acoustic musician.
“Me and others who do this for a living basically plugged into our imaginations and made careers out of them,” he said. “We illuminate the human condition. And spend our lives fueling our imaginations that enable us to do that for you.”
The actor said he has noticed that everyone, no matter if they are involved in theatre or not, loves a good story.
“There’s always the wonderful ‘Once upon a time,’ or the ‘Two guys walk into a bar,'” he said. “We all want a story. We all are captivated by a story. And even if it’s told by some guy sitting at a dinner party at Christmas, there’s a story. It’s small and simple, and it may only be between you and the guy who’s telling it to you. But we all can relate.”
Daniels said stories aren’t just relegated to movie and theatre scripts.
“It can also be a song that has a beginning, middle and end or has a twist,” he said. “They are all based on a story that’s aimed right at the audience.”
After being an actor since he was in high school, Daniels was forced into music.
“It wasn’t until 2000 when we needed to raise money for my Purple Rose Theatre here in Michigan that people discovered that I played,” he said. “They said if I went out with my guitar and sold tickets, we cold raise a lot of money. And as someone who was in charge of raising the money I said ‘OK.’ But when I went onto the stage, it was was terrifying. It was white-hot naked fear.”
The Golden Globe Award-nominee never had intentions of playing music for a audience.
“I was so focused on being an actor,” he said. “So there was no room for me to go ‘hey I think I’ll also try this songwriter/singing thing.’
“It was something I did in my apartment to keep myself sane, and to stay creative,” he said. “In fact, if I was playing on the porch and someone stopped by, I would stop playing. It was just something I did for me.”
After 10 years, Daniels has gotten used to playing music and writing songs.
“I was a writer before I knew I was a writer,” he said. “I was surrounded by writers. At Circle Repertory that was off-Broadway there was Lanford Wilson and other playwrights who would walk around rewriting second acts. I was fascinated. I remember Watching Jim Brooks rewrite ‘Terms of Endearment’ and watching Woody Allen rewrite ‘Purple Rose of Cairo’ on the set between takes. I wanted to learn how to do that and why they were doing it. And that led to me writing plays and that led to writing songs.”
Throughout the years, Daniels has sharpened his musical performances.
“It’s a show,” he said. There’s storytelling and comedy. There are songs about Hollywood and songs about basically anything. It’s all about making people laugh harder than they have in a long time and then dropping in a song that moves them.”
Daniels likes to leave some space in the performance to improvise, but he knows that structure is important.
“I’m not allowed to bore you,” he said. “Performers have to hang on to you from the time the curtain goes up to when it comes down. And if I become predictable, then there’s a problem.”
Daniels admires the likes of Bill Cosby and Hal Holbrook.
“They just go out and hold the audience,” he said.
He also was influenced by songwriters such as Arlo Guthrie, Elton John, Bernie Taupin, Stevie Goodman, John Prine, Patty Griffin and Lyle Lovett.
“It’s all brilliant stuff,” he said. “These are people who take care of the words. And it’s OK to be funny and also play music that hits the heart.
“The last time I looked the Greeks are holding up two masks (Comedy and Tragedy). They’re the same and equal. One is not more important than the other.”
Daniels’ songs are a mix between personal experiences and observations.
“However, the last thing an audience wants to hear is a song that means something only to me,” he said. “It needs to become personal to them as well.”
To check out Daniels’ new CD, “Keep It Right Here,” visit www.jeffdaniels.com
The Park City Performing Arts Foundation will present Jeff Daniels at the Eccles Center for the Performing Arts, 1750 Kearns Blvd., on Saturday, Dec. 11, at 7:30 p.m. Tickets range from $18-$65 and are available by calling 435-655-8252 or by visiting www.ecclescenter.org.