Dan Finnerty doesn’t have any issues with his sexual identity.
Yet Finnerty gets a huge kick out of singing the songs of Irene Cara, Wilson Phillips, Christina Aguilera, Abba, Bonnie Tyler, Kelis, Alanis Morissette and Helen Reddy.
He is woman, indeed.
“It’s an easy laugh with a guy singing these girls’ lyrics and not changing them,” Finnerty said from Santa Barbara, Calif., recently. “And I’m not in drag, so it’s not going to that whole place. But when I sing these girls’ songs and I’m dressed like a mechanic you listen to the lyrics more so than you would with a lady singing them.”
If Finnerty’s shtick sounds familiar, you’ve probably seen the 2003 comedy “Old School,” in which a wedding singer croons and crashes his way through an overdramatic, profanity-laced take on Bonnie Tyler’s “Total Eclipse of the Heart.” That was Finnerty’s coming-out party, courtesy of director Todd Phillips, who had seen Finnerty’s act at a Los Angeles club and cast him in the Will Ferrell comedy. And now Finnerty is living the wild afterparty, sans the streaking through the quad.
“If there was a Todd Phillips statue, I’d bow down to it every day,” said Finnerty, who brings The Dan Band to the Gothic Theatre on Saturday night. “This tour is great, but ‘Old School’ is the only reason people know who we are.
“But touring is great, and we did it all summer long it in a big, huge bus with two lounges and lots of beds, and the band’s sleeping on it, and I keep thinking to myself, ‘What the (expletive) am I doing?’ I’m on a tour bus and playing really good clubs – lots of House of Blues venues – and I’m like, ‘This isn’t what I was trying to do.”‘
This musician bit is just an act, as it turns out. Finnerty is, after all, an actor. He attended Emerson College in Boston and later moved to New York where he was cast in a touring production of “Stomp.” But he discovered his other talent after quitting “Stomp.” After his final performance in the percussive musical, he and the cast hit a Toronto karaoke bar for drinks and goodbyes.
“I got up and sang ‘I Am Woman’ because I thought it was funny,” Finnerty said. “That and Helen Reddy’s cool.”
He was right. Helen Reddy is cool. And his interpretation of her anthem was funny.
Back in Los Angeles, a few small performances with bongos and an acoustic guitar led to bigger shows with backup singers and a full band. People started talking, and the early-adopters’ text messaging and word-of-mouth quickly grew into a wildfire.
“And then I started doing it to promote my lame acting career and get industry people from L.A. to come down and watch me be stupid,” Finnerty said.
It worked. Celebrities frequented his shows with entourages in tow. And one night he was particularly surprised when one of the most respected directors in Hollywood greeted him outside his changing room.
“He was waiting outside the dressing room door, and (Steven) Spielberg basically said, ‘Kate and I wanted to see the show ever since we heard it was a live show. I wanna put you in my Tom Hanks movie.’ I just thought he was being polite, but I told him that (‘Charlie’s Angels’ director) McG and I were trying to get this concert film done, and he said he was seriously interested. I thought I’d never see him again, but then Monday morning came around and the casting director for ‘The Terminal’ called and said, ‘Steven gave you a part, and you should come down.”‘
Finnerty had a small role in “The Terminal” – and also the Ben Stiller/Owen Wilson vehicle “Starsky & Hutch” – and Spielberg came through by funding and producing the hour-long, McG-directed “Dan Finnerty and The Dan Band: I Am Woman,” which screened on Bravo and will see a DVD release in the coming months.
While The Dan Band is little more than a novelty act, this one-trick pony is not just winning over the easily impressed. The band played the Side One Dummy party at South by Southwest earlier this year in Austin, Texas, and the show – amid the punk rock label’s other acts – brought the house down and had discerning fans of independent rock in tears and proclaiming their allegiance to The Dan Band. But the guru behind it all credits the songs.
“The songs are good songs, and they’re ones that everybody really likes,” he said. “And we have the band and the backup guys and bad … choreography.”
While many of the tracks are past-their-prime soft-rock hits, others are more contemporary and even, at times, obscure. Surprisingly, one of the biggest crowd-pleasers is Erykah Badu’s vengeful slow jam “Tyrone.”
“‘Tyrone’ is such a great song from Erykah Badu, but when you hear a guy singing about another guy who only wants to hang with his friends and who is disrespecting, it changes everything.
“And I’m not making fun of the songs either. I’m just keeping it real.”
Pop music critic Ricardo Baca can be reached at 303-820-1394 or rbaca@denverpost.com.
| The Dan Band
SCHMALTZ-POP COVERS|Gothic Theatre, Englewood; 8 p.m. Saturday|$20-$22|through TicketWeb, ticketweb.com.
