Dan Spencer

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Doors: 7:00 PM

Dan Spencer
The late singer-songwriter Judee Sill considered her style Country Cult Baroque, and Dan Spencer finds that this is a perfect way to describe his own music. His penchant for mixing morbid lyrical content and black metal imagery with country-fried Southern rock doesn’t feel forced at all, considering his eclectic taste and background as a mortician. No, really. 

Born near Nashville in Smyrna in 1993, the Tennessee troubadour grew up going to see hardcore bands in the region because there were no age restrictions on those kind of shows. He eventually moved to the college town of Cookeville, TN of which he notes, “It’s got this pretty unique history of having a way better music scene than it ought to.” Despite being in the heartland of country music, his interest in the genre coalesced in an entirely circuitous way, via the California-based, punk-pedigreed experimental band Amps For Christ. “They would cover a lot of traditional Scottish folk songs that morphed into Appalachian mountain music, which morphed into country music. I had to hear it through that lens to get into it.” 

After having played guitar in indie rock band Holy Coast and managing vocal/guitar duties for the CCR/Allman Brothers-inspired group Pumpkinseed, Spencer began writing and recording solo material in early 2020, just in time for the pandemic to hit. His debut album Bursting With Country-Fresh Flavor (a Seinfeld reference) was unceremoniously released online two years later. Music seemed like a dead end pursuit so he enrolled in mortuary school; a career path that shaped his music.

“Death is a big lyrical topic I’m always exploring,” says Dan Spencer. “I think it really kicked off when I was working at a funeral home and really surrounded by it all the time that I learned new questions to ask about death. I think there’s just a culture, in the US specifically, where people are not prepared for grief at all. It’s also shocking working in that system seeing the random and seemingly meaningless nature of death. It does something to you and definitely inspires you to create art about it, with an infinite bowl to grab from. It makes you so much more aware that whoever is running this show is not guaranteeing you a long, fulfilled life of experiences and dreams coming true.” 

It was much sweeter for him when his dreams did start coming true, beginning with a chance encounter with a music industry veteran at a pizza place in Nashville that Spencer was managing on the weekends. Pretty soon his music ended up in the hands of Post Malone, a fellow musician with similarly diverse taste who was already at this point a platinum-selling household name with multiple #1 albums and singles under his belt. Spencer found himself engaged in songwriting sessions with Malone and Brad Paisley after dropping out of mortuary school; it all seemed surreal. https://open.spotify.com/artist/4nZhCPagwfGtHV2tASZkpU