Dody's Musical Bio

This first batch are my lead vocals from the album by the old No Secret band back in 1988.  Be warned, these sound pretty dated, but we thought they were pretty cool at the time.  Dana Walden and Harry Washburn produced the album, and Jon Pines engineered.  No Secret at the time was myself, Leon Reeder, Dawn Perry and Kevin Flowers.

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Am I Ready

This song is special because Harry and Dana wrote it for this album.  The subject matter is embarrassingly serious and our attempt at meaningful social commentary at the time.

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Dance Away

As I recall, Dana wrote this song with the Little River Band in mind ... not sure if they ever actually recorded it.  But I liked it, and even got to program the drums on this song.

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My Guy

A Dana/Harry remake of the original by Mary Wells, although it's almost unrecognizable except for the words.  The object was to take out the swing, which they certainly accomplished.  I submitted this a few years later for a vocal contest and won an honorable mention.

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On The Verge

Originally written by Rocky Maffit, Michael Day and Rena Day for the Champaign band; I remember it being one of my faves from seeing Champaign live a few years before.  But until Dana brought it out for our album, I had always thought the words were "All The Birds", which came out "All the birds are loving you" ... a pretty spacey sentiment!

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Summer Vacation

Probably my favorite from the album.  Written by Rocky Mantia and performed by his band (coincidentally named Mantia), Dana and Harry updated it, and switched genders (the song, not Harry and Dana), for our project.

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This next batch are recordings by the jazz vocal group Vox Humana, who I performed with for several years in the 1990's.  We were a vocal quartet (quintet for a short time), and performed about half our stuff a capella, the other half with computerized backing tracks I created.  The members of this group were myself, Amy Hamra, Tim Byrne, Curt Dunne, and for a while, Kevin Brown.  You might find these a bit corny, which they are, but we really enjoyed learning many difficult versions of great old standards.

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Don't Mean A Thing If It Ain't Got That Swing

I had a great time arranging this for vocals.  We had the good fortune of performing this with Dan Perrino's jazz band at Krannert after he caught one of our appearances in Urbana.

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Honey Pie

My favorite of the a capella's we did.  The is the King's Singers arrangement of the Beatles tune, incredibly difficult but so much fun.  Kevin Brown did the lead; we only performed this as a quintet.

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Just The Way You Looked Tonight

Another nice a capella, this one is an old standard that was featured in the movie "My Best Friend's Wedding" (not our version!)

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Opus One

A corny but great Tommy Dorsey swing era standard.  This was usually our opening number.

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Route 66

The familiar Bobby Troup swing number. The backing track is pretty lame, created from a program called "Band In A Box". But it was always fun to sing.

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When I'm 64

This was my own a capella arrangement of the famous Beatles tune.  After Kevin joined the group I rearranged it for 5 parts, but this is the 4 part version.  At least once that I can remember, we actually performed this at a wedding.

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Finally (for now), a couple of others:

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Toys

This is one of many tunes written and produced by Dennis Cronin back in the ... 70's?? ... that I sang on.  Backing vocals provided by two members of the Appaloosa band, Steve Morrison and Mark Hutchison, and great guitar work by Denny.

 

Phone Call

Written and recorded by Rocky Strohl, who says:   "I believe it was 83 or 84, I can't remember that well either, but I was in Slipstream at the time, and Dana and I were trying to do something that was totally different than just crashing thru a bunch of cover tunes.  It was finished at Dana's apartment, which is where you did the vocal part.  It was just a song that came from a feeling and playing around on the piano, as you can tell I am not the greatest piano player.  But the bass player on the song was very solid, LOL!!  I had written 8 songs in a 3 month time frame and it took us about 5 months to finally get 6 songs finished.  Those were great times!!  All sound very 80's and all were played on the local lunch program that WPGU had at the time."