Reflections on the Passing of Denny Geyer

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I knew this guy, a musician from Milwaukee. His name was Denny Geyer. I want to talk about him and what he meant to me. 

In the late 1960s, when I was 14 or 15 years old, my best friend’s mother took us to several music shows. We went to a nightclub in downtown Milwaukee called The Scene, where we experienced big name bands like Jimi Hendrix, John Mayall, Cream and others, which made a huge impact on my musical consciousness. She also took us to the Avant Garde coffeehouse on Milwaukee’s East Side, to hear blues music. There, we heard authentic Chicago blues artists like Magic Sam and Johnny Shines. Local Milwaukee based bands including the New Blues played there too. The impact of hearing blues music in an intimate setting for the first time was profound and memorable. It changed my life. 

Members of the New Blues included drummer Terry Anderson and bass player Jim Marcotte. We didn’t know enough then to pay much attention to the backbone, the rhythm section, but the front line consisted of Jim Liban, Sam McCue and Denny Geyer, and they got most of our attention. I didn’t anticipate it at the time, (who does at that age?), but those three guys, among others, provided me with the inspiration to make a life in music. When you’re young, seeing expressive artists that are absorbed and invested in playing emotional music without pretense is an eye-opening experience. It made me want that too. I was hooked from an early age.

The New Blues moved to San Francisco in 1969 and changed their name to A.B.Skhy. That band had two albums released on a major label before they broke up. Jim Liban came back to Milwaukee soon after and started Short Stuff, a blues band that also was influential to me. Sam McCue, (up until then, best known as a member of The Legends), hooked up with the Everly Brothers and spent 13 years touring the world with them before he returned to settle and raise his family in Milwaukee. Jim and Sam are both now retired. But Denny stayed in San Francisco. He had a stint touring the world with zydeco stalwart Queen Ida and was a member of several very successful Bay area bands as well, both fronting his own groups and as a sideman in others. Denny and I stayed in touch.

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I visited Denny when we lived in Nevada in the early ‘90s, which was about a three-hour drive from where we lived on the south shore of Lake Tahoe. We met up again when my son lived in the Bay area. We went out to lunch a couple of times, and I sat in with him at the Saloon, the coolest dive bar/blues venue in the North Beach neighborhood of San Francisco. During one visit, Denny invited me to come to his house to record some tracks on his latest batch of tunes, soon to be a CD release. After that recording session, he dropped me off at the BART train and I found my way back to our hotel room. I found myself overcome with emotion at the events that had transpired. The guy that had originally inspired me had found my playing good enough to bring me on board to record with him. This moved me. It was a full circle, and very affirming.

Denny never gave up on the dream that he would get back on the track that he’d started as a successful recording artist with A.B.Skhy. He put out CD after CD of original music for decades.

He did a smart thing and bought a house in San Francisco back in the early ‘70s. That investment yielded a substantial profit when he sold it and moved to northern California about ten years ago. His new home survived the Camp fire, despite mandatory evacuation, during which time he sustained a serious injury. He also endured an incident in which he broke several bones in a fall. Another accident led him to be unable to play guitar for the last several years. He stopped answering his phone almost two years ago, and now word has come to me that he has passed away.

I have a sense of regret that I wasn’t able to do more to help Denny in the last couple years of his life.  He’s not entirely gone. I can still listen to the A.B. Skhy LPs, as well as the CDs Denny made and gave me, including the un-released tunes that I recorded with him. My memories of those early days at the Avant Garde still elicit strong feelings, and when I think about those times, I’m right there again.