The veteran New York pianist discusses upcoming area shows, his eclectic career, and playing with legends from Bo Diddley to Ronnie Spector.
by Danny Colman originally published on Rock On! This Week’s Sound Bites…4/17/25
“Good to talk to you man, a pleasure as always,” began the very talented Dave Keyes as he enthusiastically discussed his upcoming area shows on April 17 at The Twisted Tail in Philadelphia and April 19 at The Lizzie Rose Music Room in Tuckerton, NJ. “We are looking forward to it, it’s always a fun place to play and we always have a good time down there in Tuckerton. I’ll have Chris Bergson on guitar, a wonderful singer named Ellis Hooks, John Conte is playing bass and Diego Voglino on drums. So, we have five of us and Chris, myself and Ellis split the vocal duties, we all have our own material that we’ll be doing; some original stuff, Ellis sings some Sam Cooke stuff, he’s kind of an older soul R&B kinda’ guy so we mix it up and he’s been doing some gigs with chris for quite a while. Chris’s stuff is a little jazzier, mine is a little more Boogie Woogie oriented so we have a good time up there.”
Keyes, a native New Yorker, has been playing and performing for more than three decades and it is truly from his earliest days that his “Journey” began.
“My musical journey,” he said with a laugh, “Started when I was seven, I started taking lessons as a kid learning the kind of popular songs of the day; I joke that the the first song I learned; I think it was “Downtown” by Petula Clark (Laughs) which goes back a ways but I started there. Then, when I was in Junior High, I started to learn how to improvise. I had a great guitar teacher who showed me the ropes and he was also a working piano player, which was a very excellent thing to have a cat like that as my mentor because he basically said, “You learn these tunes and you’ll work.” There were certain Jazz standards that were really important to have in your arsenal so to speak and that worked out; I’ve always worked, he gave me good advice. Then I went to Boston for school, not for music but I was playing a lot in Boston which had a great scene and then I came back to New York and just went to work playing Top 40, weddings, Blues gigs, Swing gigs, basically playing any gig I could get my hands on. Then one thing led to another and I ended up on Broadway for about 10 years in the ’90s and I did that for a while and television music and touring the world with different stuff and my own stuff and I think that brings us up to date (Laughs).”
“Up to date,” nothing could be farther from the truth as the always humble Keyes seems to have left out a few small details and steps of the journey but when reminded of this, he humbly responded.
“It’s a pretty long list,” he chuckled slightly, “If you stick around long enough, you end up playing with a lot of people. Some of my highlights I’d say are Bo Diddley, Chuck Berry a lot, I worked with Odetta for a long time, a great folk singer. I worked with Ronnie Spector the last 10 years of her life, which was wonderful. I worked with David Johansen also for a long time, you know, Buster Poindexter, we did that for a while and a lot of different gigs with various blues guys like Eddie Clearwater, Eddie Kirkland, Ronnie Baker Brooks, Wayne Baker Brooks; a lot of the Chicago guys. So, it has been quite a journey; I worked with Popa Chubby for a long time too; toured with and have done a lot of stuff in Europe with him. It has been a long and varied career and it has been a heck of an interesting ride. Some guys just play in one band all of their lives, I’m not quite that way (Laughs), I like to move around a little bit and get different experiences.”
Not to mention those he left out such as Gladys Knight, Darlene Love and the late Ruth Brown. However, recently he has worked with current and past luminaries as well.
“Early Times (Sirius XM “Bluesville” air personality) played on one of my tracks (On the album “Rhythm, Blues and Boogie”) and I’ve played on some of his stuff, not on his records but we’ve done some live gigs together. He’s a great guy and in addition to being a great DJ, he’s a fantastic guitar player and an incredible tech with a lot of knowledge who really respects his elders in a good way that you carry on and bring it forward so, hats off to Early on that stuff. Dougie (MacLeod) and I have known each other for a long time. I know his wife, his son and he knows my family and we just had a good connection and I’ve always really dug what he did and I approached him before my last record and said, “Would you be into playing on my record?” I don’t know who said it first or maybe we said it at the same time,”Let’s write a tune together and do it that way” and he gave me a title, then maybe half of a verse and I ran with it for a while and then he ran with it for a while and we ended up with this great tune which is one of my favorites on the record; the one and only “Invisible Man.” It’s a great tune about getting older and change comes and you either accept it or you fight it but it’s very tongue in cheek, double entendre and I always tell people that the basic idea of the tune is that you’re lookin’ at women but they ain’t looking at you and I always add to that the Doug is considerably older than me so that must’ve been one of the lines that he came up with (Laughs). So, we have a lot of fun with that and the tracks with Bernard Purdie; I’ve known Bernard for a long time and we’ve done a bunch of playing over the years and I was really glad to get him on this record because he just adds so much, he’s the “King of the beat!”
Keyes is very high on his guitarist Chris Bergson and praises not only his talents but the rest of the band who will be joining him at The Lizzie Rose on April 19. So; how did this band and the connection to The Lizzie Rose Music Room come about and what can one attending expect?
“The doors are at 7 p.m. and the show is at 7:30 p.m. Chris is a wonderful guitar player, a wonderfully inventive cat who doesn’t play like other people, he’s got his own style. I met him up at Levon Helm’s Ramble up in Woodstock a while ago back when that was happening regularly. Chris was sitting there, I was sitting there and we just kind of connected; he’s a very creative guy. He writes terrific songs, they’re not cookie cutter stuff and like I said, he’s got his own guitar style but he’s very rooted, just a real solid player and an excellent songwriter. I think I used him as my guitar player on a couple of gigs and then he called me for his gigs and we just kind of swapped back and forth for a while and then we approached Lou at Lizzie Rose because we were doing something with Purdie. So, it was Purdie, Chris, myself and Chris works with Ellis Hooks who is a fine vocalist; so that’s how that all kind of came together and then Bernard moved to North Carolina so we can’t get him on this one but we hope to have him in the future.”
“We like to take an intermission there so we’ll probably do an hour-ten, take a break and do another hour-ten or something like that, maybe a little shorter,” he went on. “What we do is, we mix it up; we all split the lead vocals, we kind of alternate. Ellis may leave the stage if Chris and I are doing something special but otherwise we’re all up there having fun, singing and making with the mirth; ya’ know? It’s a fun show, a lot of uptempo stuff; we’ll sneak in a ballad here and there but we want people to party and basically have a good time.”
After the April 19 show, Keyes will be criss-crossing the Atlantic before returning to the area for a couple of events.
“I’m going to Spain at the end of April for a week, I’m going to France at the end of June for a week, I’m playing the Bucks County Blues Picnic in July with my own band and something with Mikey Jr. as well as we’re gonna be backing up some other people too. Mikey is a treasure, he’s a great guy, his latest record is terrific too, he really, really did a great job on it. Like I said, I’m also playing at the Twisted Tail in Philadelphia on April 17 and May 22.”
To discover more about Dave Keyes, please visit https://www.davekeyes.com/ and to purchase tickets to the April 19 show at The Lizzie Rose Music Room, please go to https://www.lizzierosemusic.com/
That’s it for this week! Please continue to support live and original music and until next week….ROCK ON!