It’s a house party on the seas with Danny Klein

Next month, the recently reunited J. Geils Band will take to the stage at Fenway Park with fellow Boston classic rockers Aerosmith for the most highly a anticipated concert of the summer. It’s been the talk of the town and tonight fans can get warmed up with another unique show as co-founder and bassist Danny Klein takes to the high seas for night of all J. Geils Band music with his band Full House. We caught up with Danny earlier this week for a quick chat on both shows.

Boston Music Spotlight (BMS): Everyone’s excited for the big J. Geils &Aerosmith show at Fenway later this summer. What’s most exciting for you? Is it playing for the 30,000+ fans, playing with Aerosmtih, or just playing at Fenway itself?

Danny Klein (DK): Well in the old days at some venues we played in front of 100,000 to 200,000 people so it’s not so much the amount of people, it’s number one playing Fenway Park because I’ve been in New England since ’64 so I’m a huge Red Sox fan. You know, I love to go there, and to actually be able to play there, especially with my batting average, is great. So that’s number one and number two, although I’ve known the guys in Aerosmith for years and years, I don’t think, although I have “bluezheimers” so I forget stuff, but I don’t think we’ve ever played with them before so that’s exciting. It’s just so special to play Fenway it’s hard to define it.

BMS: Back in the early days of J. Geils you guys drew on a variety of influences. Do you still draw from the same influences today or have your listening habits branched out?

DK: Well, both really. We came from R&B and Blues and a little Country. Because that’s what I grew up in I still listen to that stuff but I’m doing a project called Rockphoria, which is a multimedia/Classic 70s thing that’s a work in progress. We haven’t played out at all but in doing that I’ve been learning a lot of the music from the bands of that era, the same bands that were out when I was out with Geils… I had never been in a cover band before, my first band was with Dick and J, so I never grew up in high school doing cover material so it’s nice to learn the stuff from the bands in the 70s who I was on the road at the same time as, so I never really got to see them. I’m playing that stuff now and it’s really interesting because I hadn’t branched out before this and I’m playing that stuff and it’s a lot of fun to play.

BMS: You’ve been playing some of the lesser-known J. Geils Band material with your band Full House. Have you pushed to get any of those lesser-known songs into the current J. Geils set list?

DK: Not really because we don’t have as much time as I do with Full House. What we try to do with Full House is, to go along with the hits, put some of the lesser-known ones in because they’re not actually seeing the Geils band so we put the lesser-known songs in because we like ‘em and they’re not in the Geils set.

BMS: So you and the band are playing the Rock N’ Blues Cruise on Friday. In your decades of experience, have you ever played any other interesting venues like this?

DK: Well I’ve played the Blues Cruise before with a band I had for ten years called Stone Crazy in the 90s. It’s hard to remember… we played a lot of weird stuff in the early days. I know when I was with Debbie Davies’ blues band we did a cruise in the Caribbean that got a little weird with all the rocking but five or six scotches made it very smooth after that….Nothing really jumps out but you know, when you start out and you play and they pay you, you play where they pay you.

BMS: What can your fans expect from the show?

DK: Well we play with passion and I’m blessed to have five other guys who are really great musicians. They’re all Geils fans and we’ve been doing this for two, three, four years now and it’s like playing in the Geils band: it’s party time! It’s like music for the groin, not the brain. It should be a great party.

Danny Klein’s Full House – Celebrating the music of the J. Geils Band – will perform on the Rock & Blues Concert Cruise tonight, Friday, July 16. Tickets are $25 for the 8 p.m. cruise with a 7:30 boarding call.