Huntington, West Virginia. 1984. Daniel Hutchens (then known almost exclusively as Danny) and Eric Carter were playing guitar and writing songs together, as they'd been doing since they were teenagers in the small southern West Virginia town of Ravenswood. Joe Geiger played drums hard, and he played them fast. I was going to Marshall University and working in a local theater chain to make ends meet. Danny'n'Eric heard me goofing around with a bass guitar in the attic of a classmate's rented house, and thought I'd be an okay bass player for their new band, tentatively called "Spare Change." Wasn't long before I was playing along on Danny's white Fender bass, as a part of what soon became The Wreck.
We played the songs that Danny and Eric wrote, like "Boat's Gonna Sail" and "New Horse and Carriage," at parties around Huntington and in several well-received gigs at the Monarch Café. One of those appearances, in fact, marks the only time (so far) that I've actually been paid for performing music.
Eventually, Daniel and Eric moved out of Huntington to Athens, Georgia, where they formed the band Bloodkin, with a string of CDs variously available as side projects from Widespread Panic records: Good Luck Charm, Creeperweed, Out Of State Plates, All Dolled Up, The Bloodkin Community Gospel Rehab, Ravin' Beauties. Bloodkin was also featured on the Athens compilation CD Five Ring Circus. A five-CD retrospective, One Long Hustle, came out in 2012.
Check out Sloan Simpson's website on the Athens music scene for recordings from some of Bloodkin's live shows.
Daniel Hutchens had some significant solo accomplishments, as well. He accompanied Maureen "Moe" Tucker and Sterling Morrison of the Velvet Underground to Europe, as acknowledged in the liner notes of LIVE MCMXCIII, recorded in 1993 at L'Olympia Theater in Paris. On March 1st, 2003, he released a solo album of mature, somber acoustic music called Lesser.
Me, I stayed in Huntington to continue working towards my B.S. (ambiguity at least somewhat intentional). An involuntary change of jobs led to me working at Chili Willi's Mexican Cantina, where I met Mike Gibson and Tim Flanery. We turned out to be at least as interested in playing music as we were in washing dishes. Together with friend and Marshall University Science Fiction Society (MUSFS) alumnus John Crist, we formed Wenton Gone.
The last time I saw Danny was in 2015, performing at a benefit concert in Portland, Oregon, for fellow musician Brad Rosen.
Daniel Hutchens passed away on May 8th, 2021 at age 56, of a hemorrhagic stroke. I sorely wish he'd had time for a few more encores.