Coos Canyon Band - Portland, ME

A Maine native from North Yarmouth, all Dan has ever known is his music. His velvet voice and mastery of the guitar are second to none on the national scene. Over the past 10+ years, he has added songwriting as well as producing to his artistic abilities. He was co-founder of the highly successful New England touring band Cornerstone in the 80s. With Cornerstone, the band produced the CD "Foundation", played night clubs and colleges, made several TV appearances, and opened concerts for .38 Special, Foghat, Marshall Tucker, and Jeff Healy.

In 1987, Dan received the "Male Vocalist of the Year" award from the Maine Music Awards. In 1992, economics as well as a need to shift artistic focus drew him to the acoustic guitar. Dan played everywhere from coffee houses to colleges. He eventually would come to share stages with the likes of John Hiatt, Warren Zevon, Chris Smither, Patty Griffin and Ellis Paul. His songwriting hit new levels in 1995 when Dan was chosen out of a field of over 800 entries nationwide and received national recognition by winning the "New Folk Award" at the renowned "Kerrville Folk Festival" in Texas with his song "Katherine" - a song about his daughter when she was 3 years old. Past winners of this award include; Lyle Lovett, David Wilcox, and John Gorka. In 1996 Dan released his first solo CD "Revolution", which was recorded in part in Nashville, TN. You can also hear Dan as lead singer with the group, Simon Apple on their latest release, "River to the Sea."

Those who attended the 9-11 tribute concert at Merrill Auditorium in 2001, will never forget Dan's stirring and passionate rendering of "America the Beautiful". WMGX had Dan on air and said it was the most incredible representation of that song they had ever heard.and played it frequently thereafter on the air.

Leader of the band, Barney has been a performer of many flavors over the past 30 plus years. As a freshman in high school, he picked up a guitar thinking he was heading into playing hard rock and suddenly John Denver became the inspiration Barney "cut his teeth" on. Within the next year he found the stage and landed the lead in "The King and I" and the performing arts was cemented as part of his life from then on.

Graduating college with a triple degree including Theater Performance, Barney continued his guitar playing performing as a solo, in duos, trios, singing from New England, to Colorado, Florida, the Bahamas and back. Missing the stage, in Boston he did some live theater, but found "on camera" acting in the mid 80's getting an extra role in a TV "movie of the week" called "A Case of Deadly Force" starring Richard Crenna and John Shea (John got me this part - we shared the same theater professor in our college education).

Today, in addition to his love and passion of music with this extraordinary band, Barney also has performed in numerous local/regional/national commercials, voice overs, and performs in an equally passionate comedy trio called The Maine Hysterical Society (www.mainehysterical.com) with his two other cronies Randy Judkins and Stephen Underwood. This trio performed the main stage in July 2008 for the International Humor Conference in Lake George, NY where they met Lucie Arnaz who invited them to share her stage at the legendary "Birdland" jazz club later that summer.

Something new over the year is Barney doing some MC work as himself hosting the Maine State Lottery's 35th Anniversary event at the Augusta Civic Center, but also his character Emmitt Pickitt from The Maine Hysterical Society that has been burnin' up the stage up in Rangeley Maine. Emmitt's latest was hosting "The Mountain Home Companion Show" - a benefit for the new radio station in Rangeley, WRGY 90.5 FM.

Another Maine native, Brian hails from Cumberland. Much of Brian's musical past was shared with Dan as they grew up together attending the same schools starting in grade school. Brian was apart of those initial bands with Dan as Dan changed gears in the 90's to a more acoustic sound. Brian and he found they were more than able to connect as a duo to play the acoustic sounds, but in addition still deliver rock with the growing technology in sequencing (the ability to create the rest of the band on a computer). Brian has now become a master at creating sequences. Brian is a fine guitarist and one of the few true tenors of the likes of Graham Nash.