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Nope that isn't Rod Stewart on a recent hot summer night.
It's Danny D, arguably the best Stewart impersonator in the business today.
Danny's been performing his act for many years and has gained the respect of countless fans
and musicians alike.
And while that's quite a feat in itself it's even more impressive when you learn that Danny has
suffered from Tourettes Syndrome sine he was a young child.
When I was five years old I noticed a little tic and in second grade it got really bad.
But we really didn't know what I had until I was twenty-one.
My Dad ha arthritis and always you to read Prevention Magazine.
He seen this thing in the paper well got involved in movements and all this stuff and you might
have this problem.
And I was like I went to the Doctor.
But I didn't have a name for this problem until I was like twenty-one.
You don't know how many cures I got for hiccups.
You got hiccups?
So I had sit there and go well do I tell them what I got which I really don't know at the time.
Or I just kind of say I got hiccups.
So I got a cure for that.
After I tried so many cures well, I should've just told them already.
Tourettes Syndrome was named after a French neurologist Jorge's Dee La Tourette in 1902.
Tourette published the first account of the affliction in 1885 when he studied nine
patients who all suffered from varying degrees of tics and involuntary movements.
Well Tourette's Syndrome is a developmental disorder, by that I mean it begins in development
in the early years.
The typical age of onset is five, six, seven years of age.
When the parents begin to notice certain behaviors.
Usually in the form of tics.
They might have a cure.
The eyebrows might be raised they might have various sounds to their throat.
We call those vocal tics.
So they could have motor tics and typically vocal tics.
Well involuntary movements that you make.
Cause by too much dopamine in the brain.
It's kind of a weird problem because it presses on certain nerves and makes you jerk.
Actually swear, say things.
It's like having two people in your body fighting each other.
You know, kind of weird.
The underlying mechanism of Tourette's is that there is insufficient suppression from
the frontal cortex.
Insufficient suppression of impulses that are coming from deep within the brain.
The structure that we call the base organelle.
They are deep grey matter structures in the brain that are giving impulses and normally the
frontal cortex is in equilibrium and it's able to suppress these.
But if there's insufficient inhibition from the frontal cortex then these impulses come
out and you have tics.
Music, singing.
Time passes by.
Still got the look in your eyes.
It feels like making love.
Sometimes it feels like making love.
Well having Tourettes doesn't preclude someone from living a normal life, even an
extraordinary life.
Take for instance Danny D.
When I was young the big thing was seeing Paul McCartney on TV doing Let It be.
I always wanted to be a musician.
When I seen him do that I was like that's defiantly what I'm doing.
So I started playing.
I started bands.
Playing originals, I've made two CD's already.
Actually I developed into a Rod Stewart tribute show being I kind of look him and sing like
him.
So I was in Vegas once and someone said, "Why don't you do a Rod Stewart?
So I started doing the show and it actually took off.
Which got me my recognition to meet the right people because I do him so well to do my
originals.
He's amazing at it.
He's really good.
Actually, when I first got into town and even got Danny up on stage to sing with him, right?
So doing a tribute and seeing a lot of stars they come around and take pictures.
So I said how am I going to break this Rod, I said well, you know what?
I'm going to keep moving on and go for the originals and if it happens then there's that Rod
Stewart guy or whatever.
Whatever it takes.
Whatever it takes, that's Danny's motto.
Growing up in Hamtramck, Michigan a gritty urban enclave in Detroit, Danny never moved
far from his roots.
After running a successful vending machine company, Danny turned turned his warehouse
office into his practice studio and it's here that Danny along with his band has been working
on his newest venture, an original CD.
Music.
Singing.
You're a star above the storm.
I want to wrap you in my arms and keep you warm and I don't live want to live without you.
Nobody does loving like you girl.
I love you.
Piano playing.
Robyn Robbins is a world-renowned producer and musician.
Producing for clients such as U2, Sinead O'Connor, Van Morrison and Ronnie Wood.
He's also a founding member of the Bob Segar Silver Bullet band.
Well we've been at this, well we've doing this private, slowly, we want to get it right.
You know it started very simple, pretty much I was doing all the instruments myself.
While we formulated the songs and the concepts of everything.
So as things went, I started bringing some friends of mine.
Mark Farner from Grand Funk.
So I brought in him.
So he's playing on his album, then a friend of mine is a guitar player and he's from
Detroit.
Paul Warren and he played guitar for Rod Stewart for eighteen years.
Murphy was a backup singer for the Bob Segar Silver Bullet Band.
I say you walking baby, Oh baby, baby.
I'm gonna make you my girl.
Baby, make you my girl.
Oh I see you talking baby.
C'mon baby.
I'm going to make you my girl.
Yeah.
Oh yeah.
Sean Murphy sings back up a lot.
Drew Abbott, which is a guitar player for the Silver Bullet Band.
We have plus my guys in my band and other people we got through the way.
Alto Reed who plays sax on a lot of songs.
Also Mark Farner which is a very good friend of Robyn Robbins came in and wrote things for us.
It works out really good because I kind of fit right in.
At a recent recording session at Robyn's studio, Danny worked on perfecting his vocals for the
new CD.
Singing - sometimes our best ain't good enough.
We get to thinking life's so tough.
But we still got air to breathe, and song to sing, and I can laugh at most anything.
If there's a reason my heart can sing it's because I'm free.
Trying to face the record as it evolved, about people.
It's a tribute to the people.
About you know, I always try to write love song but the songs we got are more like promoting
freedom in the world, you know go for your dream, don't give up, kind of inspirational songs
which I'm hoping one of them really takes off cause with hat I've been through and the story
I've got.
I'd like to be able to write a book one day about Tourette's and people with afflictions and
go for your dreams and don't give up and it doesn't matter, young, old whatever it may take,
just if you have a passion and you financially separate yourself from being able to eat
and live, then do it.
What have you got to lose?
Never say never.
This guy struggles Tourette's, it's got to be frustrating thing to go through in life.
Because it's just not the vocal aspect of it, the effects of it are various you know.
But when the man sings he doesn't, he's like Notelius, the country singer, I don't know if
you heard f him.
But this guy was a stutter big time but when he sang a song he was fine and Danny is the same
way.
I've never heard him stutter.
And I'd like to write a book about my experiences and try to be a motivational person to say
hey, it might be rough but get off your duff and get it moving you know?
Try to make it happen you know?
It's rough, get to it.
Let's get going.
It's all you got life's short.
You know?