Coming right on the heels of my annual visit to Put-in-Bay, we got word of the passing of Pat Dailey, the island troubadour often known as the “mayor of Put-in-Bay,” on July 4. He was 83.
The singer/songwriter/guitarist was mainstay at the island during the summer, performing in its bars for four decades, and becoming the voice that drove the legendary partying there. His music, which combined bawdy tunes about drinking and partying with sentimental songs about languid life on the water fishing, boating and enjoying the fresh Lake Erie breezes, created the template for many other performers who make the island their summer home to this day. You can hear his voice in their performances as you stroll down Delaware Avenue and catch their songs wafting from the patios of bars even though he retired from his performances there several years ago. He was so committed to the island lifestyle that in the 80s, he began spending winters at Key West.
I was introduced to the island in 2007 by Dailey’s longtime manager Tom Brady, who invited me to come out and check out a new restaurant they’d opened on the Boardwalk in downtown Put-in-Bay. In my younger days, it wasn’t my scene; heavily drinking and partying weren’t my thing. But I discovered a whole different vibe mid-week when the crowd is more family-oriented, and I’ve tried to make it out every summer since.
Dailey also performed occasional winter shows for his fans who were chomping at the bit for warm weather to return. In 2002, I wrote the following article to preview one such show at Playhouse Square for the Plain Dealer. It explains Dailey’s origin and how he became an island icon. It’s somewhat edited for length.
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Anyone who has ever been to the South Bass Island resort town Put-in-Bay knows Pat Dailey. The 61-year-old entertainer landed on the island in 1978 and since then, he’s become its musical mouthpiece. In tunes that mix whimsy, yarn-spinning, irreverence, bawdiness and a sentimental streak, he has lovingly chronicled the island’s favorite pastimes: fishing, boating, drinking and chasing the opposite sex. Albums with titles like “Shore Lines,” “Freshwater” and “Raw Bars” feature songs like “Just How Drunk Are We Gonna Get” as well as lovely ballads like “River of Stars” that ruminate on life’s beauty in a rich but rough-hewn voice that resembles Gordon Lightfoot’s.
That Dailey ended up in northeast Ohio at all was accidental. The St. Louis native had been a nomadic folkie since the mid 60s.
“I was based in San Francisco but I was travelling most of the western states,” recalls Dailey. “While I was working in Chicago, somebody told me about a place in Cleveland I could work, the Choo Choo Lounge in the basement of the Terminal Tower. I was only there for a few weeks and I found the Hairy Buffalo. That’s when things started clicking. So I came back several times and worked there and down at Bobby McGee’s.”
“When I’d come to town everybody would say, you gotta go to Put-in-Bay. So finally somebody took me there. I had about three or four weeks before I had to get back to California so I told the owner of this bar I’d work for the door. He said nobody ever got a cover charge at Put-in-Bay. So I said, ok I’ll just work for nothing and see what happens. And the place got filled up and he said, you want to stay all summer? So it started that way.”
Dailey not only found his natural audience but the wellspring of inspiration that has fueled his music for 25 years.
“I had something specific to write about. When I was travelling, I was writing generic travelling guitar player songs. When I got around here, I didn’t know that much about the Great Lakes. I started hearing people talking about stuff and it all sounded like music to me. It gave me a focus to write about.”
It was during Dailey’s first summer at Put-in-Bay that Tom Brady saw him. Brady, who has a commercial production company in Toledo, is Dailey’s agent, part of a close-knit team which also includes longtime production manager Tony Bacho.
Brady describes his first encounter with Dailey.
“We’re a fledgling production company. We’re at Put-in-Bay shooting a TV commercial for the Chamber of Commerce to get people to come to Put-in-Bay. This was 1978. Put-in-Bay had kind of a bad rap-too much of a party town, not a family thing. We get done and we go into the Beer Barrel for a beer. This guy was on stage and I looked at my crew and said, gang, I’m sorry to ask you this but please if you don’t mind can we get the gear out again ’cause we gotta shoot this guy. This guy is unique. It was unreal the way he controlled the crowd, played them like a violin. It just blew me away.”
Brady offered Dailey a copy of the video to take to clubs to promote future bookings. When Dailey told him he’d never done this, Brady offered to show it to clubs when he traveled for his work.
“The first gig I booked for him was $1000 and later I found out he was working for $200 a night. So he was thrilled with this. We went on to sign a contract and now I’ve been working with him for 25 years.”
In 1984, Dailey added Key West to his itinerary.
“I realized that all the people that I saw at Put-in-Bay were going to Florida. I said maybe I should do down there and find winter work. I went to Sloppy Joe’s and it just seemed like the perfect place for me. Everybody from Put-in-Bay would come down there so it became a meeting place.”
That same year, another career-changing event occurred. Songwriter Shel Silverstein (“A Boy Named Sue,” “The Cover of ‘Rolling Stone'”) attended a Dailey show and suggested they do some songwriting together. That blossomed into a partnership that lasted until Silverstein’s 1999 death and left a legacy of “maybe 100-200 songs” the two worked on together.
“Shel was like a big brother and a mentor,” says Dailey. “We had the same insecurities, the same sense of humor. He educated me on a lot of things that I didn’t understand, in the music business primarily. Shel was an obsessed writer. There would be times I’d throw my hands up and say I gotta quit, I’m burned out. He’d apologize and say, I know, I know, I get crazy. But he was happy as a guy could be. He’d get up every morning like a little kid on summer vacation, going what am I going to do today? He’d start writing songs on his hand while he’s walking over to my house. He made writing fun for me because he gave me confidence that I was doing the right thing.”
Before Silverstein’s death, the two had completed a pair of children’s albums. The first, officially titled Pat Dailey Sings Shel Silverstein’s Underwater Land with performances by Shel Silverstein, comes out this month on Dailey’s Olympia Records. It focuses sea life with titles like “Fish Breath,” “Bubba Barracuda”, “Fred the Trout” and “Found Flounder.”
Dailey says that he feels re-energized by the release of Underwater Land.
“I ran into a real snag when Shel died. The bottom dropped out. So I’m thinking this album is going to put a little life in me. Knowing this thing’s going to be released I sat down and relearned all the words and how to play all that stuff and I realized that just in doing this it’s opening things up to me. After he died, I just let the thing lay for a while. And when I did listen to it after being away from it I really understood what he was doing. It’s got his magic touch on it.”
Many feel Dailey has that magic touch too. Noted area singer/songwriter Alex Bevan is an old friend of Dailey’s who also produced five of his albums.
“I’ve known him since he was playing at Bobby McGee’s. At one point he asked me to produce an album and that began our friendship of many, many years. He’s one of my best friends. On Put-in-Bay I hide out on his dock and bring his wife tomatoes. I love the guy to death.”
Bevan attributes Dailey’s appeal to his “phenomenal charisma. He’s very easygoing. He’s a charming conversationalist. And he’s naturally one of the funniest guys in the world. He took all that craziness of the Bay and he was able to turn it into a caricature which he exploits in music. And he’s able to do it in a way that’s never mean-spirited.”
Brady is also an unabashed Dailey fan.
“I’ve been with Patrick 25 years and I still enjoy the hell out of him. The guy amazes me and blows me away. I sat myself down and listened to the new CD. I told my wife, I’m going to lock myself into my studio and I’m going to listen to this thing. Afterwards I called Patrick up and said, yo P, Brady over here. I wanna tell you I just spent an hour and change listening to this goddamned thing and it’s funnier than hell and it made me laugh and it makes me cry and thank you. And he just went, well, hell, that’s a hell of a compliment.”
In recent years, Dailey has been playing winter theater shows, such as the one at Playhouse Square’s Allen Theater tomorrow night, giving fans a chance to re-live their summer fun.
“I do a lot of the same material, but I do it in a much different way. I keep it a little cleaner. I don’t yell quite as loud and I do more ballads. I love singing ballads and yet I know that there’s only so many I’m going to do before I gotta do something funny. I think deep down I’m more of an entertainer than anything. Singing and writing and all that stuff is just a means to an end, to entertain.”
Come Memorial Day weekend, Dailey will be back on South Bass Island at the 2000 capacity Beer Barrel Saloon (“the world’s longest bar”) where he’ll hold court every Saturday through August.
“I feel so lucky to be in this kind of business which can get pretty ugly after you get over 60,” he says. “I feel so fortunate that I still have what I consider a bright future, a lot of good bookings and lot of places to go with this new record.”
[Written by Anastasia Pantsios]
2 Responses to “Put-in-Bay music Icon Pat Dailey Passes Away at age 83”
Gary Marquard
Cool, Cleveland, Yes I Love Cleveland, my family built half of it.
CHRIS ABOOD
Thanks, Anastasia, for the reminder with the wonderful story of how special Pat was / is to our region.