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LL: Please tell us all about the musicians/collaborators who contributed to “Backbone”
and your connection to them.

DC: It was natural to work with Chris Arms again on the production side of things because we
had been writing together and he’s very talented and easy to work with. He’s produced 3 other
albums of mine and so we collaborate on ideas really well and both know what to expect from
the other person. We recorded the 12 rhythm tracks live at Morningstar Studio outside of Philly
with the fantastic engineer, Glenn Barrett and my long-time core road band of 16 plus years,
guitarist Allen James, bass
player Garry Lee and
drummer Tom Walling
with the addition of Danny
Schogger on the keys.
There was a lot of ease and
familiarity, so the process
was fun. None of us had
played with Danny before
but I had communicated
with him about the songs
over Skype and knew he
would be easy going, funny
and immensely talented.
He added a lot to the
album, and we got the
rhythm tracks and the majority of lead vocals completed in 2 days.

We then took the next 3 months to do overdubs adding in other instruments and recording a
few new vocals as the tracks evolved. Some other great Philly musicians contributed to the
project as well including saxophone player Jay Davidson, blues harmonica player John Colgan
Davis, and singer Charlene Holloway who has sung background vocals on 3 of my prior albums.
These are all musicians I have known and worked with over the years, and it was great to have
them on my new album. Overall recording this album was a really wonderful experience. One
of the difficult parts of wrapping up the recording was that our drummer Tom Walling passed
away unexpectedly in late November of 2022, and he never got to hear the completed project.
We are still feeling the impact of this loss.

LL: I have to ask about your other side! You are a licensed Psychotherapist and Clinical
Social Worker with a successful business in that field. Does your musical side play into
that equation? Tell us all about that please!

DC: I mentioned above some of the history of my clinical social work/psychotherapist side and
how it’s been intertwined with my music life. After I left my full-time job in the late 90’s, I tried
working as a musician full time for almost a year. I found that it was hard to make enough money
this way and feeling pressure to work all the time playing music kind of took the joy out of it for
me. I decided to work part time in the social work field and began working a few days at a
women’s center and moved on to working at a Youth Center 3 days a week for 13 years. This
allowed me to have time to write, record, perform live and do some long weekend tours and 1
week to 10-day tours here and there.

About 8 years ago I stopped working for an agency and transitioned to having my own private
practice fully. I had been doing this part time for a while before this. I also have been an adjunct
teacher at a School of Social Work off and on for a while. Being able to create my own schedule
is really helpful. Having two careers and an active 12-year-old son can be a lot to manage but I