Cover photo © 2025 Joseph A. Rosen

Lately, it seems like the world rewards those with the loudest, most pretentious voices.  However, it is often the quieter, more unassuming individuals who have the most interesting lives and stories.  Keyboardist/singer/songwriter Dave Keyes is one of those unassuming artists that leads a fascinating life.  In addition to having his own band and releasing eight albums, Keyes has performed with numerous legends of the blues, written for television and movies, played on blues cruises and the Big Blues Bender, and has conducted/played in a long-running, successful Broadway play, (Smokey Joe’s Café).  Blues Blast Magazine had the opportunity to catch up with Keyes while he was performing recently at the Big Blues Bender in Vegas.

A native New Yorker, Keyes grew up in a family that supported and encouraged his musical ambitions.

“My mom was pretty musical—she sang, and my dad was into music. We’d go out and hear jazz every once in a while.  But most importantly, they encouraged me to take lessons.  I took classical lessons starting at age seven, but it only lasted two months, because I hated them.  My mom was cool enough to get me a teacher who was willing to teach me the popular songs of the day.  I think the first song I learned was “Downtown”, by Petula Clark.  Piano was my first instrument, but in public school I started playing trumpet in the first grade.  I had a really good music teacher at school and in the fourth grade I heard someone mentioning about improvising, so I then learned how to improvise.”

“One of my first early influences was Earl Hines.  Then, somewhere around the 8th grade I got the record Live at the Fillmore East by the Allman Brothers, and Jefferson Airplane’s Bless it’s Pointed Little Head.  And then I looked at the credits and saw McKinley Morganfield and started working back from there.  I was always into swing and Louis Armstrong, so from there I got turned on to Earl Hines and, at that time, there was a ragtime revival because the movie The Sting had come out, so I started listening to Scott Joplin, Willie ‘the Lion’ Smith, and Eubie Blake.  From there I got into the boogie-woogie stuff, like Albert Ammons, Pete Johnson and Meade Lux Lewis.  Then, when I went to high school I moved on to Leon Russell.  Leon was someone who influenced me immensely.  And, later, in Boston, I got turned onto Professor Longhair.”

After graduating high school, Keyes completed a bachelor’s degree at Tufts University in Boston but majored in English, rather than focusing on his primary passion.

“I wanted to go to music school, but my dad wasn’t really into it, so we kind of compromised.  I went to regular college and got a degree in English but was playing music all through my college years.  I was fortunate enough to get a really well-rounded education, so whether it was psychology or the English classes, it all helped me with my writing.  I remember there was one cool professor there named Jeff Titan who was an ethnomusicologist.  I believe one of his books is in the Blues Foundation’s Hall of Fame collection.  We would listen to the sermons of C.L. Franklin (Aretha’s father) and analyze it for how it related to the blues with the cadence and the call and response.  It was a real eye-opener and gave me a deeper understanding of just how things evolved musically and societal-wise, and the importance of that.”

Following college, Keyes was able to immediately work full-time as musician, skipping the phase that many musicians experience of working horrible short-lived jobs.  His initial work led to some wonderful opportunities.

“I saw an ad in the Village Voice where someone was looking for a country piano player and I played a few gigs with them.  That job led to a job with a Texas swing band, and from there I met a number of great players and seemed to be working all the time.  I guess in terms of a ‘big break’, 10 years later, I was playing with Darlene Love and after the show someone came up to me who was a contractor and put bands together for Broadway shows. He asked me if I had ever done Broadway.  I said no but let him know that I was interested.  Shortly after that I got a call from Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, and they asked me to be involved in a show that they were developing, which ultimately turned into the show, Smokey Joe’s Café.  That show lasted six years and was an amazing gig.  I probably played in two thousand performances and conducted about half of them.”

Throughout the many years it was on Broadway, Smokey Joe’s Café featured special appearances by popular singers including Ben E. King, Pam Tillis, Gladys Knight, Lou Rawls, Gloria Gaynor, and Rick Springfield, with Gladys Knight extending her involvement to actually appear in the show in Boston and Las Vegas.  It was nominated several times for Tony Awards and in 1996 won a Grammy Award for the Best Musical Show Album.  But this was only a small fraction of great performers with whom Keyes had the opportunity to collaborate.  For example, he has performed with Odetta, David Johansen, Bo Diddley, Chuck Berry, Ronnie Spector and Popa Chubby.

Odetta seemed like an especially intriguing personality, given that she was often referred to as “The Voice of the Civil Rights Movement and influenced such greats as Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Mavis Staples and Janis Joplin.  Just the sound of her voice seems to command one’s full attention, and it has been reported that Rosa Parks was her number one fan, and that Martin Luther King, Jr. called her the “queen” of American folk music.  Dave was asked about his experience with Odetta.

“Odetta hadn’t recorded in a while, and Mark Carpentieri, from MC Records, was bringing her back to the public limelight. My friend Seth Farber was touring with her, but couldn’t do some of the gigs, so I subbed.  Odetta was not the easiest person to work for because she was getting older and was having physical issues.  It was very difficult for someone like her, who was used to being so independent, to find that she couldn’t do everything for herself anymore.  The gig was just me on piano and her, so I traveled with her and did everything with her.  It was intense.  Every note she sang and every word she spoke had meaning.  There were no wasted words with Odetta.  It was an amazing experience.”

“Bo Diddley was great too—but he was more like a kid.  He had this cigar box guitar with a drum machine built into the guitar.  One time we went to Japan, and we were sitting on the train platform and he took his guitar out of the case and turned on the rhythm machine, started jamming with it, and within 60 seconds we were surrounded by 100 curious Japanese schoolchildren.  I loved playing with Chuck Berry too, but I didn’t talk to him much.  He just really wasn’t much of a talker.  But those were the architects of Rock ‘n’ Roll right there—him and Bo and Jerry Lee.”

Like Odetta, David Johansen (leader of the New York Dolls who later performed as Buster Pointdexter and played the role of the Ghost of Christmas Past in the movie Scrooged), also had an energy suggesting an intense and intriguing personality.

“I worked with David Johansen for a long time—about ten years.  He was like a chameleon—he could just go from one musical style to another.  He went from the NY Dolls to this Latin thing—Buster Pointdexter, which was when I worked with him, and then he went to a straight blues thing.  He was such a student of music and such a great entertainer.  He had a passion for everything he did, which was really fantastic.  Some people, like him, and Odetta in particular, I seem to appreciate more after they are gone.  The thing about Odetta is that she had such historical importance.  She was the first artist to have her hair in an afro, (they called it an ‘Odetta’) and she was a real trailblazer being a Black woman who was not a wallflower.”

Dave is frequently seen at the Big Blues Bender, in Vegas, and sometimes plays with their music director’s (Jimmy Carpenter) band.  He was asked how that came to be.

“I was on a cruise ten years ago and met Jimmy.  I was playing in the piano bar, and we just connected.  He would come sit in.  He can play jazz, or just about anything.  Very few people can do what Jimmy does.  We stayed in touch, and I was helping to book this festival in Switzerland for 25 years, so I brought Jmmmy’s band over there one year.  Then he brought me out to Vegas as an artist in residence, and I also play the east coast gigs as part of his band.  We’re just having a ball.”

Jimmy Carpenter expressed mutual admiration for Dave’s abilities, noting “My friendship with Dave Keyes goes back about 15 years, and it just keeps getting better! He is not just a total pro and badass on the keys, he’s a good friend and real asset on the road. He’s been playing with my band whenever possible, and always brings it, and rolls with the challenges of our world like a champ. What a great player and fine human being!”

Dave has always played in his own band when not involved in other projects, and his band won the International Blues Challenge in Memphis in 2000.  Later they played for an English cooking television show on NBC (which didn’t last too long given that it aired at the same time as Rosie O’Donnell’s show.)  Lately, Dave has been spending more time focusing on his own music, playing in his band, and he has just released his eighth CD, Two Trains.

“I recently connected with a guy I’ve known for a long time named Mark Sameth, who had a bunch of national country hits in the ‘80s and then stepped away from the music business.  He’s back now, and we’re writing and I’m excited about our collaboration.  I feel like my songwriting is becoming more targeted and pinpointed and better as a result of working with Mark.  There are a couple of themes to the new album.  One theme is about my wife passing a couple of years ago after us being together for 37 years.  She had ALS.  She had been a dancer and had a dance company, and she said if her legs couldn’t move she was done.  So, she decided a year into the illness that she was going to slowly just stop eating.  I respected her decision, and she lived fully until the very last minute.   We lived and loved until the moment she died.  So, a few songs on the album express the emotion of that sense of loss. For example, ‘Rest in Peace’ is basically about losing the one you love   You are grateful for the amazing times that you had and then sad for the loss, but somehow you go on. Then there is a gospel song called “I’m Alright” that basically says that I’m alright no matter what happens, and with the love in my heart, I can deal with anything. Two Trains being the title of the CD is about the idea that there are two trains running all of the time— same track- the good and the bad, the Yin and the Yang.  Even in the worst thing possible, like my wife’s passing, I found gratitude for the wonderful life that we had together.  So, there is this duality constantly happening.  Nothing is all good or all bad.  Even the worst things sometimes teach you lessons.  Even in the chaos of this world that we live in right now (and it’s really nuts), there are good things that happen, and we have to find those things and we have to acknowledge them and be able to embrace them.”

Dave also noted that he Is grateful to have a profession when he can continue to improve, without artificial limits based on age.

“I just feel really fortunate to do something that I can keep getting better at each day.  There is not a ceiling on what we do.  Like athletes tend to have a shorter shelf-life.  I feel blessed that I can just keep playing and I’m in a better place artistically now than I have ever been, and that’s really gratifying.  I’m also grateful for the connection with the audience.  I’m kind of a shy guy—not naturally an extrovert.  So, there has been a sort of skill development for me in terms of being able to go on stage and leave everything out there, because that is not naturally who I am.  But I’ve gotten a lot better at it as I’ve gotten older.  I feel like what am I waiting for?  Why hold anything back?  When you connect with somebody you can see it.  You can tell, and it’s a great feeling.  Bruce Springsteen said one of the great things we do as musicians is that we are like magicians.  We can transform people.  We can do things normal people can’t because we have a way to connect.  When I was playing with Odetta, people would come out of the woodwork crying, talking about a concert she did in 1961.  You have a way to connect with people, and they remember that stuff, and it’s wonderful.  It’s a gift.  I just want to do that.”

Go see Dave Keyes live and you will instantly connect with his immense talent and also with his kind and loving spirit.  You can find out more about his latest album, Two Trains, and see his tour dates at www.davekeyes.com