You can’t accuse
Dan May of being a stranger.
Although he’s lived in the Philadelphia area for more than three decades, the prolific singer-songwriter regularly returns home to Sandusky to perform – as he’ll do with his band July 20 for
the city’s free Party at the Pier concert series at Jackson Street Pier.
“I’ve had just great support from the people of Sandusky,” May says during a recent phone interview. “I haven’t forgotten Sandusky, and Sandusky hasn’t forgotten me.”
Regardless of whether May’s story is new to you or you simply need a refresher course, know that it boasts more twists and turns than an M. Night Shyamalan movie.
We’re talking opera singing, a children’s book and even weapons of mass destruction.
After his years at St. Mary Central Catholic High School and a semester at BGSU Firelands that suggested college wasn’t for him, May enlisted in the United States Air Force, serving as a nuclear missile security specialist up in North Dakota. (Try not to think about the Air Force sending a “19-year-old kid,” as he puts it, to check out nuclear missile sites when an alarm went off.)
He left the Air Force after cancer was found in his lungs, liver, bone and brain, he says, and received treatment at a military medical center.
With the cancer in check and May feeling reasonably well, he decided to give college another shot, enrolling in Bowling Green State University’s journalism school with the goal of becoming a film critic.
Skip ahead a bit, and the now-married May has moved to Columbus, where his wife would have better career prospects. When Ohio State University journalism school wouldn’t accept his BGSU credits, he changed course again, deciding to pursue music at the college.
“When I was a kid, I used to write songs in my head, but I thought that’s what everybody did,” he says. “I didn’t know that was something that was not normal.”
May wasn’t exactly encouraged by the dean of music, he says, because he had no real music experience beyond playing in a high school rock band. He hadn’t taken music classes and couldn’t write music, so the dean suggested May wouldn’t be able to earn a degree.
“That’s all I needed to hear,” May says. “That was enough motivation to get me to go for it.”
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“I haven’t forgotten Sandusky, and Sandusky hasn’t forgotten me.”
While May was majoring in voice and minoring in piano, an instructor asked whether he’d considered opera. The answer: no.
“We didn’t listen to opera when I was a kid,” he says, “and I’d never had any exposure to it.”
He took to it, though, and earned a four-year scholarship to the Academy of Vocal Arts in Philly. May calls ACA the “premier opera-training center in the world” and “an amazing place,” where they taught him, among other things, three languages.
A 12-year career in the opera followed, taking him to various places around the world – including Sandusky, with May bringing a production of “Carmen” to the State Theatre.
The beginning of the end of that phase of his career came after a significant drop in the volume he was able to generate.
“Opera is not pop music, where you use microphones for amplification,” May says. “It’s your raw voice over a 60-piece orchestra.”
Vocal cord surgery bought him six months, but the issue returned.
So this is when he turned to the heartfelt and catchy folk rock for which he’s become known, right?
Nope.
He became a dancer.
A choreographer who’d seen him perform opera in Canada liked the way he moved and hired him for a contemporary ballet. It didn’t matter that he’d had neither dance training or experience, May says, as this was not traditional ballet.
After three years of dancing out of Montreal, he – wait for it – “ended up blowing my hip out, and that was the end of that. And so I figured it was a good time to go back to what I loved doing to begin with, which was songwriting.”
He’d picked that back up during his dancing days, he says.
“When I was singing opera, I kind of turned that part of my brain off,” he says. “When you’re learning Italian and German opera, you don’t have time for that sort of thing.
“I like singing opera, but you don’t have much opportunity to create in opera,” he continues. “You’re doing what the director wants, doing what the conductor wants. You’re doing what the score says, and there’s no room for creation.”
May recently released his seventh album, “Legacy,” named so because he sees it as a reflection of his experiences and early musical influences.
He grew up with six brothers and sisters. One brother was into the Beach Boys, another a trumpet player who loved jazz and a third who dug The Holies. One sister constantly played show tunes and another Cat Stevens.
“It was all those things that I kind of inherited from living in a house with music lovers, and, you know, I think a little bit of all of it soaked in,” he says.
Along his musical way, May also became an author, first collecting stories and essays he’d posted on
Facebook into the book “Adventures in Grocery Shopping” – chosen by the Philadelphia Inquirer as one of its best books of 2016. He followed that up with another collection, "Street Urchins, Poets and Dream Visitors."
Most recently, he published a children’s book, “Coop the Magic Pug,” inspired by the dog he’d had for a decade and a half, a pooch that hung out with him during recording sessions and tales of which garnered interest among his social media followers.
“When he was getting older, people were kind of aware that he was reaching the end, and when he passed away about a year ago, I wrote a story I presented in a children’s book format,” he says, quoting the beginning: Once upon a time, there was a boy named Dan with a dog named Coop.”
He says he’s soon to publish another book, “What Being From Sandusky Means,” filled with his memories about his hometown – a city he sings about on “Chaussee Liaison,” a heartfelt track off of 2015’s “Heartland.”
Dan May - CHAUSSEE LIAISON
May says he likes to think of himself as “an ambassador of music for Sandusky” and is looking forward to playing the Jackson Street Pier, calling the renovated area “another feather in the cap” of the city.
“I’m really excited about it,” he says. “It’s a free concert, and it brings people together, and I think it’s great.”