Like Taylor Swift, a Philly guy gives his heart to Nashville

Someone from around these parts develops a taste for country music, moves to Nashville to follow a dream, and after doing the hard work, ultimately develops into a global superstar.

That’s Taylor Swift.

Following that same path? Dan Connors, who I have known (slightly) since childhood.

Dan’s in Nashville now, but grew up in Wynnewood, the son of Fran Connors, best known as the general manager of the Dad Vail Regatta, and Mary Flannery, best known as a sportswriter for the Philadelphia Daily News, where she and I became lifelong friends.

Dan, 35, is a graduate of LaSalle University, where he majored in communications, and chose, at an early age, to communicate through music.

“When I was in first grade at St. John Neumann, a group of older kids performing in the talent show played a rendition of ‘Keep on Rocking in the Free World’ by Neil Young,” Dan tells me.

“It was loud. It was distorted, it absolutely rocked. I knew in that moment what I wanted to do. This was something I had to be a part of.”

Dan’s mother tells me Fran likes traditional country music and he, Dan, and Dan’s brother John would go to Toby Keith concerts together. Keith’s music opened the door to all of today’s country music for them.

Dan had a metal band named Enemy Eternal when he was in college and played at Philly venues such as Dobbs on South Street, the Trocadero on Arch Street, and the Rusty Nail in Ardmore.

He didn’t make much money, but that wasn’t the point. He had fun and racked up performance experience. You’re in college, you’re in a band. It doesn’t get much cooler than that.

In 2013, two years after collecting his degree, he decided to move to Nashville.

Why?

He had interned at Upper Darby’s Relapse Records and asked where the best music scenes were. Dallas, he was told, L.A. — and Nashville.

Nashville? He visited Music City with his parents.

“We feel in love,” Dan says. “It was like no place I had ever been.”

He liked Nashville and moved there, and Nashville liked him back.

Within three months he landed a job as a stagehand. It had everything to do with music — short of performing.

For two years he was “Carrying gear, loading in for a show, every day was something different.”

In 2015, he heard that the big country band, Little Big Town, was looking for roadies. Dan interviewed. “They liked me, I liked them, they asked me to stick around” and that was a portal to touring, and working his way up from a grunt to a stage manager. 

He’s also toured with the Eagles, the mega band of the ‘70s, and with country legend George Strait, sometimes called the King of Country Music.

Touring has taken him all over America, down to Mexico, to much of Eirope.

Touring with a top name band, he tells me, can pay up to $2,000 a week, and the band pays for hotel rooms, travel expenses, and meals.

Unlike rock acts, Dan tells me, which can spend weeks, or months on the road, country acts tend to play a few days, return home, then go out again.

Also unlike rock acts, they are unlikely to trash hotel rooms, he tells me with a laugh when I ask about it. “It’s a totally different zeitgeist,” he say, “The country musicians have families.” He is in a long-time “committed relationship” with a Nashville advertising executive, he says.

He continues to do the road work to pay the bills, but his goal is to move from backstage to performing.

He’s been working on his music all his life, it seems, learning and changing every day.

“My songs and lyrics reflect many of my experiences on the road, from all over the world,” Dan says. “I have loaded in shows everywhere — from the Greek Theater [in Los Angeles] to the Apollo [in Harlem],  Carnegie Hall [in New York] to Royal Albert Hall [in London].”

Remember his metal band in college? That’s in the past, but a thread or two is in the present.

He describes his musical style as the “East Nashville sound — equal parts country, alternative, rock and pop.”

He matches fuzzed out, three-chord songs that sound like they belong on college radio, he says, with the soaring steel guitar and Gospel-driven pipe organ you would expect to hear at the Grand Ole Opry.

Here’s a few sample lines from his “Broken Record”:

An old song about heartbreak on warped 45

Held close and guarded, never too far from your mind

With that scratch in the silence before the opening track

That spot where it skips over a cut in the wax

Found in an old thrift store, new arrivals at cost

A love song about leaving that you hum to yourself when you’re lost

When the day breaks you down, feeling like a fall from grace

The song brings you home into my arms where you’re safe 

Since reading lyrics gets you just so far, Dan has provided this sample for you:

Dan has put out two EPs (small albums) the most recent being 215/615 — the area codes for Philadelphia and Nashville. 

“I have no agent, no management, so I haven’t sold anything or made any money. I just release them to my friends and family, and if a few more people hear about me through them, great, but for now this is just something I do because I love to create music.”

By 2025, he hopes to be touring on his own, playing his own music. 

“I’d love to make money, but ultimately I want to have fun doing what I love doing.”

Which is just what that other young person from around here set out to do.

Hitting Taylor Swift stardom is unlikely, but that’s not the goal for Dan Connors. The goal is the music.