Jeff Daniels Loves His Guitar, And Talks About Other Things

May 10, 2024 8:56 PM

So, Jeff Daniels recently visited the Kelly Clarkson Show [13m]. It was an entirely lovely and kind visit full of humanity. But the real surprise is his confession of the love of playing guitar, having written a zillion original songs, and his performance of a song about how the guitar is his best friend and he moves Clarkson to tears with his performance. It's entirely unexpected, and I'm sorry to have spoiled it for you, but how else could I have gotten you to watch this interview?

Here's a link to just the song, if you don't want the full interview. Although they're both so charming in the full interview, just go watch that!

posted by hippybear (13 comments total)

Aw, that was sweet.
posted by gwint at 9:18 PM on May 10

He's very good. Took me back to the 60s folk era. Now watch him as Charlie Crocker in Netflix movie, "A Man in Full"...
posted by Czjewel at 10:06 PM on May 10

Jeff Daniels has an Martin guitar custom model named after him. That's a sign of how well regarded he is by the acoustic guitar community. Jeff Daniels plays a very special custom guitar; it is based upon an old 1934 Martin C-2 archtop guitar, which Jeff found with a broken top. He had famous luthier Joe Konkoly replace the top, essentially converting the C-2 to an orchestral model.

By a weird twist of fate, his first major movie roll was in Ragtime, which also starred James Cagney in his last movie roll. James Cagney was another good amateur guitar player. See acoustic guitar forum, for instance..

Martin no longer makes the Jeff Daniels OM model, but you can find them available sometimes on sites such as reverb. (here, here, here and so on.)
posted by blob at 10:24 PM on May 10 [13 favorites]

Smarter.
posted by fairmettle at 11:13 PM on May 10 [1 favorite]

Never had a clue that he played guitar, let alone that well, or wrote songs. Good on him. He will forever be associated with that brilliant film Something Wild, for me, that I saw when I was still in my teens.
posted by bookbook at 4:18 AM on May 11 [1 favorite]

Worked with him on a tv show and any time there was downtime he was off by himself practicing acoustic guitar. Seemed like a nice guy
posted by cloeburner at 6:59 AM on May 11 [1 favorite]

He's very good. Took me back to the 60s folk era. Now watch him as Charlie Crocker in Netflix movie, "A Man in Full"...

Having just finished the miniseries, he was far better than Tom Freaking Hanks as Sherman McCoy, I can tell you that.

I thought the miniseries did a reasonably good job of moving the action forward to 2024 and condensing and simplifying the plot lines and character relationships of the book, which was pretty messy and sprawling and relied on a few implausible coincidences to bring them together. At the same time, some of the book's best set pieces were kept (the loan workout meeting at the bank, the disastrous visit of the investors to Croker's plantation, Conrad fighting for his life in prison). I thought it was a reasonably diverting piece of TV.

I don't know if I'd reread the book. If I recall correctly Wolfe had to have heart surgery after writing about three quarters of the novel and it just...peters out.
posted by fortitude25 at 9:52 AM on May 11

Thanks for the reminder. I did see this on my YouTube feed - I follow Kelly and once in a while listen to her covers. I saw this and thought hmm, that's interesting, but did not hit play. It was nice! Very worth watching. (I am not a fashion person but I <3 Kelly's shoes - about 12:06)
posted by Glinn at 12:36 PM on May 11

Oh, dammit. f already like him, but now I like her, too.
posted by JustSayNoDawg at 1:05 PM on May 11

First discovered that he could play (and sing) on the funeral/wake episode of "The Newsroom."

The version he and the other reporter did of "That's How I Got To Memphis" was really well done. I did a re-watch of the show recently and that was definitely one of the high points. Love that song now, too.
posted by Thistledown at 3:01 PM on May 11

Oh, she is awesome.
posted by wenestvedt at 3:12 PM on May 11

Oooof. I really like Jeff Daniels. I’ve loved his past work and look forward to anything he puts out. But.. I had to turn off ‘Man in Full’ after about 15 minutes, that southern accent is HORRIBLE! Like Kevin Spacey, HOC, horrible!! My pearls were thusly clutched!!
posted by pearlybob at 4:21 AM on May 12

Ah, that song captures the delight of amateur music making!

You can enjoy the lyrics and chords as text, or download the tune for us$1 at Jeff's site.
posted by Jesse the K at 2:18 PM on May 12 [1 favorite]