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Steelyard "Sugartooth" McDan
 
 
The Man ... The Legend ... The Tour
 
     
     
     
 
     
  On April 12th, 1862, Winny McDan gave birth to a bouncing baby boy in the main house at Honker’s plantation near the the town of  Clarksville, Archingsaw,* not to be confused with more famous  Clarksville in deep blues country — the Mississippi Delta!  Despite the fact that the child looked to be a strapping, big-boned chap, Reuben McDan, the proud father, named him Stilliard after his teeny tiny little grandfather.  
     
 
* When Union-leaning West Virginia completed its secession from Virginia in 1862, three rebel counties within the new state seceded in turn and formed the Dang Cussed State of Archingsaw. The following day, the State Militia had quelled the insurrection. The state of Archingsaw had existed for just 41 hours, 9 minutes and 11 seconds.  
     

     
  Fast-forward to 1875. One lazy afternoon, after a month of calamities too horrific and blues-tinged to describe here (including the accidental pulping of Stilliard Senior, the bizarre death of his parents on the site of an early electrical experiment and, especially, the desertion of his fiance’, Delorous “Delly” Von Bronx, on what was supposed to be their wedding day), Stilliard was fooling around with his guitar, “messin’ with some ethnic-type pentatonic scales and shit”, when he made an amazing discovery. When he bent the G string up to B, let it gliss slowly back down to G and then played an E on the the D string, the effect was no less than a perfect analog of the pain and suffering he felt in the deepest part of his soul. After noodling around for 10 minutes or so,  he came up with a structure, some lyrics, and a neat rhyme scheme. And so the Blues was born. McDan
   

   
 

Six months later, at a “juke joint” in East Texas, Stilliard — now Steelyard — gave his first performance in the newly forged style. The rest, as they say, is histrionics.

 
 
   
The only known photo of McDan: Stuart, Florida c. 1916
     
 
 
     
 
         
 
     
  It is to this man –
no less than the
Inventor of the Blues – 
that this tour is dedicated.
     
     
    Hats off to  
 
 
Steelyard "Sugartooth" McDan
 
         
         
         
  | siteguide
  On Tour 2006
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  pics | on tour | dates + tix | the man... | press release | admat