Guitarist gets encore as Phila. TV host

Danny Gold is a baby boomer following his big dream of a midlife career change, and he's hoping you'll watch him on Wednesday nights to see how it works out.

In baggy shirts and with a beard flecked with what Jerry Garcia would have called "a touch of gray," the loquacious proprietor of Danny's Guitar Shop - the name of both his TV show and his quirky little store in Narberth - is aiming to do for guitars what Anthony Bourdain has done for weird foreign food or Mike Rowe for the art of cleaning septic tanks.

"These days, it's a do-it-yourself world, and if you have a vision and come with up with something that clicks, you can make it work," said Gold, who walked away from a steady gig selling Fender guitars to run his own small guitar shop while he pursued his ambition of a TV series for music lovers.

That vision and his unlikely new band of partners - drummer-turned-composer-and-audio-engineer Larry Freedman and music-loving filmmaker Ron Stanford - will take the next big leap when Danny's Guitar Shop makes its debut on WHYY-TV's YArts cable channel on Feb. 1.

The upbeat trio hope Gold's chatty televised excursions into the virtuoso guitar-making of C.F. Martin & Co. or the world of guitarist-turned-violin-merchant David Bromberg will eventually lead to other public TV outlets.

"I'm doing what I always wanted to do when I grew up - and I'm 58," said Gold, who lives with his wife in Bryn Mawr.

It wasn't easy.

In his mid-50s, the lifelong Main Line resident had to choose between a fading conventional job with a steady paycheck and following his own path - with potential greater rewards at the end.

A musician and fixture at Philadelphia's North Star Bar in the '70s, the outgoing grad of Haverford High and Temple was briefly a public schoolteacher before discovering he had a natural gift for sales.

Gold found an opportunity to sell a product he really loved: Fender guitars. He rose to become regional sales manager but was increasingly frustrated.

"I was getting burned out just by the years adding up on the road, but also the industry changing," he said, as chains such as Guitar Center and the Internet made competing more difficult. "It was getting uglier and uglier."

Then he had an epiphany.

Surfing late-night television shows on topics from cooking to cars made him wonder why there was none for his favorite instrument.

"The guitar is an iconic object found in your house," Gold recalled thinking. "Every kid has a guitar."

His bosses at Fender were less enamored of the idea. When he pitched it, they turned him down. So he quit.

He opened Danny's Guitar Shop on Forrest Avenue in Narberth in June 2009.

"This is a small-scale, low-overhead, family neighborhood kind of place," he said. He gets by with lessons that pay his rent and overhead.

The store also offered a base to pursue his more complicated dream of television success. Everything clicked when he found two partners who shared his passion and who had the right complement of skills.

Freedman had a production studio on Second Street and at times seemed a bigger believer in Gold's vision than Gold himself.

"I said, 'You know, you're pretty good at this, being a host,' " after watching a short video that Gold produced. Eventually, Freedman and Gold produced short reports on guitars and musicians for the University of Pennsylvania's WXPN radio station.

"Danny is a fantastic storyteller - he makes seemingly boring information about music come alive," said Bruce Warren, WXPN programming manager. "He's a warm, friendly, entertaining, really knowledgeable guy."

But the talky segments weren't a fit with the station's music format, and there was a lack of funding. Freedman pushed Gold not to give up, and brought in a critical third partner, the veteran filmmaker Stanford, whose first documentaries had been explorations of Louisiana's Cajun music scene in the 1970s.

"The reason I got into films was because I wanted to make films about music," said Stanford, who lived in Narberth. "And now I'm doing it."

They filmed the initial episodes about the Martin guitar factory, Bromberg, and the Philadelphia School of Rock, and paid $250 an episode to run them on Atlantic City's infomercial-laden WMCN-TV. The episodes - and Freedman's ability to land sponsors like Yards Brewing Co. - eventually persuaded WHYY to pick up 12 episodes for its YArts cable channel that it will run at 10 p.m. on Wednesdays.

The key to the show's success, the partners say, is Gold's gift of gab. "Danny can make people feel comfortable," Stanford said. "He's a natural."

"I'm a kibitzer," said Gold, whose sister Julie is a singer-songwriter who won a Grammy for "From a Distance," a megahit for Bette Midler. "I've always been in sales. I enjoy it."

They film the show in what Gold calls a "guerrilla style," with one camera and one microphone, just the host interacting with his subjects.

The trio - or "the lads" as Gold calls them - are optimistic the 12 episodes will lead to wider distribution. With that could come money for road trips to music meccas like New Orleans and Nashville and a chance to "actually pay ourselves," Gold said. "What a concept."

The TV show isn't the only way Gold follows his musical passions; he still plays once a month at local bars such as Chestnut Hill's Mermaid Inn in a western swing band called Beats Walkin'. Indeed, the ups and downs of the bar-band life seem to have prepared the partners for their new venue.

"It's like being in a band," Freedman said. "You go from club to club, build a following, get a buzz about you, and see what happens."

See a video about Danny Gold and his quirky little guitar shop in Narberth at www.philly.com/guitars

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