dan finnerty tour

You may have seen Dan Finnerty sing & swear in movies like THE HANGOVER and OLD SCHOOL with his comedy group The Dan Band. They'll be fully back out on the road soon,  but until then -  tide yourself over with a fkn DAN-O-GRAM on Cameo!  

The Dan Band

About The Dan Band

Dan Finnerty first caught America’s attention as the foul-mouthed wedding singer in the box-office smash OLD SCHOOL, performing his now- infamous rendition of “Total Eclipse of the Heart”. Todd Phillips has continued to feature Dan with cameos in STARSKY & HUTCH and the highest grossing R-rated comedy of all time THE HANGOVER, where he performed his version of “Candy Shop”.

What started as a drunken joke for Finnerty singing I Am Woman at a karaoke bar spiraled out of control into The Dan Band – a cult phenomenon that has garnered rave reviews from The New York Times, The L.A. Times, Rolling Stone and Variety and prompted Entertainment Weekly to dub it “The hottest ticket in Hollywood.”

The Dan Band plays to sold-out crowds from Los Angeles to New York and has appeared numerous times on “The Tonight Show,” “Jimmy Kimmel Live,” “Ellen,” “The Late Late Show” and even caught the attention of Steven Spielberg, who signed on to executive produce Dan’s one hour concert special “The Dan Band: I Am Woman,” directed by McG.

The Dan Band has released three albums, “The Dan Band Live”, “HO: A DAN BAND XMAS,” and “The Wedding Album” – which debuted at the top of the iTunes Comedy charts and featured collaborations with Train, Nicole Scherzinger, Bridget Everett and Rob Thomas.

They tour all of the world, from rock & comedy clubs to large theaters to festivals to corporate events and the occasional high-profile wedding. Dan’s specialty for combining his improv-comedy skills along with his spin on the hilarious covers they perform makes each show feel catered to that specific audience and has kept The Dan Band in high demand for years.

Per New York City’s guidance, Sony Hall is requiring all guests, staff & musicians ages 12+ to be fully vaccinated against Covid-19 to enter. Children ages 5 to 11 must have received at least one dose. Proof of vaccination may include your physical CDC card, photo of your CDC card, NYC Covid Safe App, or the NYS Excelsior Pass. In addition to the vaccination policy, New York City continues to encourage masks for all indoor gatherings, except while you are actively eating and drinking.

The Bourbon Room

Dan Finnerty first caught America’s attention as the foul-mouthed wedding singer in the box-office smash  OLD SCHOOL , performing his now- infamous rendition of “Total Eclipse of the Heart”. Todd Phillips has continued to feature Dan with cameos in  STARSKY & HUTCH  and the highest grossing R-rated comedy of all time  THE HANGOVER , where he performed his version of “Candy Shop”.

What started as a drunken joke for Finnerty singing I Am Woman at a karaoke bar spiraled out of control into THE DAN BAND - a cult phenomenon that has garnered rave reviews from The New York Times, The L.A. Times, Rolling Stone and Variety and prompted Entertainment Weekly to dub it “The hottest ticket in Hollywood.”

THE DAN BAND plays to sold-out crowds from Los Angeles to New York and has appeared numerous times on  "The Tonight Show," "Jimmy Kimmel Live," "Ellen," "The Late Late Show"  and even caught the attention of Steven Spielberg, who signed on to executive produce Dan's one hour concert special “ The Dan Band: I Am Woman, ” directed by McG.

THE DAN BAND has released three albums,  “THE DAN BAND LIVE”, “HO: A DAN BAND XMAS,”  and  “The Wedding Album”  - which debuted at the top of the iTunes Comedy charts and featured collaborations with Train, Nicole Scherzinger, Bridget Everett and Rob Thomas.

They tour all of the world, from rock & comedy clubs to large theaters to festivals to corporate events and the occasional high-profile wedding. Dan’s specialty for combining his improv-comedy skills along with his spin on the hilarious covers they perform makes each show feel catered to that specific audience and has kept The Dan Band in high demand for years.

The Dan Band

The band is known for its  covers  of originally female-performed pop songs, with added obscenities and swearing, made famous by Finnerty's appearance in the films  Old School  and  The Hangover .

Finnerty has appeared in the hit movies  Old School  (singing " Total Eclipse of the Heart " and " Lady "),  The Terminal ,  Starsky & Hutch , where he performed  Roberta Flack 's " Feel Like Makin' Love " at a  bat mitzvah , and  The Hangover  (performing " Candy Shop " and " Fame ") in a wedding scene reminiscent of his appearance in  Old School .

In 2005, they released  The Dan Band Live , their live full-length debut album. They gained attention due to their expletive-heavy version of  Bonnie Tyler 's "Total Eclipse of the Heart," as well as their cover versions of "Lady" by  Styx , " Milkshake " by  Kelis ,  Toni Basil 's " Mickey ," and many others.

They filmed a one-hour concert special of their live show called  Dan Finnerty & The Dan Band: I Am Woman , for the  Bravo  network, which was directed by  McG  and executive produced by  Steven Spielberg .

The band released a Christmas LP called  Ho: A Dan Band Xmas . The album consists completely of original Dan Band songs, with no covers. Songs on the album include "Ho, Ho, Ho" (a smooth  R&B Christmas song about a  prostitute ), "Merry Christmakwanzakah", "Please Don't Bomb Nobody This Holiday" and "I Wanna Rock U Hard This Christmas" with a video featuring  Florence Henderson  from  The Brady Bunch  making the moves on Santa at a retirement home. The video for "Please Don't Bomb Nobody This Holiday" featured many celebrity cameos, including  Sheryl Crow ,  Christina Applegate ,  Nicole Scherzinger  from  The Pussycat Dolls ,  Kyle Gass  from  Tenacious D ,  Neil Patrick Harris ,  Meg Ryan ,  Macy Gray ,  Christopher Guest , among others.

In addition to their numerous appearances on  The Tonight Show with Jay Leno , they have been seen as the house band on  The Ellen DeGeneres Show ,  Pajama Party  and Spike TV's  Spike Guys' Choice Awards  2009 as well as appearances on  Jimmy Kimmel Live! ,  The Late Late Show , and  Last Call with Carson Daly . Finnerty wrote and performed the finale song for the  NBC  show  Last Comic Standing  and was a regular comedy correspondent on  The Jay Leno Show  and continued on as a correspondent on the new  The Tonight Show with Jay Leno  performing all original material for the show.

In 2015, the band released their third album, entitled  The Wedding Album , a mixture of covers and originals, featuring collaborations with  Nicole Scherzinger ,  Train ,  Nuno Bettencourt ,  Bridget Everett  and  Rob Thomas .

Finnerty recently co-wrote the song "Look At Her" with  American Idol  musical director  Michael Orland  and performed it in the  Netflix  movie  Dumplin'  starring  Jennifer Aniston .

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Twenty Years Later, The Dan Band Is Still the Funniest Part of ‘Old School’

February 22, 2023 by Admin 0 Comments

By Jake Kring-Schreifels

Last spring, Dan Finnerty—the comedic frontman of The Dan Band, the raunchy, pop cover group made popular by Old School —received an Instagram notification that he didn’t recognize: “Champagnepapi started following you.” After a quick Google search told him the blue check-marked handle with its 130 million followers belonged to Drake, he sent a screenshot to his 25-year-old daughter. “Check your DMs,” she insisted loudly over the phone, where Finnerty found a brief message from the hip-hop artist.

“Hey, I’m doing a video with a wedding. Is there any way you’d recreate your scene in  Old School ,” Drake wrote, signing off with a fingers-crossed emoji.

Finnerty replied in a manner typical of his white, jocular, 52-year-old identity: “Sounds good, Drake.”

With plans to film him in a nine-minute music video for his single “Falling Back,” the Canadian rapper tasked Finnerty with spoofing a song from his extensive catalog, so the comedy singer sent Drake a voice-note with a melodramatic version of his 2009 hit “Best I Ever Had.” The next day, Finnerty, bleary-eyed following a red eye from San Diego, stood in a hotel ballroom, belting out slow, falsetto interpretations of “You’re the fucking best” in front of numerous IG honey brides, as Drake nodded in approval at the head table. “I was just laughing the whole time,” Finnerty remembers. “Like,  What the fuck? ”

Like many men of a certain age, Drake had been captivated by The Dan Band ever since the outfit showed up in a Todd Phillips’ R-rated comedy. Released 20 years ago this week,  Old School —about three men closer to middle-age than college-age who begin a fraternity—became an unlikely hit, more than tripling its budget at the box office and catapulting Will Ferrell, Vince Vaughn, and Luke Wilson into comic stardom. But Finnerty’s first-act cameo as a foul-mouthed wedding singer lands the earliest impression, dropping F-bombs into Bonnie Tyler’s “Total Eclipse of the Heart” and shocking guests as they danced to his reimagined power ballad. By the end of his set, in which he entertains Vaughn with a ludicrous version of Lionel Richie’s “Lady,” Finnerty had stolen the entire scene. “At all our early screenings it always got a tremendous response,” Phillips says over email. “It’s so unexpected and it feels so out of place in the best way.”

Though Finnerty and his rotating cast of suit-jacketed backup singers had already spent several years performing expletive-ridden female anthems in L.A. nightclubs, the movie expedited the band’s mainstream popularity. “All the people that would start to come to the shows or hire us—that was based on  Old School,”  Finnerty says. Over the last two decades, the Hollywood sheen has kept Finnerty rocking and cracking jokes, affirming the comedian’s profane hold over audiences. At a time when most comedies are relegated to streaming services, The Dan Band serves as a nostalgic trip to a raunchier, monocultural landscape, where a one-minute cameo could fuel an entire career performing women-empowerment classics unironically. “I like how it’s evolved. Even if some of the songs are the same, every show is different based on who is in the audience,” Finnerty says. “They know anything can happen.”

The bones of The Dan Band started with some late-night karaoke. In the mid-1990s, at the end of his American tour of the off-Broadway show “Stomp,” Finnerty took his cast members to a Toronto bar and began singing Helen Reddy’s “I Am Woman” for some laughs. A couple years later at a karaoke bar in Los Angeles, he drunkenly performed it again and “the reaction I got in the room was just like,  That’s genius! ” he says. That night, a friend asked Finnerty if he’d open for her band with a few songs “so it looked like she was headlining,” he remembers. After agreeing and performing a set list that included “You Light Up My Life” and “Fame,” a promoter approached him. 

“He was like, ‘I book The Viper Room, when’s your next show?’ 

“I’m like, ‘Never.’

“He goes, ‘If you can make a 20-minute set, I’ll book you next Friday.’”

That week, Finnerty curated a handful of 70s and 80s pop songs—transforming R&B staples like “Don’t Leave Me This Way” and “Flashdance” into surfer punk jams—which he’d grown up listening to. “Those songs are funny, and I knew I could do something with the water splashing,” he laughs. “That’s when I realized they were all female songs.” Though he forgot to invite friends to his debut, he grabbed the remaining crowd’s attention with his unexpected song choices and secured more gigs. “That’s when my wife [actress Kathy Najimy] was like, ‘This is what’s going to get you noticed. This is what’s going to get you on a sitcom.’”

Finnerty had grown up attending Catholic school in Rochester, N.Y., aspiring to be on television as the “smartass neighbor who said a couple funny zingers.” Though he had a strong voice, “I liked singing if I could be funny,” he says. “I never wanted to just sing a ballad and commit to emoting any feelings.” The initial concept of The Dan Band effectively merged those two interests. With his swear-happy vocals, goofy dancing, and quick-witted crowd banter, Finnerty soon began booking monthly dates at Largo, where Tenacious D and other comedians had gotten their starts. Around 2000, he added two permanent backup singers and expanded the band’s celebrity audience by “talking more in between songs, adding ridiculous choreography, and trying to one up ourselves every time,” he says.

About a year later,  Breckin Meyer ( Clueless, Franklin & Bash ) invited Todd Phillips to Largo to see Finnerty sing. “I just loved their whole point of view,” Phillips says. “Dan was a natural performer and knew how to keep the crowd engaged.” At the time, he and Scot Armstrong’s  Old School  script didn’t include a wedding singer, but that all changed once he saw The Dan Band’s performance. “Todd said, ‘I’m doing a movie, there’s a wedding scene, and I need a song. What would you sing?’” Finnerty recalls. “I was like, ‘Well, I’m working on a medley of ‘Total Eclipse of the Heart’ and ‘Private Dancer.’ And Todd said, ‘I love it.’” Within a week, Finnerty and his band members were in a Hollywood studio recording vocals. The only problem? He wasn’t cursing. “We went outside to have a smoke and I basically was like, ‘What the fuck?’” Phillips says. “He misunderstood that we were making an R-rated comedy and didn’t know that he had the freedom.” Once Finnerty realized he could swear, “we went back inside and changed “Total Eclipse of the Heart” forever.”

On the day of the shoot, inside L.A.’s Wilshire Ebell Theatre, Finnerty had about three takes to unleash his perfectly-timed curse words on his wedding guests. “It was all such a blur,” he says. “I could tell people thought I wasn’t going to swear.” The scene takes place early in  Old School , when Frank (Ferrell) and his wife (Perrey Reeves) begin their first dance with the bridal party. In one take, Phillips floats the camera from the stage, capturing Finnerty in profile, to the dance floor. Moments later, the frontman slightly adjusts Tyler’s lyrics: “I see the  fucking look in your eye,” he sings, a sneaky punctuation that prompts Ferrell to throw a brief, confused glance back at Finnerty, and then to Reeves. “It’s so unexpected and it feels so out of place in the best way,” says Phillips, who designed the moment as a steadicam shot. “There is something so disruptive about taking such a time-honored tradition—the bride and groom’s first dance—and just completely defiling it.” 

Though Phillips admits the camera misses Finnerty’s second F-bomb by a hair, “I saw the playback and thought it was so fucking funny to have my giant head coming into frame and then Will Ferrell nailing that reaction,” Finnerty says. “That’s when I knew it wasn’t going to get cut.” In place of “Private Dancer,” Finnerty finishes the scene with the final notes of “Lady,” inserting some “Lonely Goatherd” riffs and cementing what could have been a generic 90 seconds into a dynamite cameo. “He has great timing and he’s so quick,” says Gene Reed, Finnerty’s long-time backup performer, who had a front-row view on set. “He has a total sense of humor about it all, but you still have to be able to sing and know what you’re doing.” By the spring of 2003, the movie had earned $86 million at the global box office, giving The Dan Band an “as seen in  Old School ” slogan that garnered larger crowds, a record deal, nationwide tour dates, and frequent requests to hear their soiled version of “Total Eclipse.”

Over the next several years, Finnerty committed to growing his act and audience. In 2004, Steven Spielberg executive-produced the band’s hour-long special for Bravo that showcased the spontaneous thrills of their live shows. Finnerty then continued his reign within the Todd Phillips comedy universe, appearing in  Starsky and Hutch  as a carrot-topped bat mitzvah singer performing an age-inappropriate version of “Feel Like Makin’ Love.” A couple years later, he returned to  wedding singer duties in  The Hangover , reinterpreting 50 Cent’s “Candy Shop,” annoying Jeffrey Tambor, and flipping off an old man while grinding on his wife. As he spins and screams in ecstasy with a rendition of “Fame,” he takes over the movie’s finale with an overwhelming and hilarious arrogance. “By then, I just had the confidence to jump off the stage whenever I wanted,” Finnerty says. 

“It was kind of an inside joke to myself that he always showed up in my films as a hired entertainer who has his own idea of how the night should go,” Phillips says. “It just felt right.”

That cavalier energy and desire to mess with the crowd persists in The Dan Band’s live act. As his assholish persona and overtly sexual gyrations attest, Finnerty thrives on making the men in his audiences uncomfortable, replicating the characters he’s played on screen. “I wanted it to be this guy who had the mic so he made the most of it and stood up to whomever he wanted,” he says. “You can see my own self-hatred based on who I pick on.” As the show progressed, however, he continued to find new inspiration and updates for performances—like when he saw Pink floating from silks at the 2010 Grammys. “Dan called the next day and said, ‘We’re doing that. We’re meeting at this gym in the Valley,’” Reed says. Soon enough, three “middle-aged, overweight men” were putting on their own aerial gymnastics show two feet above the ground. “We all had black and blue bruises around our lower backs getting dizzy,” Reed jokes.

Since the pandemic subsided, Finnerty has taken the show back on the road, playing select cities throughout the country, along with some private gigs, occasional (hefty-paying) weddings, and, yes, Drake music videos, continuing a career that he calls “the one good thing that came out of drunken karaoke.” Still, two decades after  Old School , “Total Eclipse of the Heart” and his perfectly-timed F-bombs remain his signature sendoff, ensuring The Dan Band will live as long as the movie does. “It’s the least entertaining song we do in the whole show, but it’s the recognition—people are high-fiving when I swear, and I get it,” Finnerty says. “It’s cool to be part of someone’s happy memory.” 

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About The Dan Band

Dan Finnerty first caught America’s attention as the foul-mouthed wedding singer in the box-office smash Old School , performing his now- infamous rendition of “Total Eclipse of the Heart”. Todd Phillips has continued to feature Dan with cameos in Starsky & Hutch and the highest grossing R-rated comedy of all time The Hangover , where he performed his version of “Candy Shop”. What started as a drunken joke for Finnerty singing "I Am Woman" at a karaoke bar spiraled out of control into The Dan Band – a cult phenomenon that has garnered rave reviews from "The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Rolling Stone" and "Variety" and prompted "Entertainment Weekly" to dub it “The hottest ticket in Hollywood.” The Dan Band tour all of the world, from rock & comedy clubs to large theaters to festivals to corporate events and the occasional high-profile wedding. Dan’s specialty for combining his improv-comedy skills along with his spin on the hilarious covers they perform makes each show feel catered to that specific audience.

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The Dan Band have turned 21, and there’s no hangover in sight

Enduring two decades as a band, Dan Finnerty busts a move and sings the old school classics this weekend at Foxwoods

He may dress like a janitor, but when Dan Finnerty makes his way back to Foxwoods this weekend with the rest of The Dan Band , he’ll be keeping it everything but clean.

Bringing what Finnerty is describing as their “finally legal tour” to Fox Theater on Saturday (March 7), the musical comedy trio, who have made appearances in films like Old School, The Hangover and Starsky & Hutch , is gleefully celebrating their 21st year of existence by embracing everything the show has evolved into. And they’re still holding close to what made their shows so memorable to begin with after a drunken karaoke session involving Finnerty kick-started the idea for their career.

“We’ve played Foxwoods a bunch of times, and it’s always been a really fun show,” Finnerty tells Vanyaland. “ The crowd is up for anything, and over the last four or five years, the show has really turned into an audience participation sort of thing. I enjoy going through the songs, but to me, the show is really made by what happens between the songs with whatever crowd we’re in front of.”

While not the original lineup, the significance of reaching 20 years as a band that doesn’t bother to replace feminine pronouns when reciting their own versions of Rhianna or Bonnie Tyler tracks is not lost on Finnerty. Quite frankly, the older the band gets, the funnier it becomes for Finnerty to try and survive through the boy band dance moves they break out whenever they take the stage.

“One of the back-up guys, Eugene [Reed], will do a cartwheel and then his pinky finger will be pointing in another direction,” says Finnerty. “I’ll ask him how it happened and if he’s okay, but he just tells me it’s fine because he doesn’t want me to send him out to pasture. He’s got no other options at this point. He’s too far in.”

Sure, Finnerty is looking forward to putting out a new album later this year — the first of which since 2015’s The Wedding Album — but before that happens, he’s looking forward to making his way back to New England for another round, and he plans to dust off an older track, Pink’s Glitter In The Air ,  and performing in grand Dan Band-style. Even though he may not be forcing Reed to suspend himself in the air like Pink did at the Grammys in 2010, he’s hoping to make this time around at Foxwoods a big deal, even if it means putting his bandmates in the line of fire.

“We only do the song two feet off the ground, but we’re going to do it again,” says Finnerty. “We’ve been cutting edges, because I’m worried about Eugene dying up in the air in a hammock, but he’s gotta go sometime, so we’re gonna make it big at Foxwoods. It might be his last show, and we’ll miss him, but he had a good run.”

THE DAN BAND :: Saturday, March 7 at Fox Theater at Foxwoods, 7 CT-2 in Preston, CT :: 8 p.m., $36.50 :: Event Page

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How the Dan Band became America's favorite foul-mouthed wedding band

The first two things you're bound to notice in a conversation with Dan Finnerty are:

1) He's funnier than most.

2) He really does like swearing. 

This should come as no surprise to anyone at all familiar with the Dan Band singer's work in three Todd Phillips films that define his pop-cultural currency.

First, he played the leader of a wedding band slinging F-bombs through "Total Eclipse of the Heart" during Will Ferrell's dance with his new bride in "Old School."

Then, in "Starsky & Hutch," he turned in a brilliantly age-inappropriate version of "Feel Like Makin' Love" at a bat mitzvah.

And this year marks the 10th anniversary of "The Hangover," which featured Finnerty's disturbingly lascivious rendition of the 50 Cent song "Candy Shop" to hilarious comic effect.

The road to "The Hangover" started, fittingly enough, with a night of drunken karaoke.

"I was in the show 'Stomp,'" he recalls. "We were touring. And when it was my last show, the cast took me out to this bar in Toronto, and I got up, and I sang ‘I Am Woman’ just to make my friends laugh."

It was shortly after this that Finnerty was asked to open for a friend's band in Los Angeles — to make it look like she was headlining.

"She was like, 'Just come sing anything,'" he says. "So I sang, ‘I Am Woman,’ ‘You Light Up My Life’ and ‘Flashdance.’ People were like, ‘That's so cool that you did all girl songs.' I was like, 'Oh yeah.' It hadn't hit me that it was all girl songs. It was just songs that I thought would be funny."

After their set, a man walked up and asked for a flyer.

"I’m like ‘For what?’," Finnerty says. "He goes, ‘Your next show. When is it?’" As it turns out, that guy booked the Viper Room and offered him a 30-minute slot.

"So I borrowed my friends band, and we played the Viper Room," he says. "The guy that booked it was like, ‘How many people do you have coming?’ I’m like ‘Nobody. I didn’t invite anyone. I don't know what the (expletive’s) gonna happen.' That's when I learned that you're supposed to actually bring people to your show. I was too embarrassed."

How Hollywood came calling

As luck would have it, the Pussycat Dolls were set to hit the stage at midnight, and one of the Dolls was dating "Charlie's Angels" director McG. He caught the Dan Band's set and invited Todd Phillips to see them when they got a steady gig at Largo, the LA nightclub where Tenacious D started."

"Todd came and he's like, ‘Well (expletive), I actually need a wedding singer for this movie I’m doing. What would you sing at a wedding?’ I’m like, ‘Well, I'm working on a medley of ‘Total Eclipse’ and ‘Private Dancer’ that’ll break your (expletive) heart.'”

From there, McG landed the Dan Band a development deal with Warner Bros., and Steven Spielberg signed on to executive produce a concert special directed by McG for the Bravo network called "Dan Finnerty & The Dan Band: I Am Woman."

Finnerty laughs and says, "Every time something big happened, I was like, ‘This is so stupid, you know? A couple wine coolers and karaoke.'"

After signing record deal, the Dan Band hit the road at their label's insistence.

As FInnerty recalls his first reaction, "I'm like, ‘Who the (expletive’s) gonna go see us outside of New York or LA?' But they were like ‘You'll see.’ By then, ‘Old School’ had happened, and the TV special had aired. So people came. And that was 15 years ago. Now it's the 10th anniversary of ‘The Hangover.’ So it's like, 'That's crazy. That was fast.' But yeah, we've been whoring this out for a long time."

Where the (expletive) started

Finnerty credits his parents for his reliance on colorful language.

"I was brought up so Catholic," he says, "in this small farm town in upstate New York. So the minute my parents dropped me off at college, as the car pulled away, I just started screaming ‘(Expletive)!’; you know what I mean? Because I finally could."

When he went in to film the scene that sent him on his way in "Old School," he figured he'd clean up his act for the big screen.

"I did the first pass of ‘Total Eclipse,'" he recalls. "And Todd Phillips came up and was like ‘Hey, are you gonna swear like you do in your show?’ I was like, 'Am I allowed to?’ 'Yeah.' So I was like, ‘Well, buckle the (expletive) up.’”

This should be a lesson to parents, he says, who don't allow their kids to use that kind of language.

"Now I make a living swearing in a band," he says. "When my daughter was little, people would say ‘What does your dad do?’ She would say, ‘He sings girl songs and swears in a band.’” My dad was a judge. It’s ridiculous that this is what she grew up with. But it’s funny."

Anything for a laugh

And if there's one rule the Dan Band seems to live by, it's that if it could be funny, then it's definitely worth a try.

"The older and fatter we get, the funnier the songs are," Finnerty explains, "Like to see us try to get through ‘em. There's a lot of choreography. When ‘Single Ladies’ came out, I was like, ‘We're doing that. And it's only gonna to be funny if we learn exactly the choreography.’ We had a friend who’s a choreographer, and we asked him to break it down. We're like, 'Let's have a couple rehearsals and have him teach it to us.' We had seven three-hour rehearsals. It was 21 hours it took our (expletive) (expletives) to learn that song."

At the final rehearsal, Dan Band backup singer Gene Reed tore a hamstring while doing a high kick. "And the show was like the next night," Finnerty recalls. "I'm like 'You're doing this song. Ice it up ‘cause this is happening.'"

When Pink did her aerial silks at the Grammy Awards, he knew they had to get in on that action, too.

"It’s the first time people saw her hanging from circus things," he says. "My wife kept watching me rewind the video of her on the awards. She’s like ‘What are you doing?' I'm like, ‘I am doing this next week at the show.’ I Googled ‘circus trainer in Los Angeles’ and found some girl. I walked in in sweats and Converse sneakers and was like ‘Can you teach me how to do what Pink did?’ She's like, ‘Oh my god, there's a lunatic in the gym.’ But the next day, I called my backup guys. I was like ‘Get to the Valley. We’re learning that Pink song.'"

Their version of her aerial ballet was only two feet off the ground, but they did it at their show that next week. And the crazy thing, he says, is that Pink saw a video of their performance and invited them to join her on stage at the next year's American Music Awards.

"It was when she did ‘Raise Your Glass,’ and she was pregnant," he says. "So she had all this mayhem on steroids – like skateboarders and break dancers. So they just thought it would be funny to put us up in the aerial silks, but they just weren't getting that we don't really do that. They were like ‘Just have the backup guys be upside down and we’ll raise the silks in the air.’ And we were like ‘Are they going to be strapped to anything?’ They're like, ‘No, you just bend your knees, and you won’t fall.’ The look on their faces when they go, ‘There’s this button we push, and it just shoots them into the air.’ And they shot them up into the air. So yeah, that was ridiculous. But it was funny."

A wedding in the lobby?

The Dan Band's Van Buren performance this weekend has been billed as an actual wedding with cake, a bouquet toss and a champagne toast. Wedding attire is encouraged.

"You know, I saw that," Finnerty says, when asked about the wedding. "I called my agent, and I was like, 'Is this really happening?' But I guess the people who run that venue, they're doing something in the lobby before our set. So it's going to be our regular show. I don’t know if they’re actually going to get married before the doors open and then they’re just pretending it's a wedding reception, but it should be funny."

You may wonder if they get a lot of people asking them to play their weddings.

"I'm not even kidding," Finnerty says. "Every day, I get tweets and emails saying, ‘Will you please play our wedding? We don't have any money, but there'll be plenty of beer and plenty of babes.' I’m like, ‘Let me drop everything. By all means.’ We have, like, a ‘scare away’ quote that says ‘I'll do it if someone's crazy enough to pay THIS.’ But it's happened. We've done, like, actual legit weddings, probably five or six, I think? We only sing, like, three songs. But we're doing another one next month here in New York. And Daniel Negreanu, the poker player, we just did his wedding last month in Los Angeles."

Before they'd even done the wedding scene in "Old School," the woman who used to book them every weekend in Los Angeles asked if they would play her wedding.

"And she had done so much for us, I was like, 'Absolutely,'" he says. "And her grandmother sat in front. By the time we went on, everyone was wasted. But she was still sitting there with her hair all done up nice and a purse on her lap. Everyone was dancing and drunk, and she was looking right at me. So I kept looking at her, but I get nervous because it's so inappropriate. And when I get nervous, I swear and grab my crotch. The more she was horrified, the more I grabbed my crotch. It was awful for both of us. We both looked at each other like, ‘How can we make this stop?’ It was a runaway train of sorrow and shame."

That's when he decided he wouldn't do his act in front of people's grandmas anymore.

"If there are grandmas, I say 'No,'" he says. "Unless they pay. Then, I’m like 'OK; send your grandma home,' which is what a lot of people do."

His daughter just turned 22. And Finnerty wouldn't let her see the act until she was 21.

"Her friends would always be like, ‘Your dad’s cool. He lets you drink and smoke out and swears in front of you’," he says, with a laugh. "And she's like, ‘No, he's like a sitcom dad from the '50s.’ I didn't swear in front of her. I didn't let her swear. I didn't let her see my show because I wouldn't be able to do it with her in the audience."

The Dan Band

When: 8 p.m. Friday, July 19.

Where:  The Van Buren, 401 W. Van Buren St., Phoenix.

Admission: $15-$25.

Details: 866-468-3399,  thevanburenphx.com .

Reach the reporter at [email protected] or 602-444-4495. Follow him on Twitter @EdMasley .

Support local journalism. Subscribe to azcentral.com today.

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18 mind-blowing facts about dan finnerty.

Written by Retha Clouse

Published: 12 Oct 2023

Reviewed by Sherman Smith

Dan Finnerty is a name that has become synonymous with entertainment and incredible vocal talent. From his electrifying performances as the lead singer of The Dan Band to his memorable appearances in movies like “Old School” and “The Hangover,” Finnerty has undoubtedly made a lasting impression on audiences worldwide. But beyond his sensational performances, there is so much more to this charismatic celebrity. In this article, we will delve into 18 mind-blowing facts about Dan Finnerty that will leave you in awe of his extraordinary journey, unique skills, and unexpected accomplishments. Get ready to dive into the fascinating world of Dan Finnerty and discover what makes him the one-of-a-kind personality that he is today.

Key Takeaways:

• Dan Finnerty and the Dan Band have gained fame through their comedic musical performances, appearing in hit films and prestigious events, and amassing a dedicated “Dan Fans” following.
• Their unique blend of music and comedy, along with Finnerty’s powerful vocals and energetic stage presence, has solidified the Dan Band’s status as an unforgettable and entertaining act in the entertainment industry.

The Dan Band was formed in 2003.

The Dan Band, led by the charismatic Dan Finnerty, was established in 2003 and quickly rose to fame for their unique style of comedic performances and entertaining covers of popular songs. They became known for their energetic live shows that combined humor, music, and audience engagement.

Dan Finnerty gained widespread recognition through his role in the movie Old School.

Fans of the comedy film Old School will likely remember Dan Finnerty for his memorable performance as the wedding singer singing iconic songs with his own hilarious twists. This role propelled him into the spotlight and solidified his reputation as a talented entertainer.

The Dan Band made appearances in hit films like The Hangover and Starsky & Hutch.

Continuing their success in the film industry, the Dan Band made appearances in other renowned movies such as The Hangover and Starsky & Hutch. Their comedic musical performances added a unique touch to these films, earning them even more fans and recognition.

Dan Finnerty has performed on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno.

The Dan Band’s popularity led to numerous television appearances, including a performance on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno. This exposure helped increase their fan base and solidify their presence in the entertainment industry.

The Dan Band’s cover of “Total Eclipse of the Heart” became a viral sensation.

One of the Dan Band’s most popular performances is their comedic rendition of Bonnie Tyler’s “Total Eclipse of the Heart.” This unique cover became a viral sensation, gaining millions of views on various online platforms and further showcasing Dan Finnerty’s talent and humor.

Dan Finnerty has performed at prestigious events like the Academy Awards and the USO Tour.

The Dan Band’s reputation as a must-see live act led to them being invited to perform at prestigious events such as the Academy Awards and the USO Tour. Their ability to entertain audiences of all kinds solidifies their status as a highly sought-after musical act.

Dan Finnerty is known for his distinct and powerful vocal range.

One of the standout features of Dan Finnerty’s performances is his impressive vocal range. He effortlessly switches between high and low notes, captivating audiences with his powerful voice and unique style.

The Dan Band has released multiple albums throughout their career.

Since their formation, the Dan Band has released several albums, showcasing their musical prowess and ability to put a comedic twist on well-known songs. Fans eagerly anticipate their releases, eager to hear what comedic musical surprises the band has in store.

Dan Finnerty has collaborated with numerous renowned artists.

Throughout his career, Dan Finnerty has collaborated with various renowned artists, further solidifying his place in the music industry. These collaborations have allowed him to showcase his versatility and expand his fan base.

The Dan Band’s performances are a unique blend of music and comedy.

One of the defining characteristics of the Dan Band’s shows is the seamless blend of music and comedy. Their performances are filled with laughter, bringing an infectious energy to the stage and making for a truly memorable experience.

Dan Finnerty has made guest appearances on popular television shows.

In addition to their successful musical career, Dan Finnerty has made guest appearances on popular television shows, including The Ellen DeGeneres Show and Jimmy Kimmel Live!. These appearances have allowed him to showcase his talent and comedic prowess to a wider audience.

The Dan Band has a dedicated and passionate fan base.

Known as “Dan Fans,” the Dan Band’s loyal followers are passionate about their unique performances and comedic musical style. Filled with memorable moments and catchy tunes, their shows leave a lasting impression on audiences, creating a strong fan base that supports them throughout their career.

Dan Finnerty’s energetic stage presence adds excitement to every performance.

When Dan Finnerty takes the stage, his energy and charisma captivate the audience from the very first note. His infectious enthusiasm and larger-than-life persona make each performance an unforgettable experience.

The Dan Band has performed sold-out shows around the world.

The Dan Band’s popularity extends far beyond their hometown, as they have performed sold-out shows in various countries around the world. Their ability to connect with audiences across borders highlights their universal appeal and lasting impact.

Dan Finnerty’s talent extends beyond singing into acting and voice-over work.

In addition to his musical talent, Dan Finnerty has also ventured into the world of acting and voice-over work. His versatility and charm have allowed him to explore different avenues within the entertainment industry, showcasing his wide range of abilities.

The Dan Band’s performances have been featured in popular commercials.

The Dan Band’s unique blend of comedy and music has caught the attention of advertisers, leading to their performances being featured in popular commercials. Their catchy tunes and entertaining style make them a perfect fit for capturing the attention of viewers.

Dan Finnerty’s performances are known for their interactive and engaging nature.

When attending a Dan Band concert, be prepared for a lively and interactive experience. Dan Finnerty thrives on engaging with the audience, ensuring that everyone is entertained and involved throughout the show.

The Dan Band’s iconic rendition of “I Am Woman” gained international recognition.

The Dan Band’s hilariously irreverent version of the iconic anthem “I Am Woman” gained international recognition and became one of their signature performances. This clever twist on a classic song left audiences laughing and wanting more.

Undoubtedly, Dan Finnerty is a remarkable individual with an incredible array of talents and achievements. From his musical prowess to his comedic performances, he has captivated audiences around the world. His unique mash-up style and powerful voice have made him a recognizable figure in the entertainment industry.As we explored the 18 mind-blowing facts about Dan Finnerty, it becomes apparent that his journey has been nothing short of extraordinary. From his humble beginnings to his rise to fame, he has demonstrated resilience and determination. Whether it be through his performances with The Dan Band or his appearances in movies and TV shows, his charismatic personality shines through.Dan Finnerty’s ability to seamlessly combine humor and music sets him apart from others in the industry. His performances are filled with energy and passion, leaving audiences entertained and wanting more. As he continues to charm audiences worldwide, it’s clear that his impact on the entertainment industry will continue to grow.In conclusion, Dan Finnerty is a true powerhouse in the entertainment world. Through his exceptional talent, dedication, and infectious personality, he has earned a well-deserved place among the most beloved celebrities of our time.

Q: How did Dan Finnerty become famous?

A: Dan Finnerty gained fame through his performances with The Dan Band, known for their unique and comedic renditions of popular songs. His appearances in movies like “Old School” and “The Hangover” also contributed to his rise to stardom.

Q: Can Dan Finnerty really sing like that?

A: Yes, Dan Finnerty’s powerful and versatile voice is indeed authentic. His ability to belt out incredible notes and deliver memorable performances has been well-documented and appreciated by audiences worldwide.

Q: How did Dan Finnerty develop his signature mash-up style?

A: Over the years, Dan Finnerty has honed his mash-up style by combining various genres and songs to create unique and entertaining performances. This creative approach has become a trademark of The Dan Band and has solidified their place in the music industry.

Q: Has Dan Finnerty released any solo music?

A: While Dan Finnerty is primarily known for his work with The Dan Band, he has also released solo music projects. His solo album “Stupid Love” showcases his talent and versatility as a singer.

Q: Does Dan Finnerty have any upcoming projects?

A: While specific details may vary, Dan Finnerty is known for his constant engagement in various projects. Whether it’s live performances, collaborations, or appearances in movies and TV shows, fans can expect to see more of him in the future.

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• Contact info

• Wedding Singer

• Levi Whitaker

• Vernon Whitaker

• Kevin the Snow Plow Guy

• Lord Stenchman

• Eugene Reed

• Sad Sack (uncredited)

• Tour Manager - Stacee

• SWAT Captain

• Grouchy Guy

• Wallo (voice)

• Gigundocock

• executive producer
• performer: "Mrs. Claus", "Single All the Way"
• writer: "Mrs. Claus", "Single All the Way"
• performer: "Look at Her"
• writer: "Look at Her"
• performer: "Candy Shop"
• performer: "MAKING PORN"

• performer: "Christmakwanzakah"
• writer: "Christmakwanzakah" (uncredited)

• performer: "Feel Like Makin' Love"
• performer: "Lady", "Total Eclipse of the Heart"

• performer: "Perfect Princess"

• courtesy: "A Groovy Kind Of Love"
• performer: "A Groovy Kind Of Love"

• performer: "Carolina Skies"

Personal details

• thedanband.com - official site
• Dan Finnerty and The Dan Band
• Rochester, New York, USA
• Kathy Najimy August 8, 1995 - present (1 child)
• Children Samia Najimy Finnerty
• Other works Dan in "The Dan Show" ABC Pilot/Warner Bros. Studios - John Pasquin - Dir.

Did you know

• Trivia Lead singer of "The Dan Band"
• What is Dan Finnerty known for?
• Is Dan Finnerty married?
• Does Dan Finnerty have children?

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Twenty Years Later, The Dan Band Is Still the Funniest Part of Old School

By Jake Kring-Schreifels

Last spring, Dan Finnerty—the comedic frontman of The Dan Band, the raunchy, pop cover group made popular by Old School —received an Instagram notification that he didn’t recognize: “Champagnepapi started following you.” After a quick Google search told him the blue check-marked handle with its 130 million followers belonged to Drake, he sent a screenshot to his 25-year-old daughter. “Check your DMs,” she insisted loudly over the phone, where Finnerty found a brief message from the hip-hop artist.

“Hey, I'm doing a video with a wedding. Is there any way you'd recreate your scene in  Old School ,” Drake wrote, signing off with a fingers-crossed emoji.

Finnerty replied in a manner typical of his white, jocular, 52-year-old identity: “Sounds good, Drake.”

With plans to film him in a nine-minute music video for his single “Falling Back,” the Canadian rapper tasked Finnerty with spoofing a song from his extensive catalog, so the comedy singer sent Drake a voice-note with a melodramatic version of his 2009 hit “Best I Ever Had.” The next day, Finnerty, bleary-eyed following a red eye from San Diego, stood in a hotel ballroom, belting out slow, falsetto interpretations of “You’re the fucking best” in front of numerous IG honey brides, as Drake nodded in approval at the head table. “I was just laughing the whole time,” Finnerty remembers. “Like,  What the fuck? ”

Like many men of a certain age, Drake had been captivated by The Dan Band ever since the outfit showed up in a Todd Phillips’ R-rated comedy. Released 20 years ago this week,  Old School —about three men closer to middle-age than college-age who begin a fraternity—became an unlikely hit, more than tripling its budget at the box office and catapulting Will Ferrell, Vince Vaughn, and Luke Wilson into comic stardom. But Finnerty’s first-act cameo as a foul-mouthed wedding singer lands the earliest impression, dropping F-bombs into Bonnie Tyler’s “Total Eclipse of the Heart” and shocking guests as they danced to his reimagined power ballad. By the end of his set, in which he entertains Vaughn with a ludicrous version of Lionel Richie’s “Lady,” Finnerty had stolen the entire scene. “At all our early screenings it always got a tremendous response,” Phillips says over email. “It’s so unexpected and it feels so out of place in the best way.”

Though Finnerty and his rotating cast of suit-jacketed backup singers had already spent several years performing expletive-ridden female anthems in L.A. nightclubs, the movie expedited the band’s mainstream popularity. “All the people that would start to come to the shows or hire us—that was based on  Old School,”  Finnerty says. Over the last two decades, the Hollywood sheen has kept Finnerty rocking and cracking jokes, affirming the comedian’s profane hold over audiences. At a time when most comedies are relegated to streaming services, The Dan Band serves as a nostalgic trip to a raunchier, monocultural landscape, where a one-minute cameo could fuel an entire career performing women-empowerment classics unironically. “I like how it's evolved. Even if some of the songs are the same, every show is different based on who is in the audience,” Finnerty says. “They know anything can happen.”

The bones of The Dan Band started with some late-night karaoke. In the mid-1990s, at the end of his American tour of the off-Broadway show “Stomp,” Finnerty took his cast members to a Toronto bar and began singing Helen Reddy’s “I Am Woman” for some laughs. A couple years later at a karaoke bar in Los Angeles, he drunkenly performed it again and “the reaction I got in the room was just like,  That's genius! ” he says. That night, a friend asked Finnerty if he’d open for her band with a few songs “so it looked like she was headlining,” he remembers. After agreeing and performing a set list that included “You Light Up My Life” and “Fame,” a promoter approached him. 

“He was like, ‘I book The Viper Room, when’s your next show?’ 

“I’m like, ‘Never.’

“He goes, ‘If you can make a 20-minute set, I'll book you next Friday.’”

That week, Finnerty curated a handful of 70s and 80s pop songs—transforming R&B staples like “Don’t Leave Me This Way” and “Flashdance” into surfer punk jams—which he’d grown up listening to. “Those songs are funny, and I knew I could do something with the water splashing,” he laughs. “That's when I realized they were all female songs.” Though he forgot to invite friends to his debut, he grabbed the remaining crowd’s attention with his unexpected song choices and secured more gigs. “That's when my wife [actress Kathy Najimy] was like, ‘This is what's going to get you noticed. This is what's going to get you on a sitcom.’”

By Lori Keong

By Bradford William Davis

By Zach Baron

Finnerty had grown up attending Catholic school in Rochester, N.Y., aspiring to be on television as the “smartass neighbor who said a couple funny zingers.” Though he had a strong voice, “I liked singing if I could be funny,” he says. “I never wanted to just sing a ballad and commit to emoting any feelings.” The initial concept of The Dan Band effectively merged those two interests. With his swear-happy vocals, goofy dancing, and quick-witted crowd banter, Finnerty soon began booking monthly dates at Largo, where Tenacious D and other comedians had gotten their starts. Around 2000, he added two permanent backup singers and expanded the band’s celebrity audience by “talking more in between songs, adding ridiculous choreography, and trying to one up ourselves every time,” he says.

About a year later,  Breckin Meyer ( Clueless, Franklin & Bash ) invited Todd Phillips to Largo to see Finnerty sing. “I just loved their whole point of view,” Phillips says. “Dan was a natural performer and knew how to keep the crowd engaged.” At the time, he and Scot Armstrong’s  Old School  script didn’t include a wedding singer, but that all changed once he saw The Dan Band’s performance. “Todd said, ‘I’m doing a movie, there’s a wedding scene, and I need a song. What would you sing?’” Finnerty recalls. “I was like, ‘Well, I’m working on a medley of ‘Total Eclipse of the Heart’ and ‘Private Dancer.’ And Todd said, ‘I love it.’” Within a week, Finnerty and his band members were in a Hollywood studio recording vocals. The only problem? He wasn’t cursing. “We went outside to have a smoke and I basically was like, ‘What the fuck?’” Phillips says. “He misunderstood that we were making an R-rated comedy and didn’t know that he had the freedom.” Once Finnerty realized he could swear, “we went back inside and changed “Total Eclipse of the Heart” forever.”

On the day of the shoot, inside L.A.’s Wilshire Ebell Theatre, Finnerty had about three takes to unleash his perfectly-timed curse words on his wedding guests. “It was all such a blur,” he says. “I could tell people thought I wasn't going to swear.” The scene takes place early in  Old School , when Frank (Ferrell) and his wife (Perrey Reeves) begin their first dance with the bridal party. In one take, Phillips floats the camera from the stage, capturing Finnerty in profile, to the dance floor. Moments later, the frontman slightly adjusts Tyler’s lyrics: “I see the  fucking look in your eye,” he sings, a sneaky punctuation that prompts Ferrell to throw a brief, confused glance back at Finnerty, and then to Reeves. “It’s so unexpected and it feels so out of place in the best way,” says Phillips, who designed the moment as a steadicam shot. “There is something so disruptive about taking such a time-honored tradition—the bride and groom’s first dance—and just completely defiling it.” 

Though Phillips admits the camera misses Finnerty’s second F-bomb by a hair, “I saw the playback and thought it was so fucking funny to have my giant head coming into frame and then Will Ferrell nailing that reaction,” Finnerty says. “That's when I knew it wasn’t going to get cut.” In place of “Private Dancer,” Finnerty finishes the scene with the final notes of “Lady,” inserting some “Lonely Goatherd” riffs and cementing what could have been a generic 90 seconds into a dynamite cameo. “He has great timing and he's so quick,” says Gene Reed, Finnerty’s long-time backup performer, who had a front-row view on set. “He has a total sense of humor about it all, but you still have to be able to sing and know what you're doing.” By the spring of 2003, the movie had earned $86 million at the global box office, giving The Dan Band an “as seen in  Old School ” slogan that garnered larger crowds, a record deal, nationwide tour dates, and frequent requests to hear their soiled version of “Total Eclipse.”

Over the next several years, Finnerty committed to growing his act and audience. In 2004, Steven Spielberg executive-produced the band’s hour-long special for Bravo that showcased the spontaneous thrills of their live shows. Finnerty then continued his reign within the Todd Phillips comedy universe, appearing in  Starsky and Hutch  as a carrot-topped bat mitzvah singer performing an age-inappropriate version of “Feel Like Makin’ Love.” A couple years later, he returned to  wedding singer duties in  The Hangover , reinterpreting 50 Cent’s “Candy Shop,” annoying Jeffrey Tambor, and flipping off an old man while grinding on his wife. As he spins and screams in ecstasy with a rendition of “Fame,” he takes over the movie’s finale with an overwhelming and hilarious arrogance. “By then, I just had the confidence to jump off the stage whenever I wanted,” Finnerty says. 

“It was kind of an inside joke to myself that he always showed up in my films as a hired entertainer who has his own idea of how the night should go,” Phillips says. “It just felt right.”

That cavalier energy and desire to mess with the crowd persists in The Dan Band’s live act. As his assholish persona and overtly sexual gyrations attest, Finnerty thrives on making the men in his audiences uncomfortable, replicating the characters he’s played on screen. “I wanted it to be this guy who had the mic so he made the most of it and stood up to whomever he wanted,” he says. “You can see my own self-hatred based on who I pick on.” As the show progressed, however, he continued to find new inspiration and updates for performances—like when he saw Pink floating from silks at the 2010 Grammys. “Dan called the next day and said, ‘We're doing that. We're meeting at this gym in the Valley,’” Reed says. Soon enough, three “middle-aged, overweight men” were putting on their own aerial gymnastics show two feet above the ground. “We all had black and blue bruises around our lower backs getting dizzy,” Reed jokes.

Since the pandemic subsided, Finnerty has taken the show back on the road, playing select cities throughout the country, along with some private gigs, occasional (hefty-paying) weddings, and, yes, Drake music videos, continuing a career that he calls “the one good thing that came out of drunken karaoke.” Still, two decades after  Old School , “Total Eclipse of the Heart” and his perfectly-timed F-bombs remain his signature sendoff, ensuring The Dan Band will live as long as the movie does. “It's the least entertaining song we do in the whole show, but it’s the recognition—people are high-fiving when I swear, and I get it,” Finnerty says. “It's cool to be part of someone's happy memory.” 

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