The Raleigh native has been steady presence on the music circuit for decades, including on Broadway and in popular cover bands
by David Menconi

American popular culture mythologizes solo stars — the musicians who stand alone as iconic figures. But for every Taylor Swift or Bad Bunny, there are countless role players who are trying to make a living as best they can, one gig at a time.

Raleigh native Dan Grennes is one of those musicians, a bassist for hire for 30-plus years. He’s done a little of everything over the years, including playing original music with some success. Most notable was when his band Bomb Squad won a battle-of-the-bands contest sponsored by American Bandstand icon Dick Clark back in the early 2000s. Grennes has also played innumerable studio sessions for jingles and soundtracks over the years.

Grennes still writes and records original songs, but he mostly makes a living playing in various strata of the cover-band circuit. The work has included playing in stage bands for Broadway musicals and touring musical productions like Rock of Ages, Tenors of Rock and Raiding the Rock Vault. He’s also in The Windjammers, a “yacht rock” band that plays 1970s-vintage soft rock; Phoenix, which plays harder classic rock; and tribute acts for Traveling Wilburys and Tom Petty (in which he portrays Petty).

For all that, you’re most likely to encounter Grennes onstage if you take a Royal Caribbean cruise, where Phoenix is a popular onboard act. The cruises keep him out on the ocean about two weeks per month, playing vintage hits by the likes of Foreigner, Aerosmith and Bon Jovi, one 90-minute set at a time.

“The cruise gigs are fun,” he says. “Yeah, you do see a lot of the same ports and play the same music. But they’re some of the best musicians I’ve ever played with.”

Grennes has a solid reputation among his peers on the circuit. Les Warner, former drummer for the English platinum-level hard-rock band The Cult and Grennes’ longtime bandmate in various groups, describes him in glowing terms.

“He’s extremely dedicated, takes the music very seriously,” Warner says. “Great all-around musician, and he’s amazing when he does Tom Petty. It’s handy that he looks like him and doesn’t need a wig. He’ll really go the extra mile to put the work in, and he’s always prepared. You can rely on him.”

And that’s how you get a steady stream of gigs for more than 30 years.

It was probably inevitable that Grennes would pursue music as a career. An oft-repeated piece of family lore is that as an infant, young Dan broke the Grennes household’s record player trying to pull it down so he could see where the sounds were coming from. The incident left a permanent scratch on Side One of his parents’ copy of Carole King’s classic album Tapestry (they had to skip over “So Far Away” after that).

Grennes’ earliest experiences playing music himself began with informal accordion lessons from his grandfather, even though the instrument was bigger than he was. Formal piano lessons followed. He played saxophone in the Broughton High School marching band while also playing bass in a band with friends.

“It really was a good band,” Grennes remembers. “Everybody in it was a good player, but everybody else went on to other things. I was the only one stubborn enough to keep at it, because I was always the awkward ADD kid trying to find my own way. I could’ve given up, gotten a desk job I hated. But I would not have been satisfied with that.”

After high school, Grennes went to Boston’s Berklee College of Music on scholarship, graduating in 1994. After a brief unproductive stint in Nashville, he landed in New York and started on the studio circuit. Networking with his peers eventually landed him on Broadway for Toxic Avenger and Green Day’s American Idiot. Playing in the touring band for the latter even brought him back to Raleigh for rare hometown performances with a run of the show at Memorial Auditorium in 2012.

Grennes was also playing with his band Bomb Squad, who were big on the jam-band circuit in the early 2000s. After winning Dick Clark’s “Coca-Cola New Music Award” in 2003, Bomb Squad got to play on that year’s American Music Awards telecast alongside Metallica, OutKast and Pink, getting a thumbs-up from pop star Daryl Hall.

“Stuff like that brings alive the teenager in me,” Grennes says. “Some of my favorite times with Bomb Squad were sitting around backstage listening to road stories from some of the old-timers we’d meet. It’s been a priceless journey.”

After a 16-year run in New York, circumstances took Grennes out to Las Vegas. He has lived there with his wife for more than a decade. When he’s not on the road or out on the ocean, there are gigs aplenty with his various bands in the ultimate tourist town. And he still does passion projects as a side hustle, writing and recording songs under the names Uncle Pumpkin and Karma Gods.

“Most of the work I get comes from word of mouth,” he says. “I’m fortunate that somebody is always calling with some new opportunity to go down another path. I’m fortunate to keep working in this day and age. You know, I had the same dreams as everyone else about making it big, selling a lot of records. But I’m content, very grateful. It’s always a challenge to make a living and balance what you’ve got to do with what you want to do. Same as any artist.”

This article originally appeared in the March 2026 issue of WALTER magazine.