Music is music. Doesn’t matter the genre or the singer. It’s still music.
“It’s all cut from the same notes,” said Steve Dansby. “The same frequencies in the spectrum. It’s just the way you put them all together.”
And Dansby, 54, has put those notes together in all kinds of ways. A post on his Facebook page about a recent gig at The Grape Wine Bar & Bistro says, “Come enjoy a relaxing night of soft country, rock and blues.” He’s part of the worship team at Journey Lorena church. He’s written and produced rap and hip-hop, and was a member of two Tejano bands that toured extensively across Texas and Mexico. He was in a heavy metal band in Waco back in the day. Classie Ballou taught him the blues. He hung out with Eddy Shaver.
“I don’t even want to call them teachers or instructors or influencers,” he said. “They’re just my heroes. I’ve had so many heroes right in this area and they’re not all with us anymore. But bunch of them still are.”
He then rattled off a list of who’s who in Central Texas music lore, many of whom taught or still teach in the Commercial Music program — now known as Music Industry Careers — at McLennan Community College.
“I would put all these folks around this area that mentored me and are my heroes, I would put them all up against anybody in the world anytime,” he said. “And they can play with anybody. Probably outplay most people.”
Dansby and his current band, the Hellbillies, “are technically a country band,” he said, but they’ll bust out some old school hip-hop — N.W.A., for example — or play a Metallica tune, just to make sure the audience is paying attention.
“We’re going to knock you back in your seats and that’s why we’re the Hellbillies,” he said. “It’s an attitude along with the name.”
In 2013, Dansby and his band at the time, the Tailgate Philosophers, were on a national tour when he started feeling poorly. He figured it was another upper respiratory infection. A doctor prescribed him medication that got him through the end of the tour, but symptoms returned shortly thereafter. His doctor here in Waco saw in an x-ray that Dansby had an enlarged heart. “My heart was bigger than a lung,” he said. And there was a walnut-sized blood clot in there as well.
He eventually needed surgery to supply him a pacemaker, a procedure that Dansby’s doctor said he had little chance of surviving. And he almost didn’t.
“I died somewhere in the middle of it for over seven minutes,” he said. What he experienced in those seven minutes “can’t be described,” he said, but he attempted to put in into words:
“It’s energy. It’s the light frequencies and the sound frequencies that hold these bodies together. Separate and interconnect to all sound and all light frequencies. All frequencies that we can’t even comprehend are all joining together.”
That first pacemaker was replaced a few years later, and the second one did its job until 2021, when Dansby’s heart began to give out.
“Once it’s that damaged, it’s not going to get better. It just gets worse,” he said. His only hope was a heart transplant, and on May 31, 2021, one became available. Jason Turner, from Huntsville, was involved in a serious car wreck on May 22, the day after his 36th birthday, and died nine days later.
“Even after tragedy struck unexpectedly, taking this loving man from his family and with the assistance of his mother, Jason was still giving. He has given new and prolonged life to others by donating his organs. Jason leaves us a true ‘Hero,’” his obituary read.
“He’s my hero forever,” Dansby said. “I’ve hung out with the family. They’re like my family. We talk to each other regularly. We go visit. They come here to visit.”
Dansby and Jason’s mother, Tammy, have plans to get matching tattoos, of the rhythm of Jason’s heartbeat.
