Dan Vaillancourt seems to have the worst luck with his truck.

When he arrived in Cincinnati this afternoon, the dashboard battery light of his black Chevy S-15 pickup started flashing red. His alternator needed to be replaced. The repair cost: $75. Driving home from a show in Ypsilanti in November, a deer collided with his truck, severely damaging the left rear side. The repair cost: $500. And in October, at about 2:30 a.m. near Dundee, Mich., on his way to Cleveland, something flew up from the highway, leaving a massive hole in his gas tank. Luckily, Vaillancourt made it to a gas station, where a man named Al not only gave him a place to stay for the night, but also helped him fix his gas tank. The repair cost: $300

"It's kind of hard to save money because of the random things that happen," Vaillancourt says with a smile while sipping on coffee at Cody's Café in Cincinnati, where he will play later tonight. "I drive about 30,000 miles a year. I have to think that these same things could happen to other people over the course of driving that many miles."

The 22-year-old Vaillancourt keeps a pretty optimistic outlook on things. He shakes off what could have been two life-altering car accidents as something that could have happened to anybody, never questioning the troubadour lifestyle he leads.

"Everyone has something they have to do. Even if I'm using all the money that I have just to keep doing this, it's worth it for me."

When he's not performing, Vaillancourt studies cultural anthropology and religion at Central Michigan University, where he will graduate next winter.

While most of his fellow undergrads are likely spending their spring break on a sunny beach or downing a bag of chips in front of their TVs, Vaillancourt's gig in Cincinnati is the second of five shows he has booked over the break before he will head back home.

"I'm not getting paid for this one," Vaillancourt says, sporting a green hooded sweatshirt that has caused his blond highlighted hair to look as if he forgot to comb it today. "I'm playing for exposure. I'm new to this area still, so it's good to play between two established acts. They have regular people who come and see them. So they are going to be exposed to my music whether they like it or not."

Vaillancourt has been touring fulltime as a singer/songwriter now for about two years, performing about 100 shows a year, with the pay varying from show to show.

"You always have to play the lesser places first, meaning not necessarily the quality, but the places where you are going to get paid less. In Michigan, I'm to the point to where I can make money overall. Businesses, when they're starting out, don't usually make money for the first few years. You kind of have to work your way up, pay off the stuff you initially put into it."

Securing gigs takes up a lot of time, with Vaillancourt spending around 40-50 hours per week on booking. He recently took six weeks off to start booking for summer tours on the east coast and in the south and Great Lakes regions, securing most of the dates going into the week before August.

"The talent buyer (of a venue) will usually ask you to send a press kit to them. About three weeks after they get the press kit, they'll want you to call them back. And then they'll either say, 'I haven't looked at it yet,' 'I have ten million things to do,' or sometimes they'll just start booking you then."

In between booking and traveling to shows, Vaillancourt attends classes all day on Tuesday and Thursday, and works two other jobs, supervising a computer lab for eight hours on Wednesday, and teaching guitar and bass lessons on Monday at his dad's studio, Vaillancourt's Place.

Vaillancourt's father has taught 12 different instruments out of the family home in Mt. Pleasant for almost 30 years now, averaging 100 students a week. Dan has been teaching guitar and bass since he was 15.

"I have been around music my whole life, so I kind of took it for granted. I didn't pick up the guitar until I was 14, which is kind of late for someone doing what I do."

Vaillancourt started playing in various bands when he was 16, and is currently the drummer of an alternative rock band called The E.N.D. When Dan made the decision to go out and perform around the country on his own, his parents weren't the ones who pushed him to pursue his goal.

"My parents support me, but they worry about me, so they've never pushed me to do it at all," he says with a laugh. "I pretty much have pushed myself. No one ever said 'you should go do this' or 'let me help you do this.' I was just like 'hey I'm going to do this."

And Vaillancourt has no big dreams of winning a Grammy or having a video on MTV. His only dream is to pursue music as a career for as long as possible.

"I don't need to play really big places. I think that I would be happy to make enough to just make a living. I don't want to be famous because people lose respect for the music a lot of times. And then its kind of like a burned-bright-and-faded-away type of thing." -- Tim Carpenter

Check out www.danvaillancourt.com.

April 2003