Singer/Songwriter Dan Maguire

Dan Maguire is a singer/songwriter based in Rockford, Illinois, who has been an active musician since his days at Regis University in Denver, Colorado, in the early 1990s. While he has written songs and played in bands since that time, the husband and father has not always been able to focus aggressively on promoting his music.

But that has changed. In 2023, Maguire released his debut album, Travelin’ Light, a collection of tunes that exist somewhere in the uncharted no-man’s land between folk, rock, and jazz. Now, Maguire prepares to head back into the studio to record his sophomore effort, Magnolia, in October of 2025, building on the sound he established with his first record.

Featuring just Maguire and his guitar with Abbey Brick as a second vocalist, Travelin’ Light quietly raises a banner for those who enjoy acoustic music that doesn’t try to be aggressive but is more than just limp wristed strumming. Maguire pairs a combination of finger-picking and strumming patterns with melodies often anchored in a musical past that extends well beyond the last fifty years.

Maguire described his music to V13’s Dawn Jones in March 2025 as “rock and roll I pulled out of a slow cooker,” which is fair. One hears clear signs of his acknowledged rock influences, such as Tom Petty and Eric Clapton, whose blues and gospel-tinged rock creeps into the edges of some of Maguire’s material. It’s especially noticeable when you hear Maguire’s cover of “I’ve Got a Rock and Roll Heart” and hardly notice that the material changed hands.

As the youngest of six kids (all of whom took piano lessons) growing up in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Maguire was exposed to a wide range of music because of what his older siblings listened to. From Billy Joel to Fleetwood Mac, his musical education started young, but when he saw The Clash on MTV, he told Jimmie Trammel of Tulsa World in June 2025, he said, “That’s it, man. That’s where I’m headed.”

This meant doing what he called dabbling in guitar and secretly writing songs until he arrived at Regis University in Denver and committed to the instrument. While there, he was exposed to jazz and classical music and became part of ensembles in those styles. After he graduated, he even joined a group at the invitation of one of his professors, telling Trammel that “the learning experience was unbelievable.”

This background is as clear as his rock influences when you listen to Travelin’ Light. The title calls to mind the 1942 song that was composed by Trummy Young, Jimmy Mundy, and Johnny Mercer and popularly associated with Billie Holiday. Jazz references abound on this record. On songs like “Over You Too,” “Everyday,” and “Seasons,” Maguire’s guitar work echoes the stride piano rhythms and chord changes of the early jazz era. His rough and ready voice sometimes croons up to his melodies with a bluesy feel.

Other songs like “Summer Moon” and “Drop of a Hat” have a clear bossa nova rhythm that calls back that time of jazz when everyone learned that a little bossa goes a long way. Here, Maguire’s use of bass lines in his guitar work splits the difference between stride and bossa, making the two sound not as distant as they might otherwise. The beautiful “Roses and Wine” plays off the jazz standard “Days of Wine and Roses” by hinting at the chord progression in the intro and reframing the “days of roses and wine” as a time that is coming rather than one that is gone.

But the title, Travelin’ Light, could just as easily refer to the minimalist style of the album itself. After playing his songs for a friend, the fellow musician encouraged Maguire to make a record. Maguire reached out to several musicians in preparation for the sessions, but recording with a group wasn’t in the cards for this album.

“Pretty soon, it just became too much to manage all these moving parts with everything else I have going on,” Maguire told Jones. “So, I decided I was going to record the songs with just me, my guitar and my friend Abbey adding female vocal support and presence.”

While “support and presence” may seem like vague descriptions of what Brick brings to Travelin’ Light, they are quite accurate. Brick functions as more than just a background vocalist, at times harmonizing while at others singing wordless parts that provide a counter melody to Maguire’s lead. Her pitch-perfect work makes itself known right out of the box in the album’s languid opener, “Empty Pockets.”  On what is, more or less, the chorus, she finds a harmony with Maguire, then sings a wordless descending line with the chord changes to meet up with him on the last phrase, which they sing in unison. On “Roses and Wine” and “Everyday,” Maguire creates a bridge section using Brick to sing a wordless melodic phrase that Maguire rises above when he sings the lyrics. Brick’s gorgeous tone, or presence, provides a beautiful contrast to Maguire, whose voice has range with a fair bit of grit, not unlike Sting’s voice in his later period. In a setting as spare as this one, her vocal parts sound essential, rather than embellishments or touches that might describe a second vocalist on an album with fuller arrangements.

Travelin’ Light bears out Maguire’s slow-burn aesthetic perfectly. From start to finish, the songs are beautifully recorded and hold you in rapt attention with their quiet intensity. The album finds a kind of climax in the second-to-last song, “Maeve,” which was written amid a family tragedy. As the most folk-based song on the record, it bears the unmistakable mark of loss, but Maguire muscles it into a sense of hope while Brick’s soaring vocals provide a sweet contrast.

Maguire manages in no small measure to bring this intensity to his live performances. He loves to play live, telling Jones, “It’s like a cold sale. When a song works, it’s a rush—you closed the deal.” He balances quipping with the audience about mistakes or the origins of songs with the burnished luster of the songs themselves.

On his Instagram about a month ago, Maguire posted live recordings of two new songs: “Night to Day” and “There Ya Go.” These were taken from his performance at The Church Studio in Tulsa. Originally built to house Grace Methodist Episcopal Church in 1915, it was bought by Leon Russel in 1972 and converted into a studio and the home office for Shelter Records. Now, under new ownership, the iconic studio preserves Russel’s legacy and continues to record and feature new artists.

Maguire recorded this performance on June 6, 2025, featuring Stephen Schultz on stand-up bass and Stephanie Oliver on a very trim drum kit (it looks to be just a snare and a ride cymbal) and vocals. These two songs seem to indicate, at least in part, where his new album, Magnolia, is headed when he returns to record it in October.

“There’s kind of a pilgrimage thing happening for me in June and October,” Maguire told Trammel about his decision to record Magnolia in Tulsa. “That city has got a bad-ass, vibrant music scene. I have always loved it.”

It is more than Tulsa’s music scene that is drawing Maguire back to his hometown to record. “A magnolia is a tree, and we had one in our backyard when I grew up,” he told Jones about the title of the record. “My brothers and I spent a lot of time climbing that tree, and if we had any kind of event in the summer, my Mom would take the flowers from the tree and float them in the pool. I have a lot of wonderful memories and nostalgia for that tree.”

Given that description, one can reasonably expect to hear songs reflective of Maguire’s vivid childhood recollections. Maguire told Jones that part of the record will feature him and Brick in a format similar to Travelin’ Light, but part of it will also feature a band that includes lead guitar, rhythm section, and piano. It will be interesting to hear what Maguire does with a fuller band and how he preserves the quiet intensity of his music. One hopes for a release date that is sooner rather than later, but we’ll just have to see. Slow-cooked rock and roll doesn’t happen overnight.

Written by Christopher Raley