FATALLY INJURED MOTORCYCLIST WAS MUSICIAN
Dane Terry was known throughout the county in blues, jazz circles
A 67-year-old El Cajon man who died after a San Carlos crash early Monday was a singer and harmonica player who performed for years with blues, jazz and bluegrass bands around the region.
Friends and family remembered Dane Terry as a talented, passionate musician and a motorcycle enthusiast. He worked as a locksmith, the past seven years or so at the University of San Diego, and was on his way to work on a motorcycle he loved — an older Yamaha —
when the collision occurred, said his wife, Tammy.
Police said Terry crashed his motorcycle into a car that ran a red light shortly before 6 a.m. at Navajo Road and Bisby Lake Avenue.
The driver, a 51-year-old San Diego woman, was arrested on suspicion of vehicular manslaughter and is expected to be arraigned Feb. 27, officials said.
Born in Monterey Park in Los Angeles County, Terry moved to San Diego in 1987. His lifelong love of music began as a child, and he wouldn’t go anywhere without his guitar as a teenager, his wife said.
In later years, he would play the harmonica or harp, so he could play something while driving around doing sales calls, his wife said.
Terry played in several bands over the years, including the Cadillac Wreckers, a blues band, and Plow, a bluegrass group.
He also played with an early jazz and blues quartet called Zapf Dingbats, which put out a record that was nominated as best blues album in the San Diego Music Awards in 2010, said Chris Clarke, who was in Plow with Terry.
In a 2016 interview with San Diego Troubadour magazine, Terry described himself as “a melodic improviser.”
Cadillac Wreckers played many San Diego venues and festivals over the years. The group’s last performance was at Heroes Wood-fired Pizza near Julian two days before Terry died, said friend and bandmate Dana Duplan.
Duplan said Terry was funny and positive, quick to compliment others in their music and to offer encouragement. “He made sure he gave credit to people he thought deserved it,” he recalled.
Duplan said Terry had diverse musical tastes, which influenced the way he played. “We weren’t bent on sounding just like a record if we were covering a
song,” he said.
Clarke said he and Terry shared a love of old-time string band music and early jazz and blues and also went bike riding together.
“He was a soulful musician,” Clarke said. “He closed his eyes — it didn’t matter what was in front of him, he wasn’t paying attention. He was playing from his heart.
“He approached music from a different place — it was very much a spiritual and deep part of who he was.”
In addition to standard
blues harmonicas, Clarke said Terry played a pushbutton chromatic harmonica and a bass harmonica that sounded like a tenor saxophone and “is about the size of your forearm.”
“Harmonicas are one of the smallest instruments and so many blues harmonica players feel like they need to compete with screaming guitars,” said Michael Kinsman, who produced the San Diego Blues Festival from 2011 to 2022. “Dane was never like that. He would listen to a song and figure out where the harmonica fit. He didn’t overplay and that is the providence of truly professional musicians.”
After surviving a heart attack and bypass surgery in 2018, Terry asked a tattoo artist to inscribe the Latin words “memento mori” on the inside of his left forearm — loosely translated as “remember death” or “remember you must die,” his wife said.
The words served as a reminder to Terry — the father of two children, Hailey and Derek — to live life fully and to remember it can be taken from you.
“Appreciate your life and live it, and that’s what he did,” she said.