Daniel MacMaster lived life to its fullest.

He was a man gifted with a voice that could majestically soar, and deeply affect all that heard it. He was a rock star, a charismatic performer who played before hundreds of thousands of people and rubbed shoulders with some of the most luminous stars in the music universe. He was a local boy who made good at a very young age.

But more significantly, Daniel MacMaster was a brother, a father, a son, a husband and a friend, and he continues to be mourned by those who knew him, who played with him, and those who loved him more than a month after his sudden death.

A special tribute concert is being held Sunday, May 11, at the Foundation Night Club in downtown Barrie as a way to celebrate the life and legacy of the 39-year-old MacMaster, with all proceeds from the event going to his common-law wife of eight years, Tina, and their two children, eight-year-old Kaleb, and Aryanna, six.

Best known in Barrie for his days with popular hard rock band Scorcher, MacMaster shot to stardom when he was hired, at only age 19, in 1988 to be the lead singer for a band called Bonham.

It was put together by Jason Bonham, the song of legendary Led Zeppelin drummer John Bonham, and toured the world.

The ride in the rock and roll fast lane came to a halt in the early 1990s, when Bonham and MacMaster dissolved their working relationship, and MacMaster soon found himself back in Barrie, then back in Scorcher.

Throughout much of the 1990s, MacMaster led a kind of vagabond existence, travelling, working at different jobs. He met Tina MacCallum eight years ago and the two were inseparable, eventually relocating to her hometown of Thunder Bay. After a number of other jobs, MacMaster became an accomplished and well-respected long-haul truck driver, and also began getting serious about music again in the last years of his life, even recording a six-song EP called Stone.

A doting father, a gifted painter and songwriter, MacMaster was appearing to turn a major creative corner, when he contracted a streptococcal infection that got into his bloodstream. But the time he was hospitalized at Thunder Bay Regional Health Sciences Centre on March 15, his organs had already begun shutting down. He was gone less than 24 hours later, on Sunday, March 16.

Jody MacMaster, 36, his brother, started getting calls on March 15 from family members on the Saturday saying that Dan was gravely ill.

He and another brother, 34-year-old Cory, had to race from their home near Edmonton to Calgary to catch a flight to Thunder Bay to see to their brother.

“It was one of those things where you’re thinking, ‘well, is this really as bad as it sounds. Are we jumping the gun … but I said, ‘I don’t think so.’ You just get a feeling, you know?”

Every time they made stops, the news about Dan’s health worsened. But they eventually made it.

“It just hits you in the face. You see your mom and your relatives all around. I was pretty nervous; I didn’t even want to go in. Of course, you have to, right? So we went in to see him and it was just me and Cory …and I was looking at him and thinking, holy s***. And I was just thinking, ‘am I dreaming or what’s going on here? Reality just hit really fast,” Jody MacMaster said.

After consulting with Tina and the rest of the family, it was decided to unplug Dan from life support.

All his organs were shutting down and there was no hope of survival.

“And it was immediate. It was over. I wasn’t in the room, I chose not to be,” Jody said.

“I’m a little more conscious of the whole life thing. Like, I hope to live to be 100, but you just don’t know. I never imagined losing someone so close to me. I think I am still in a bit of shock. I have good days and bad days.”

Besides the great tragedy of losing someone so young is the untapped creative potential that still existed in Dan MacMaster.

Bruce Calwell had known the band Scorcher from before MacMaster joined in the mid-1980s, and, acting as his manager, was helping him in his attempt to record new material right up until the time of his death.

MacMaster had recorded Stone at Metalworks Studio in Mississauga, under the direction of well-known producer Nick Blagona. Calwell was unsuccessful in getting a record label interested in a six-song EP, so he and Dan decided to go back into the studio.

“He’d been writing for about a year, and he just sent me about 30 songs. We were going to pick another five or six and we were going to finish that CD, and get Nick to finish it off,” said Calwell.

Looking back on MacMaster’s life, Calwell said he was a young man who enjoyed the rock star lifestyle and who loved to party.

“My wife would be kicking him out the front door and I’d be sneaking him in the back. He was always pissing off the wives and girlfriends,” he said with a chuckle, but added there was definitely a special magnetism exuded by MacMaster, especially when he was on a stage.

“He was charismatic. I’ve never seen a better guy onstage than him. He’d just have the whole audience in the palm of his hand.”

He heard about Dan’s death from his wife Tina.

“It absolutely blew everybody away. It blew me away. It was like losing a part of my family,” he said.

Terry Baker played with MacMaster in Scorcher, and was also collaborating with him on the Stone project.

Like everyone else who knew Dan, his death was a shock to the well-known Barrie-based guitar player and songwriter.

“It was unbelievable to hear about someone so young who passes away, someone you spent so much time with back in the day,” he said. “It was unbelievable. It would be like me saying your brother’s dead, or your sister’s dead. I never really went through it with a young person … me and Dan were really good friends in the day. And it wasn’t like we had drifted apart, it was kind of like brothers, where you may not have talked to your brother for a year … we talked a lot on the phone, a few times a year. But we were still like brothers.”

Scorcher was a going concern on the Ontario music scene in the late 1980s, when MacMaster had a chance to audition for former Led Zeppelin manager Phil Carson, who was working with Jason Bonham. Baker said MacMaster almost turned the gig playing with Bonham down.

“To be quite honest with you, he was the most loyal person I’d ever met. He said to me, ‘I’m not going. I’m not playing with this guy.’ I told him, ‘dude, you are ****ing crazy. You gotta do it. You can always come back and do what we’ve done. You’re going to get one shot. You know people wait their whole life to get this.’”

Baker told the story of how MacMaster basically pestered his way into Scorcher.

“I was teaching his friend guitar and he asked me to teach Dan some guitar and I said, ‘sure, bring him over.’ And he sat down with me … he wasn’t that interested in learning guitar. He just said, ‘I am going to play in a band, and I am going to be famous, and I’m your new singer,’” Baker said.

“Well, he bugged me so much that we auditioned him. And I would never do that, normally, and he was good. Really good. And then within two years of that, he caught a break and was touring the world. He had the drive, and at that time, he had the look.

“You look at some of those older pictures of Dan, he looked better looking than Bon Jovi. And he had a better voice. I remember him singing David Coverdale (Whitesnake) better than David Coverdale. It was the live voice that got him the deal through Phil Carson. He was stunned how good he could sing everything.”

Tina MacCallum did not see Daniel MacMaster, rock star. The man she loved and lived with was a doting father, who preferred the comforts of home to limousines, hotels, and rock and roll parties.

“This was his security net, his family,” she told the Advance. “I was in love with him as a father. He was a great father. I don’t know, he just had this softer, gentler side to him that I think a lot of people missed.”

“I want people to know there was a whole different Dan. He wasn’t this persona that they might think he is. I mean, part of him is, but he was a genuine guy,” she said later.

“What did I like about him? He could be really sweet, and on the same token, he could be a horse’s ass. But I liked the way he saw the world differently. Like, if you and I think the sky is blue, Dan would have thought it was turquoise or purple.”

But he was still creative. He had suppressed a lot of his musical creativity until she and Calwell encouraged him to write for the sake of the process, and to get onto paper what was in his head and heart.

“I just encouraged him to do more because Dan’s very creative. He can draw and paint very well, as well as writing and singing … and for a long time, he was miserable. He was just very, very miserable, and I told him he needed to have a creative outlet,” MacCallum said.  

The loss of the man she loved so much is still very raw for her. And even when people have tried to comfort her by saying at least she still has the kids, the pain comes flooding back even stronger.

“I get that. The kids are my strength, the kids will always be a part of Dan. That’s fine,” she said.

“But my kids will never be my lover, my best friend, my protector.”

The primary reason for the benefit concert on May 11 is to raise money to help Tina, Kaleb and Aryanna.

“Daniel honoured my concert stage on many occasions, and every time he took the mic, made it a very special night. I am personally reaching out to the local musicians and fans that knew him, heard him sing, or who just want to be kind and do something nice for Dan’s family, to attend for yet another very special night, with incredible live music, featuring Scorcher and Special Guests,” said Ticketbreak CEO John Derlis, a former co-owner of Goodfellas and manager of Ruanne’s.

A number of special guests have been invited including Al Connelly of Glass Tiger, Brett Carrigan, formerly of Honeymoon Suite, Andy Curran of Coney Hatch, Kenny Maclean of Platinum Blonde, and many well-known local musicians.

For tickets, call 1-866-9-GET-TIX, or click the link provided. Derlis said no taxes or service fees will be taken from online ticket order, so all the money can get to MacCallum and her kids.

- Jim Barber is the Arts, Sports and Lifestyles Editor for the Barrie Advance. Contact him at jbarber@simcoe.com.