Ellen Gray - page 9

Once a local boy who stared at model planes hanging from his ceiling, Tim Allen opens up to DHM on his Denver childhood, his real-life role as Dad and being a Dick.

By Amy Speer

Model airplanes dangle from the ceiling. A few lay on the ground, melted from the heat of combat. The infamous Johnny 7 — a seven-in-one toy gun — is propped in the corner, at the ready.

The scent of yesterday’s Spam casserole and last night’s aerial combat linger in the air of a Denver home near 3rd and Marion Streets. The house looks upon a stunning view of snow-capped mountains, bathed in morning light.

The powdered caps mean just one thing for Tim Dick — it’s going to be a cold walk to school. But the young boy can’t help but relish the sight from his bedroom window — or inhale one last whiff of melted plastic. There’s nothing like the smell of burnt Styrene in the morning.

Meet Tim Dick — once Denver native, now Hollywood star.

You might know him better as Tim Allen, the star of Home Improvement, the voice of Buzz Lightyear, the face of Santa Claus.

Here in Denver, though, a lucky few know him as Tim Dick, the neighborhood boy who shared the same birthday as the twins down the street. Almost 50 years later, a part of him is still Tim Dick  — and that part comes home every now and then.

TIM DICK: THE BOY

Tim Allen always wanted to see the words I’m a Dick in print. That’s because Allen will tell you with sincere honesty: “I’m a Dick.”

“In fact,” he says, “my brothers are Dicks, my cousins are Dicks, and my sister — before she was married — was a Dick. My dad? One incredible Dick and the Dick responsible for me being a Dick.”

There’s even Uncle Richard — “a double Dick” — but let’s not stray too far off topic.

Back to Timothy Alan Dick, born June 13, 1953, in our Mile High City.

Allen says he believes his name helped create his life — or at least the sense of humor needed to cope with being the punch line of childhood jokes. Those low blows, pun intended, taught him an important lesson. “We have the power over words. Not the other way around,” Allen writes in his autobiography, I’m Not Really Here.

So Allen began making his own punch lines. Still, it would be a long time before he would belt out a series of animal-like grunts that would help America define manliness.

Back then, Mrs. Boyle — Mom of the Neighborhood Twins — was still reading him stories. It was those fanciful stories, told at the Boyle cabin, that helped deepen Allen’s love for words.

“She used to read us stories that really sparked the imagination,” Allen says in a Denver Hotel Magazine interview. “Her stories were wonderful and scary and unforgettable.”

Then, suddenly, Allen’s own childhood story shifted tragically. On Nov. 23, 1964, Allen’s father, Gene Dick, was killed in an auto collision with a drunk driver. Allen was just 11.

The Denver chapter of Tim’s life came to an end when his mother remarried, wedding her high-school sweetheart, Bill. She packed up her six children to join his three in Birmingham, Mich., a Detroit suburb. The only thing missing from the Brady Bunch equation was a maid named Alice and a very huge chunk of Allen’s heart.

“I wonder where I’d be in life if he’d stayed around,” Allen wrote in I’m Not Really Here.

Maybe he’d still be Tim Dick.

TIM ALLEN: THE MAN

Allen’s life on stage started out as a dare.

After graduating from Western Michigan University, Allen could wield colored pencils and paintbrushes just as impressively as he could a punch line. Following graduation, Allen took a job as a creative director for a Detroit advertising firm. There, a friend challenged him to make his first stand-up appearance at Detroit’s Comedy Castle in 1979. He still hangs on to a tile he chipped out of the comedy room floor.

Shortly after, Allen received a spot on a local talk show. “The producers came up to me and carefully said, ‘Um, we don’t feel comfortable flashing your name on screen. Surely, you understand. You know, Tim — Dick? People will think you made it up to be funny,’ ” Allen recalls on his website, timallen.com.

He wanted to be a comedian so much, he removed Dick right then and there. In that instant, Tim Allen was born.

Comedic acts turned into commercials; commercials turned into sitcoms; sitcoms turned into movies. Allen even penned two books. (What can we say — he’s a man of many talents.)

His sitcom career took off in 1991 when he starred in his own hit TV series, Home Improvement. Allen played Tim Taylor, a mishap-prone host of a home repair show. During its first season, the sitcom broke into the Nielsen Top 10, moving up to No. 1 in 1993.

Allen then appeared on the big screen, starring in top-grossing Disney movie The Santa Clause. Following that, he lent his voice to Toy Story, Disney/Pixar’s computer-animated hit.

Somehow during all that, Allen managed to find time to write his first book, Don’t Stand Too Close to a Naked Man, a revealing look into male behavior. The book topped The New York Times’ best-seller list in 1994, propelling him to an unprecedented trifecta with the No. 1 rated TV show, the No. 1 box-office movie and the No. 1 best-selling book — all in the same week.

We asked Allen, after tapping into so many mediums, does he have a favorite? “Truthfully, each different job has its own attraction,” Allen says. “I really enjoy voiceover work, like Buzz Lightyear. It demands a lot of imagination.”

Thanks, Mrs. Boyle.

“I love doing sitcoms because you get to build a character over time. There’s an evolution to it. Besides, nothing beats the intimacy of receiving laughter and feedback from a studio audience.”

Plus, it’s a 9-to-5 job. Hello, family every night.

“And I really like the pace and focus of movie acting. There’s an intensity packed into just a few months. It’s kind of like going to summer camp. It’s a new location away from home. You form bonds with friends, and it’s kind of sad when it’s over.

“But my true love — my first love, will always be stand-up comedy. It’s just you, a microphone and an audience. It’s such a pure form, I don’t even consider it a medium. It’s a large. Maybe even an extra large.”

MIKE BAXTER: OUTDOORSMAN

Now, Allen is back in evolution mode with his latest ABC sitcom, Last Man Standing. In the sitcom, which wrapped up its second season in March, Allen stars as Mike Baxter, the marketing director of a Denver sporting-goods store. The sitcom marks his most recent creative return to the Mile High City.

Allen revisited Denver’s Cranmer Park, modeling some of the Last Man Standing sets after the very park where he played Little League football as a Wolfpack Ranger.

While Allen’s character, Mike, is the king at work, he’s the odd man out at home in a houseful of women. Instead of obsessing over power tools, like Tim Taylor on Home Improvement, Allen obsesses over things like hunting gear and four-wheelers. (Insert manly grunt here.)

“There is definitely a lot of Mike Baxter in me,” Allen tells the magazine. “I like outdoor machines — 4x4s, snowmobiles, motorcycles and wood boats. Come on — what guy doesn’t love outdoor equipment?”

The Mike Baxter in Allen loves taking hikes, while the Tim Dick in Allen loves mountain views from his Grand Lake cabin — another Colorado connection.

But don’t let all this smog-free air fool you — there’s still a part of Allen, a big part, that relates best to Tim Taylor and his love for exhaust. Allen finds solace in the garage, dubbing it “a creative center” in his second book, I’m Not Really Here.

“Some of today’s greatest companies began in the garage,” Allen writes. “The Ford Motor Company, Delta Airplanes, Apple Computers and more than a few great rock-and-roll bands. There’s something spiritual about this place. Maybe it’s the size of the door or all the machines inside. Maybe it’s the work area or the tools or the smell of grease.”

One of the first cars Allen worked on was a VW-based dune buggy. Since then, Tim has done everything from building hotrods from the frame up to designing fancy Cadillacs with enough horsepower to make even young Tim Dick belt out a manly grunt.

If it’s on wheels, it’s worth souping up, and wheelchairs are no exception. In 2002, Allen helped create the Dragonfly wheelchair for his niece, Megan, who is unable to walk unassisted because she has cerebral palsy.

“When she was young, I promised I would help design and build a new wheelchair for her,” Allen says on his website. “And kids remember promises.”

So Allen kept his promise, delivering the Dragonfly, a metallic orange wheelchair complete with anodized aluminum foot pads, black perforated leather upholstery and four-wheel engineering designed to negotiate sand, snow and mud.

Think four-wheel drive on a rocky summit in the backcountry of Colorado.

TIM ALLEN: THE DAD

There’s something else the real-life Allen shares with Mike Baxter — and Tim Taylor, for that matter.

Allen goes by the name Dad.

In real life, he has two daughters, a 23-year-old, Kady, from his first marriage, and a 3-year-old, Elizabeth, with wife Jane Hajduk. On the TV set, he’s managed to father six kids altogether — fictional ones, of course.

“Being an on-screen father is a much safer proposition,” Allen tells Denver Hotel Magazine. “I get to offer sage words of advice to my on-screen kids, carefully driven by a great writing staff. At home, the writers seem to be on a coffee break — can’t find them anywhere — so I have to wing it on my own. It’s often a hit-or-miss process but always driven by love.”

So much love, in fact, he once ate a dog treat — a red one — in hopes of soliciting a giggle out of his oldest daughter.

“I told her I could eat a dog bone. She didn’t believe me,” Allen recalls in I’m Not Really Here. “So I bit off a hunk, chewed and swallowed. Her eyes lit up, she grinned, then flipped out and started crying. So I did the only thing I could do — I licked the tears from Kady’s face, nuzzled up against her and everything was fine.”

Had Kady been a boy, Allen might have predicted her reaction a little better — most boys would have asked to sample the treat, too. Since then, though, the father of two has realized something important about the female kind.

“Men are outwardly gaseous and happy to be so,” Allen tells the magazine. “Women, not so much.”

Meanwhile, after playing Tim Dick, Tim Taylor, Mike Baxter and plain-old Dad, Allen has discovered the secret ingredient to true manliness.

“I seem to be surrounded by women at home, in my job, in my world,” Allen says. “In many ways, work and activities define men as men, but it’s the interaction with women that define us as something quite deeper.”

Maybe that explains some of his newest passions in life — growing tomatoes, tea parties (with his daughter) and dress shopping (for his wife).

Hey, salt and peppering your own homegrown tomatoes is manly. You just have to do it with a grunt.

Denver’s hometown heroes open up to DHM on the long journey from local bar band to international rock stardom

By Dave Muscari

The Rocky Mountains are a musical melting pot. Legendary bandleaders Paul Whiteman, Glenn Miller and Jimmie Lunceford attended Colorado high schools. Philip Bailey and Larry Dunn of Earth, Wind & Fire, and fiery jazz guitarist Bill Frisell are all Denver natives. The state is also home to a variety of influential contemporary performers including India.Arie, Big Head Todd & the Monsters and progressive bluegrassers The String Cheese Incident.

These days, however, Denver bands don’t come much bigger than The Fray. Formed in 2002 by classmates Isaac

Slade and Joe King while attending Denver-area schools, the Colorado band with a worldwide following has a story all its own. From local band climbing a steep ladder of success to international popstars with
a boatload of record sales, Grammy nominations and Billboard Music Awards in tow, The Fray has already chiseled their names into rock history.

The band laid the foundation for success right in their own backyard — a lot of gigs around Boulder and Denver playing to enthusiastic local fans like Claire Portwood Lumsden. She is an Internet sales representative with a national company who grew up in Denver. Lumsden was there when the band took off. “My sophomore year at CSU, when they started to play The Fray on the radio, I remember they talked about them being ‘an up-and-coming local band,’ and trying to find them on the Internet.” The first time she saw The Fray perform was 2003 at one of KTCL’s famous Freeloader shows at Denver’s Gothic Theater. “My girlfriends and I drove down from Fort Collins to see them. We only knew maybe a couple of songs, and, of course, we sang and screamed along with the band.”

The Fray’s first major success story arrived in an odd fashion. Slade’s younger brother, Caleb was once the band’s bass player but left after a disagreement. “You’ll need to buy me a whiskey for that one,” Isaac Slade told us when we asked about the specifics. “Or three.” Ironically, the rift became the inspiration for the song, “Over My Head (Cable Car)” which appeared on The Fray’s 2005 album How to Save a Life. The song went on to become the fifth-most downloaded single of 2006. The album’s title track was inspired by Isaac’s work at a camp for troubled teenagers. As for Caleb, he’s now a solo artist with a career of his own and an album, Victory in Defeat, which is available on iTunes.

Since those early years, the band has toured almost nonstop and released three well-received albums. Now, with a slew of industry honors and a wide base of rabid fans, The Fray’s anthemesque, piano-driven sound has secured its place on the power pop landscape. Obvious comparisons to English groups including Keane, Radiohead and Coldplay have been made in the press. “There are certainly worse bands to be compared to. Like Coldplay…or Tiny Tim any day,” joked Slade. Some critics suggest that The Fray’s sound is probably more heavily influenced by bands such as U2 and The Wallflowers, however, for Slade’s money, he says, “Ray Charles, Bush, Third Eye Blind, Counting Crows. Always wished I could be Ray though.”

When Westword magazine tabbed The Fray as Denver’s “best new band” in 2004, they received more airplay on local rock radio stations with a demo version of “Over My Head.” Late that same year, the band signed a deal with Epic records, reportedly onstage at Denver’s historic Fox Theater.

Sam Hill, music director and midday radio personality at KALC-FM, known as Alice 105.9, said the radio station began playing The Fray’s music in 2005, starting “…with their first official single ‘Over My Head.’ We’ve played that particular Fray song the most out of any other Denver radio station.” In fact, says Hill, “Alice played every single that was released from How to Save a Life. Our listeners are huge fans of The Fray. Out of all the local acts we’ve played over the years, they’ve been received very favorably…definitely in the Top 5 of all time.”

When “How to Save a Life” shot to No. 3 on the charts, it soon tied for the seventh longest charting single of all time on the Hot 100 chart with Carlos Santana’s smash “Smooth” at 58 consecutive weeks.  It also topped the adult Top 40 for 15 consecutive weeks and found enormous success on the international charts as well. It was a Top 5 record in Spain, Canada, Australia, Sweden, Italy and the United Kingdom.

Just as “Over My Head” was climbing the charts, ABC announced that the album’s title track would be a center point in a fall promotional campaign for the 2006 season premiere of the network’s breakaway hit, Grey’s Anatomy. The visibility was enormous and helped push the song’s popularity week after week, driving it to No. 3 from No. 51 by October on Billboard’s Hot 100.

The band’s third album, Scars & Stories, is currently getting plenty of airplay. Released last February, it debuted at No. 4 on Billboard’s Top 200. The album is a departure from the previous two releases. There is a new producer on-board in Grammy-winner Brenden O’Brien. Over his career, O’Brien has produced and played on records with luminaries such as Bob Dylan, Pearl Jam, Stone Temple Pilots and Bruce Springsteen. He brought an edgier, rock ’n’ roll texture to The Fray’s new recording. The title of the album comes from the idea that the band has earned battle scars in life, on the road and as a group and survived to tell the tales. The first singles released include “Heartbeat” and “Run For Your Life.”

The band’s most recent concert tour began early last April in New York City and ended in November after stops in Australia, Singapore, Dubai and Manila. During the summer leg of the tour, The Fray coheadlined a series of dates with Kelly Clarkson, with opening acts Carolina Liar and Scars on 45.

Band members remain committed to local fans and the Denver community in general. “The guys in the band have always been really great at taking care of their hometown radio stations,” says Hill. “They regularly do one-off appearances for their fans and our listeners.”

A good example of their involvement has been through an annual telethon in support of Children’s Hospital Colorado. “Alice has been raising money for Children’s Miracle Network for a decade, and we’ve managed to raise over $10 million with the help of local businesses and generous listeners,” explains Hill. “We’ve had wonderful support from The Fray in that they’ve joined us on-air for a couple of hospital broadcasts where they’ve gone so far as to donate VIP experiences for auction with the money going to Children’s Hospital. That’s just one example of how generous and kind those guys are.”

“You really do feel like they love being a part of the community,” she adds.

We checked in with Isaac Slade recently while the band was touring on the other side of the world in Muscat, the capital of Oman. We wanted to know how it all started and what’s next for one of Denver’s most-loved musical forces.

DHM: Isaac, you and Joe are local guys. How did your backgrounds prepare you for the music you are producing today?

Slade: Growing up in Denver gives you a different take on the entertainment industry. It keeps you grounded, makes it a little harder to float off into space. Musically, it gave us a real earthiness to what we do — I like to think that came from my cowboy grandpa, Claude Graves. He was a badass.

DHM: Were there local bands or performers you followed closely?

Slade: I hatched a scheme in college, a local cable-access music show that combed the various scenes around town for the latest and greatest. It was pretty legit. We had 23 interns. It took me all over the Denver/Boulder area and exposed me to a lot of amazing music and the amazing people behind it. I also got to do probably 60 interviews with local industry folks, radio, print, promoters…everyone. It had a huge impact on how I viewed the industry, seeing it from that side. And musically, I discovered this huge pressure everyone felt to just be a sports-bar cover band. Every local artist seemed to have to wrestle with that: easy money playing Lynyrd Skynyrd or the long hard road of [playing] your own material. Needless to say, all the best artists were just about broke. That was inspiring.

DHM: How to Save a Life — the album and title track were enormously successful. Did you know when the band was recording that the album had such potential?

Slade: When you make art for public consumption you have no idea how it’s going to be received. You can guess, you can hope, you can test market…but you really don’t know. So we’ve always subscribed to the “work-till-you-like-it-yourself” school of thought. Sometimes it does well, sometimes it doesn’t. We’ve had both. 

DHM: How important has the Internet been to your band?

Slade: I remember when we first bought our domain name back in 2002, and I figured out how to see viewer country of origin. I stared at this user’s IP address in Madagascar. We scrubbed toilets for eight months to raise $1,700, recorded our EP, then boom, some kid off the coast of Africa is listening to it. That was a trip.

DHM: Talk about the rigors of touring: What are the best and worst parts of the process?

Slade: I’m not really going to say anything bad about the rigors of touring. Catch me at the end of an 11-week run in an airport hotel, 40 minutes outside of Houston, and I may answer differently.

DHM: Can you describe the feeling of standing onstage, performing in front of thousands of fans as they sing along with the band?

Slade: It’s cool in the States. It’s even cooler in a country that hardly speaks English. It’s one of the finest feelings I’ve ever had the pleasure of having.

DHM: You have traveled the world. Is there any downtime to see it beyond looking down from the stage?

Slade: I tried bartering this kid in the Gold Souk [large market in Dubai, U.A.E.]. I wanted this turban thing, and he was clearly over-charging. I played hardball, and he didn’t budge, even a little. So I paid it. The next day the Dubai DJ informed me live, on-air that I paid about four times too much. That was hard. I bet that damn kid was listening, too, just smiling and sipping on his U.A.E. coffee, happy as can be.

DHM: You and Joe have enjoyed a tremendous writing partnership: How does that process work?

Slade: We both have big piles of demos and lyrics, tossing them back and forth all the time. Sometimes I’ll get stuck on a song, nothing but a verse, and go snag one of his chorus melodies and throw some new chords on it to fit the vibe. It’s a little like that scene in Wall Street, guys shouting for melodies, verses  — I need a lyric about loneliness!  Loneliness? Anybody?

DHM: Has it been difficult to maintain a friendship as the band has grown and become increasingly successful?

Slade: Any friendship takes work if you’re honest with each other. It would be much easier to just keep it surface and hire other people to write for us all, but if you’re going to make things together, to create together, you’ve got to keep it on the level. So that’s been work, but work well worth it.

DHM: Where do you see The Fray five to ten years down the road?

Slade: Making record No. 8!