"You play for years and years and years and you start to learn what's rare," says The Dan Eaton Band's bassist, Adam Wilcox. "Guys who play guitar aren't rare, drummers aren't rare, bass players aren't rare. But songwriters? Really good ones? Rare."

Wilcox fell in with Eaton three years ago when he offered to back Eaton on an opening gig. It clicked. Three years later and the band is now dialed in tight and electric, and has become a roots-rock powerhouse. Eaton and Wilcox both had food in common; Eaton, a well known chef and TV cooking show host on YNN and Wilcox, a food critic at large (who used to write for this newspaper).

"It's intersecting stories here," says Wilcox. "And food is the connection." There were other little bits of kismet as well. Both had daughters named Lila, they both drove the same car. But Wilcox was nonplussed at first after someone gave him Eaton's demo.

"Some cook has a bunch of songs," he says. "Who gives a crap?"

But the songs grew on him; their substance, their validity. Eaton had been doing this for a while, after all.

"We can go way back to when I was a kid," Eaton says. "Before I even owned a guitar, I used to walk everywhere, to school, writing lyrics and melodies, singing wherever I went. When I started playing guitar around 17 or 18, I started writing songs immediately. I didn't really learn other people's songs."

Typically kids start off with the radio, The Beatles, "Michael Row Your Boat Ashore..."

"Maybe I felt they were too difficult," Eaton says. "I just felt it was easier for me to let the creativity flow. I'd already been writing lyrics and the melodies seemed to come easy to me. Having the guitar in my hands was just a natural step for me."

Having a band behind him and that guitar would be the next natural step, just not right away. Eaton hung up the six-string for the spatula.

"I got into the restaurant business," he says. "And the music sort of fell off because that was such a time-demanding thing. As I became a head chef and had a family, I just never had time."

Eaton was head chef at Rooney's for most of the 90's, executive chef at 2 Vine when it opened, and also worked at Rio Bamba and Max at Eastman Place over a period of roughly 15 years, he says. "Then I got this gig with Time Warner and I was able to pick the music up again. I mean, I wrote music throughout that time, but there was a lot of time where I didn't pick up my guitar more than two or three times a month.

Food and music: both are endeavors of passion that share a similar focus, investment, commitment, and, well, vocabulary. Terminology used to describe music and food is often the same - "tasty" guitar licks, "spicy" drumming - though in Eaton's life they don't quite intersect; he's never sung a recipe on "Cooking At Home," he's never grilled tilapia filets on stage.

"Well, they are kind of different," he says. "Sometimes I think of them as church and state because they are separate entities. They both are creatively driven, obviously, and even in the kitchen I am driven to create my own food. Once I became the head chef I didn't want to copy anybody else, I wanted my own stuff, the same as in music."

Wilcox jumps in on the juxtaposition.

"There's also a lot in good cooking about having tempo and a groove," he says. "If you don't, you're not going to be a very good cook. If you're nervous, you're not going to do a very good job. It's the same on stage, getting in the zone."

"I think the band is getting to that point," says Eaton. "Not that we were nervous before, but I think it feels like we're hitting on all eight cylinders now. We're feeling confident and we realize the stuff we're putting together is good."

The Dan Eaton Band began as an acoustic outfit, with Eaton singing and on acoustic guitar, Josh Pincus on acoustic guitar and dobro, Wilcox on the upright bass, and Marty York on an abbreviated drum kit. But the music demanded more. It was clear even to Pincus, who Wilcox refers to as an "acoustic fascist, you know the type."

"Josh got his Telecaster going and we never looked back," says Eaton. Despite the sonic kick in the ass, what with the amplification and all, Eaton's songs remain intact. They've been embellished, not changed.

"It comes back to the melody for me," Eaton says. "I bring the breath and the bones of the song and the guys give it the muscle, they get it to move. I always knew as a predominantly acoustic guitar player that the songs needed something bigger." Something as big as the songs themselves.

"That's what I love about Dan," says Wilcox. "The songs can support something a little grand around them. It's really fun to flesh out that sort of material."

The Dan Eaton Band

Friday, October 23

The Keg, 315 Gregory St

8:30 p.m. | free | 473-5070

Myspace.com/daneatonband