Local favorite Danny Sorentino, whose new album is a homegrown musical tour of Sonoma County, works by day as a longshoreman

Sonoma County music fans know him as the wry folk-rocker with a knack for catchy lyrics and melodies that stick in your head for days. Getting good play on KRSH radio, his new album "Sonoma County Sweet" is a homegrown song cycle that tours the region for the musical lore of "Cotati," "Gravity Hill," "Salmon Creek" and "Inn of the Beginning."

Over the past 25 years, he has opened for Bob Dylan twice and warmed stages for Jeff Beck, Dwight Yoakam and Buck Owens. He has done well in London, thanks to one of his biggest fans - DJ Bob Harris, host of the popular BBC music show "The Old Grey Whistle Test."

Back in the '90s, four of his songs were featured on "Melrose Place." Along the way, he has played every watering hole from the Cotati Cabaret and Studio KAFE to the Mystic Theater and the Last Day Saloon, and on to the Fillmore, Warfield and Concord Pavilion.

But, by day he works the docks. It's what the Sorentinos do, going all the way back to his great-grandfather, Antonio, who survived San Francisco's notorious Bloody Thursday riot of 1934, only to die later of pneumonia while walking the picket lines.

"I tried to stay out of it and make a career as a musician," he says. "But look where that got me."

A wall of photos along one side of the Longshoremen's Hall includes a Sorentino family collage, featuring every member to work the docks over the past century. In addition to Antonio, there's Danny's grandfather, Daniel Fred; his father, Daniel Henry Sr.; his brothers, Dennis and Tony; and several cousins. Danny Jr. is the one smiling in a floppy fisherman's hat.

He nearly bucked the family trend. Aside from a short 1978 stint on the docks in Seattle, where his father made a living, he stayed off the waterfront for decades, writing 15 albums and hundreds of songs rooted in Sonoma County. But since 2004, he has toiled as a longshoreman, mostly in Oakland, working his way up the union hierarchy to B-class status, now on the verge of earning his A-class book.

Looking back at 55, the musician's life was always a gamble - no health care, no pension, no benefits in exchange for no 9-to-5 obligations. There's nothing romantic about the blue-collar grind on the waterfront, but there is job security.

"Seven more years of this, and I'll get a pension," he says. "But it's a scary job. I've seen things you can't imagine."

The motto of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union is "An Injury to One, Is An Injury To All." But nearly everyone you talk to mentions how dangerous it can be on the waterfront.

"I've seen guys get crushed," Chappell says. A few years back, he fell 18 feet through a rusty grate, breaking ribs, a shoulder and vertebrae.

"Guys have been killed," adds Sorentino's buddy Timo Yee, a longshoreman standing in line waiting for a job this morning.

"You see guys with missing fingers all the time," says Sorentino, who prefers driving tractors over lashing jobs to preserve his guitar-playing hands.

Look around the room at the Longshoremen's Hall and everybody's got a nickname. There's "Heavy," named after his intense workload. There's more than one "Cadillac." Guys like "Comcast" and "Air Force" are named for their previous jobs. The guys who linger empty-handed well after all the jobs have been given out are called "hall rats."

Danny is "Rock 'n' Roll." As in, "Hey, Rock 'n' Roll, where you been lately?"

"When I first saw him, I thought, &‘Who the hell is this guy? Is this the next wave of the British Invasion?'

" remembers Yee. "He was wearing black skinny jeans and these pointed leather boots. "That was then. Look at us now," says Yee, pulling out his six-year-old ID and a fresh-faced photo that looks at least 15 years younger. "The waterfront changes you."After prodding from Yee, Sorentino pulls out his ID card and just laughs. "I can't tell any difference."He dreams about leaving it all behind and never making the commute from Santa Rosa again. Until that happens, at least the camaraderie at the docks has become "a lot like being in a band.""You've got a core group of guys with a shared experience. You need guys to share the pain with. Just like in a band - all the crap you have to go through, like showing up - and there's no soundcheck. You have to have a sense of humor to make it through all this."In his songwriting, Sorentino thrives on the same comic sensibility. In the new song "101," he jokes about drivers slowing down for the roadside corn maze in Petaluma, singing, "Good thing I ain't got a gun / Driving down 101."Another chorus goes, "Let your freak flag fly in Cotati." Flashing back to an old Cotati roadhouse, he sings, "I saw hippies spinning at the Inn of the Beginning." Like any worthy oral history, we hear about the rituals and customs that define a community: Stopping off for beer at Diekmann's store in Bodega Bay; throwing your car in neutral on "Gravity Hill" above Rohnert Park; waiting for a government check in "Russian River Blues."But the one track that sums up Sorentino's journey through life and art is "Sonoma County Stars." He came up with the album concept after a show last summer in Cotati's La Plaza Park. Gazing out on the crowd afterward, he remembered his first-ever gig was at the same park when he was only 20."I always thought I'd end up in L.A., London, Austin or maybe Nashville," he says. A wife and three kids later, "it took me a while to learn that this is the best place of all the places I've ever traveled to. This is actually the coolest place to live."And so the song goes: "So high in the sky, looking up and wondering why / You did not travel very far / Star light, star bright, there's no place else I'd rather be tonight / Than under these Sonoma County stars."Bay Area freelancer John Beck writes about entertainment for The Press Democrat. You can reach him at 280-8014, john@sideshowvideo.com and

"That was then. Look at us now," says Yee, pulling out his six-year-old ID and a fresh-faced photo that looks at least 15 years younger. "The waterfront changes you."

After prodding from Yee, Sorentino pulls out his ID card and just laughs. "I can't tell any difference."

He dreams about leaving it all behind and never making the commute from Santa Rosa again. Until that happens, at least the camaraderie at the docks has become "a lot like being in a band."

"You've got a core group of guys with a shared experience. You need guys to share the pain with. Just like in a band - all the crap you have to go through, like showing up - and there's no soundcheck. You have to have a sense of humor to make it through all this."

In his songwriting, Sorentino thrives on the same comic sensibility. In the new song "101," he jokes about drivers slowing down for the roadside corn maze in Petaluma, singing, "Good thing I ain't got a gun / Driving down 101."

Another chorus goes, "Let your freak flag fly in Cotati." Flashing back to an old Cotati roadhouse, he sings, "I saw hippies spinning at the Inn of the Beginning."

Like any worthy oral history, we hear about the rituals and customs that define a community: Stopping off for beer at Diekmann's store in Bodega Bay; throwing your car in neutral on "Gravity Hill" above Rohnert Park; waiting for a government check in "Russian River Blues."

But the one track that sums up Sorentino's journey through life and art is "Sonoma County Stars." He came up with the album concept after a show last summer in Cotati's La Plaza Park. Gazing out on the crowd afterward, he remembered his first-ever gig was at the same park when he was only 20.

"I always thought I'd end up in L.A., London, Austin or maybe Nashville," he says. A wife and three kids later, "it took me a while to learn that this is the best place of all the places I've ever traveled to. This is actually the coolest place to live."

And so the song goes: "So high in the sky, looking up and wondering why / You did not travel very far / Star light, star bright, there's no place else I'd rather be tonight / Than under these Sonoma County stars."

Bay Area freelancer John Beck writes about entertainment for The Press Democrat. You can reach him at 280-8014, john@sideshowvideo.com and