When Dozier builds it, plays it, they come

By Julie M. Fidler, Assistant Managing Editor

Music has led Danny Dozier, born and raised in Batesville, through many endeavors.

Although Dozier, owner of The Depot Diner, has branched out into areas such as wood working, house building, fighting forest fires and mirror silvering, he has always come back to music.

Guitarist Dozier, a 1969 graduate of Batesville High School, went to State College of Arkansas (now University of Central Arkansas) in Conway for about two and a half years. He started studying pharmacy, then accounting, but all the while kept playing music. When he realized he couldn't decide on a major, he got out of school and got his first job. That was opening a music store for Doug Brodie of Batesville in McAllister, Okla.

Because he missed Arkansas, Dozier came back and worked for the United Parcel Service in Little Rock for awhile. It was then that some friends he met in college got in touch and asked him and his brother-in-law to join a band and move to Hattiesburg, Miss. There, he and the band played at clubs, colleges and universities. Needing a "day job," he worked for the Mississippi State Forestry Commission as a crew leader. That meant using a 2-ton truck with a fire plow and fighting forest fires, among other tasks.

While in Hattiesburg, Dozier met and married his wife, Cathy.
Dozier's 6-piece band, The Howlers, a rhythm and blues-based band, moved to Austin, Texas, to look for exposure to a record company.
"We did real well," he said. The first year the band was there it received the Austin Sun's award for the best new band to move to town.
"We were getting closer and closer to getting a record deal," said Dozier. He said the band was about to hit the road when several of its members, including him, decided to "go home."

"I just really like this part of the country," he said. But, the music scene here wasn't too big, so he quit playing music for about a year. "I wanted to build a house ... I had this vision of being in a band on the road for 10 years and then getting off the road and not really having any money and not having a home."

Dozier's dad, Norman, had always been a big influence. Norman taught Danny wood working and how to resilver antique mirrors. "He learned a trade years ago that was kind of a lost art. ... I learned to do that when I was living in Batesville, before I moved away." Dozier said he still enjoys resilvering mirrors as a hobby.

He worked for a while in a cabinet shop, learning how to build kitchen cabinets. Then, he worked for a house builder and learned that trade. "My brother and I, Tim, we were both working for this guy building houses," said Dozier. "So, I decided I was ready to build my own house ... so Tim and I built my house, then we built him a house. Then we kind of went out on our own, and we built several more houses for other people."

Along about that time, Dozier started to get back into music, playing at local clubs. Soon, a man named Charlie Sandage put together a country music show in Hot Springs and asked Dozier to come up with a band for it and be the leader. He and Cathy kept their home in Batesville, but moved to Hot Springs.

The show, "The Country Music Story," was done in the Mid-America Amphitheater. "We did that for about three years," said Dozier. After one of the shows "Grandpa" and Ramona Jones, who had a family dinner theater in Mountain View, visited him backstage.
Mrs. Jones told Dozier that, if he ever wanted to, she would like for him to work at their dinner theater. When financing for the Hot Springs show fell through, he called her and took the job, where he worked for six years.

"It was a great opportunity," said Dozier. "I'd been playing a lot of live music my whole life, and this was a total acoustic music show that was done very similar to (The Depot Diner). I got my inspiration for a lot of things I do here from the Grandpa Jones Dinner Theater."

"When the crowds would come in over there, all of the musicians would greet people at the door. They had a buffet and we would dip beans. ... Then we would go up and play after they ate," said Dozier. "It was just really a lot of fun, and I got to meet a lot of people."

Working with the Jones family allowed Dozier to become involved in some things in Nashville as well as a public radio show, created by "Grandpa's" son, Mark Jones.

When the dinner theater closed, Dozier got back into more wood working and cabinet work. He was still playing in local bands and night clubs. In 1991, he was the winner of the Ozark Folk Center's National Guitar Picking Contest, an annual tribute to Merle Travis.

"Somewhere along the line there I really kind of got burnt out on the night club scene. It was kind of starting to deteriorate, and I didn't want to stop playing music, so I started thinking 'What could I do to continue playing music?' I started thinking about putting in a coffee house with live music."

That's how the Depot Diner came about. "I started out looking for a small place and ran across the old depot building down here (on west Lawrence Street)," said Dozier. Tom Johnson had leased the building from the Bryant family, who leases it from the railroad. Johnson was already putting in a small restaurant in the center portion of the building.
Johnson rented the end of the building out to Dozier for his "coffee house." "I've always liked history and nostalgia and things like that," said Dozier. "I really saw that this building had a lot of potential. It was just covered up with grease and sheet metal and dirt."

It took Dozier eight months to get the diner open on Valentine's Day 1997. His brother, Tim, was his "right-hand man" when it came to restoring the old train station.

"My real goal in this was to see if I could create a music venue in Batesville. I was hoping that just the restaurant part of it would be just something that would kind of support the main goal ... I started out with mainly local entertainers that I'd worked with before ..."

The Depot Diner's original band consisted of people Dozier had worked with for Mark Jones' radio show, "At Home in the Country."
The Depot began featuring local artists every weekend. Soon, more out of town musicians and booking agents started calling Dozier, and he booked some out-of-town artists.

After the Depot took off, Dozier began to look for some place that would be a little bigger. Because he likes Batesville's historical buildings, he looked into the city water department's old building a few blocks from the Depot. However, the more he looked into that project, the more he realized the Waterworks, as he planned to call it, was "land-locked."
Dozier knew he would need to add onto the building for a kitchen, and that didn't seem possible with the flood levy near by.
Earlier this year, another opportunity presented itself to Dozier. The city council agreed to lease out the historical lock keeper's house at Lock and Dam No. 1 on the White River at Riverside Park. Dozier submitted a proposal for a restaurant in the house and received the aldermen's "vote of confidence."

At 7 p.m. Monday, Dozier will ask the city's planning commission for a public hearing to change the zoning of the lock house property from residential to commercial, and he will present his plans for the structure. Dozier told the council he will add on a kitchen to the back of the house and a seating area overlooking the river.
What will become of The Depot when the Lockhouse opens? Dozier couldn't answer. He said he hopes another business will lease the building.

Dozier gives his family a lot of credit for helping and supporting him through his ventures. He said the dessert recipes at The Depot are from his mother, Rose. His wife likes to stay behind the scenes, he said, but she has helped with decorating and landscaping. In addition to Tim, he has two sisters, Fan Dozier of Batesville and Susan Porter of Fayetteville.