It all started with a drunken rendition of Helen Reddy's "I Am Woman" one late night in a Toronto karaoke bar.

For Dan Finnerty, leader of The Dan Band, it's a journey that has taken him from being one of the only guys in the rural town of Bath, NY brave enough to admit a fondness for female-driven power pop all the way to Hollywood, where he's been seen belting (and cursing) his way through Bonnie Tyler's "Total Eclipse of the Heart" in Old School, crooning Roberta Flack's "Feel Like Making Love" to a 13 year old girl at her bat mitzvah in Starsky and Hutch, and serving up 5o Cent's "Candy Shop" in this 2009's runaway smash, The Hangover. "I guess I've turned myself into the "inappropriate song" boy now," he says.

This year, Dan Finnerty is poised to break away from his usual repertoire of covers and bring his very own brand of naughty and nice to the holidays with the upcoming Razor & Tie Christmas album, HO: A DAN BAND XMAS. HO is full of Finnerty originals destined to become humorous holiday classics, tunes like the lustful "I Wanna Rock U Hard This Xmas," "Ho Ho Ho" - an R&B send up about Santa's encounter with a lady of the night and the PC-minded "Christmakwanzakah." The hilarious video for "Please Don’t Bomb Nobody This Holiday," features many celebrity cameos, including Sheryl Crow, Christina Applegate, Nicole Scherzinger from The Pussycat Dolls, Kyle Gass from Tenacious D, Neil Patrick Harris, Meg Ryan, Macy Gray, Christopher Guest, among others. Not one to completely forget his sensitive lady ballad roots, Finnerty also provides "Mrs. Claus," an inspirational number that urges Santa's overlooked mate to stand up for herself and be counted. The band will tour their holiday music and classic covers with a live show that Entertainment Weekly calls "one of the hottest tickets in town".

The success of the band is still amusing to Dan, who says "I only started this as a joke and to maybe help promote my lame acting career." Indeed, Finnerty was a working actor long before he was the frontman for The Dan Band, but mainly as a stage actor in New York City. His story begins as a youngster growing up in upstate New York on a steady diet of '80s pop and MTV. "It was the kind of town, if you walked 10 minutes in any direction, you'd hit a cow," he says. "I blame my musical taste on my sister, who's four years older than me. All of my friends had older brothers who were turning them on to classic rock like Zeppelin and Rush. My sister had me rocking out to Toni Basil and Laura Branigan. I'm all grown up and singing girl songs for a living. Nice." Thanks to that obliterated collision with the karaoke world, Dan Finnerty and The Dan Band have come to specialize in cover songs from the '80s to now, with their show-stopping renditions of classic diva hits from Bonnie Tyler to Beyonce.

After attending Emerson College in Boston, Finnerty toured for a year as cast member in the European Tour of "HAIR", directed by it's author. He then moved to New York, where he joined the cast of the popular Stomp and headed out on a national tour. He settled in Los Angeles and he met his future wife, actress Kathy Najimy with whom he has a daughter. The Dan Band began to take shape in LA, when Finnerty finally got serious about the idea of performing music. The word-of-mouth buzz spread among the general public to a large celebrity following resulting in sold out gigs at Club Largo and Avalon Hollywood, press accolades and various television appearances. Soon after seeing a live show, Steven Spielberg signed on to executive produce a one hour TV concert special, directed by McG, entitled The Dan Band: I Am Woman and director Todd Phillips began casting Dan in cameo scene-stealing moments in his films. As a result, The Dan Band's audience expanded beyond the initial cult following.

"I always had a nice little hip LA crowd who got the humor and kept growing by word-of-mouth," explains Dan. "But since the national exposure, the demographic has completely changed. Now the audience is peppered with all these frat guys who normally would've wanted to kick my ass for singing these songs. Now they stand in the front row, mouthing the words to 'Whatta Man' and 'You Oughta Know'. It's pretty funny."

The Dan Band released a live album in 2005, THE DAN BAND LIVE, featuring an array of hit cover songs. They have made numerous appearances on Jimmy Kimmel Live!, The Late Late Show and Last Call with Carson Daly, as well as serving as the house band on The Ellen DeGeneres Show, Spike TV's Spike Guys' Choice Awards and now Dan can currently be seen as a featured correspondent performing musical segments on NBC's The Jay Leno Show.

"I still can't believe this all started because I got drunk at a karaoke bar," he laughs. "At least something good came out of karaoke."