Interview I Did on 4.6.10

Interview with Singer-Songwriter Dan Coyle

By Molly Heintzelman

heintzelman.quadnews@gmail.com
|

Published: Tuesday, April 6, 2010

Updated: Thursday, April 8, 2010
Dan Coyle

Photo courtesy of facebook.com/insidethesunshinefactory

Chicago-based singer-songwriter Dan Coyle has been cranking out neo-folkpop tunes reminiscent of Cat Stevens, Paul Simon and Jason Mraz since 2004. Now he’s taking his one-man show to Connecticut for a live performance at The Space on Tuesday, Apr. 6. Quad News got a chance to catch up with Coyle before the show to discuss the future of folk, spontaneous songwriting and the art of connecting with a live crowd.

Quad News: How would you categorize your music?

Dan Coyle: Well, we push the idea that my music is kind of the next generation of singer-songwriter folk music. I would still consider it to be folk music because it has the feel of simplicity and repetition. And it can be very easy to identify with and sing along to. I guess the idea of the future of folk music is moving it in the direction of being able to blend or mix with a little bit more of a contemporary pop-py feel to it.

QN: If I listened to you on Pandora, what else would come up? What other artists would you compare yourself to?

DC: It depends [on] what album or what song you’re listening to. I had a guy pick up a song that was on my first album, “Briar Street: The Acoustic Session,” which was actually the first song of mine that was ever played on the radio back in 2007 (“Slow Train Comin’”). He said that I reminded him a lot of John Denver, and I can understand what he’s saying off of listening to that song because it’s a slower song. It has a very smooth, soothing melody kind of like a lot of John Denver. Recently, the latest album, “Random Thoughts and Incomplete Sentences,” a lot of times my vocals are compared to Cat Stevens. I get a lot of comparisons to Jason Mraz, having that kind of catchy acoustic, mellow vibe. I’ve also gotten Jack Johnson a lot, but I don’t listen to a lot of Jack Johnson, so I can’t really say.

QN: What does the song writing process entail for you?

DC: Usually for the most part, most the songs are written in 10 minutes, 15 minutes. To me, what usually happens is I will just be sitting around tooling around on the guitar, not playing anything in particular. Then the minute I hear something that I like, I’ll play it over and over and over again. And all that I usually do is just start singing to it. Not humming notes or melodies, but actual words, That’s usually how it happens.

I don’t sit down and think about the words a lot and I always hope that means that they are more meaningful because they come very naturally. It’s not that I’m writing them down on a piece of paper then ruminating over them for some period of t time. It’s more that it just kind of happens that once and in those ten or fifteen minutes go by and then it’s like okay here’s a song and I can listen back to it and see what it sounds like and then after that it may change slightly, but nothing will change very dramatically from what was written in those ten or fifteen minutes.

QN: What kind of music did you listen to in college?

DC: [When I was] in college, it’s bizarre, I had never really listened to The Beatles. But once I’d started I guess [I listened to] them for a solid four years, from about [age] 17 to 21. And that’s actually the reason I started to play guitar. I just wanted to play Beatles songs. Then I transitioned into listening to a lot of Simon and Garfunkel. I would say those are the staples.

QN: What’s your favorite song you’ve ever written?

DC: Oh, ah that’s a good question. [laughs] I guess some songs that I never get tired of playing are “Slow Train Comin.” I like to play that a lot and in the right setting people like to hear that song a lot. I like a lot of the songs off the last album. I like “Listen Closely Now.” For whatever reason, that goes over really well at live shows. People really seem to like that song.

But there are actually a few new songs that I’ve written as well. I really like both of those songs “God I Miss You” and “Something’s Changed.” I think that they’re a little bit different. And when I play “Something’s Changed” live, I use my voice to belt out a little bit more than usual. A lot of my vocals tend to be soft and smooth and highly melodic.

QN: “Random Thoughts and Incomplete Sentences” was your last album to come out, and that was last summer. When should we be expecting something new?

DC: There’s going to be a new release this year. And it would be a lot sooner, but I’m trying to [do] this one with a full band. I wanted to release it as a double disc--one disc is acoustic and the other disc is the same album, but with a full band.

QN: I noticed that you’re multi-instrumental. Do you play anything besides guitar and piano?

DC: [laugh] Yeah I struggle through the piano. That’s one of my great hopes-to over time get significantly better at the piano… If you sing over it and the song is good enough, I could probably get away with it. But I play a little African drum. I have a djembe that I’m looking at right now. Here, if I play it you might be able to hear it [several drum noises come through the phone]. So that’s the djembe.

There are songs that you’ll see that I just put on my website a few days ago. In late 2009 I felt like doing something different so I did this little project called Bliss in Motion Project and the songs are extremely different. They’re kind of a mix. They’re electronic, funk, pop, spoken word, and they fall within those genres. I put six of them up on my website the other day. All the instruments and all the vocals you hear, I did. And it was the longest process [laughs] I’ve ever done. I have no idea what I’m going to do with them; it was just a way to do something different.

QN: Where do you see yourself in five years?

DC: Five years? I get this question a lot and I never really know exactly what to say. Most everything that I have planned on happening has never gone the way that I planned anyways, so I try not to be too invested in my plans because if something goes a different direction I want to be able to just go with it. But, ideally in five years, I would love to be selling out large shows all across the country. I love being on the road and I love just staying on the road. I would be happy for some time just living on the road.

QN: What should we expect when you play at The Space (on Apr. 6)?

DC: People that see my show for the first time say that I’m a pretty genuine, down-to-earth person and just kind of put it all out there [on stage]. I would make an effort to say hi and meet and to talk a little bit with every person that comes. A huge part of it is making a real life, true, honest connection with those people and being able to see their faces and get a feel for their personalities and learn a little bit about them. Those aspects of it are irreplaceable. I’d love to be able to influence someone’s life in the way that it’s able to bring them a little bit more hope or calm or peace, or let them see the world as not so hostile. I don’t think that’s an impossible task to complete. I know it sounds a lot bigger than it is, but any task that we accomplish, we accomplish by one little step at a time.