Daniel

Musician/producer Daniel Levi Goans

Many of us might dream of getting a phone call that changes everything but I think it rarely happens. Then again sometimes it does. When I talked in my last post about getting a phone call, that call was from Daniel Goans. When I first met Daniel a decade ago, he was working on his first album. Over the next five years, we kept in touch and shared music we were working on. We also played some shows together on the East Coast. We shared a love of obscure folk and psychedelic music from the sixties and seventies and would have long conversations about keyboard sounds, guitar and drum tones we loved: why they fit well in the composition of the song, how they may have been recorded. He was always interested in the music I was making and at one point invited me down to his house in North Carolina to work on some demo recordings. I remember being really impressed with his dedication and creativity in the craft of making and recording music. On one of the tracks we were recording he had this idea for a percussion part that consisted of miking up his ancient wood floor and slapping it as hard as we could. Then he removed all the treble from the sound and filtered it through some kind of effect. We had to slap that floor super hard to get the right tone and it hurt our hands, but it was worth it. The result was this organic sounding percussion hit that couldn’t quite be identified but worked perfectly with the vibe of the song. 

Despite living far apart, Daniel and I continued to share music and would sometimes talk about the kind of record we could make given the time and resources. Years went by and this dream remained nebulous, somewhere way out in the future. As you get older, it’s not so much that the dreams of your youth go away as that they start to exist in a different space: farther away from what you think of as reality. So when I got the phone call it wasn’t just a phone call. It was a collision of worlds, of these parallel narratives about what my life was. I started to believe that maybe I hadn’t been crazy to spend so much time writing songs. 

Anyone involved in music knows that writing songs is no easy task and finding like-minded collaborators might be even harder. And everyone knows how hard it can be to find a true friend. True friends are able to speak the same language. Musical collaboration is not so different. Music is a language of emotion, and in my experience, is one of the deepest languages we can share. It’s challenging because it’s not so much about technical proficiency as it is about understanding what a song is trying to convey on an intuitive level. You can't create something that all people will experience the same way, but you can know whether or not you've brought your vision to fruition. When you connect with other musicians, it’s inspiring to share and expand the vision of that world together. 

Still, I was feeling nervous about how it would all work out as I flew across the country. I’d only had about four days to get things ready and I felt massively underprepared. But working with Daniel was such a phenomenal experience. He is such an intuitive guy, and an incredible producer and musician. Even though we hadn’t been in close touch recently, he was able to integrate all the thoughts, conversations and music we’d shared over the years in a very short period of time. When we got to the studio, it was as if he took all those experiences and his knowledge of who I was as a person and translated it all into musical decisions. And on top of his killer intuition and great ear for parts, he has a crazy ability to get shit done. I can get stuck in making the perfect decision, but he always kept the bigger picture in view. He also brought in amazing musicians that really connected with what we were trying to do. 

That phone call changed the direction of my life. Daniel is a dear friend and this album wouldn’t exist without his involvement and belief and encouragement to me as an artist. Daniel is also half of the wonderful folk duo Lowland Hum. When he’s not touring or recording and producing his own records, he uses his abundant talents to help other people make records. If you would like to find out more about Daniel and his work with Lowland Hum as well as his production work visit lowlandhum.com 

Stay tuned for more on the unique story behind Losing the Names coming soon….