LB: Hi Danny, you’re the lead singer + play guitar, right?
D: Yeah, I play guitar.
LB: Saw you at Levitation fest @ Austin, Texas.
D: Was it this year? We play it every year.
LB: I don’t remember the year, might be ’14 or ’15, The Jesus and Mary Chain were headlining.
D: That was last year.
LB: Were you perfoming?
D: Yes.
LB: Oh great, then that’s where I saw you playing songs from Sonic Boom, hooked on that album by the way, got this soft fuzzy touch to it.
D: Thank you, appreciate it.
LB: I like psychedelic music, but your new album, ‘Who Sold My Generation’, still got the psych flow, but sounds bluesy, how did you evolve into that?
D: It’s kind of hard for me to say how it’s evolved, but as far as sound, it sonically incorporates R&B elements. That’s what I listen to for the most part.
LB: Rhythm and Blues?
D: Yeah, rhythm and blues.
LB: Which R&B era?
D: I’m a huge Sam Cooke fan, Otis Redding to Percy Sledge.
LB: 60’s?
D: All these different people that I listen to on the regular, but I don’t necessarily want to carbon copy that kind of music. I want to have my own style. I’d love to play the guitar, and I love good guitars, and stuff like that.
LB: Can we talk about the album title for a minute, ‘Who Sold My Generation’? Who do you think sold our generation? Other than corporations?
D: The point is to have an open interpretation to it, and there is intentionally no question mark! People should think about it for themselves. What it means to own yourself, and to have an open mind to opinions and things that go on in the world, if it’s real, or not. For example, the stuff that’s going on in our political system is just so unattached to the regular persons in this country. But then again, it’s not exactly politically charged, it could be an overall thing. Ownership of yourself, your minds, and your thoughts really get lost in popular culture. I wanted to more or less pose that idea, plant that seed knowing that there are some people out there trying to empower them. At the end of the day, that’s what I’m trying to do, to empower people’s thoughts and minds.
LB: Carl Jung called it Individuation, the process of individuation, as an artist, you’re able to do that. You’re first single + video released from the album was ‘No Cops’:
Sick video, by the way.
D: Thanks.
LB: Why was it your first single?
D: It’s probably because it’s the most direct statement song on the record, even just like verbally, you know, with the choice of words.
LB: Can’t recall the lyrics, can you give an example, or recite some of the direct, verbal lyrics for me please?
D: Too much to lean, too much to say,
I cannot explain, what they’re meaning to say,
It’s in your blood, better wait your turn
Its another mean bullet they don’t wanna learn,
I don’t wanna have this moment with you
Got nothing better then find a stash or two,
Even the cops are tryin’ to give me a hard time
Ain’t gonna lose my cool, i just gotta find a good rhyme.
LB: Yeah, bur that sounds like deep inner personal stuff to me.
D: I’ve had experienced stuff, a lot of my friends have experiences stuff. It comes from experience. Sometimes people can bust for no good reason, because they don’t like your face, because they don’t like the way you talk, ya know? Whether be it a cop, or anybody, people are predisposed to wanna fuck with you.
LB: Why do you think we are easily intimidated?
D: Because are afraid of difference and change, afraid of breaking the mold and public images.
LB: Other than grooving us, and getting us into loopy vibes live, how did you break the mold?
D: When you tell me that I’ve broken the mold, that’s nice to hear, but you know to me, I make my own mold, so if I break a mold, I’d be breaking myself, so I really don’t wanna be breaking myself, or break myself.
LB: Boom, I love that!
Boom it was indeed when Night Beats took the stage that night at the Middle-East nightclub ’16, in Cambridge. I don’t know if I was hallucinating, but the performance in the darkened room upstairs, set in motion a rock rave. Their performance is out-there. They was no mosh pit, thank heavens, there was space for the large audience to get into that spacey rhythmic groove. As a psych music enthusiast, who is open enough to think out of the box, and not ask Night Beats to define what psychedelic music is to me, can say, that ‘Sonic Bloom‘ is one of the best psych rock albums in the 21st century. As for ‘Who Sold My Generation’, when I saw them perform their singles from it, I got convinced they might as well be one of the best psych rock bands elevating us in whatever psych scene in Austin, or out in the West Coast.
