New Jersey based singer, producer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Danny Danzi released his third album, entitled “Tribulations”, through Escape Music on 24th September. The album is his first in about 18 years, following on from two well received albums called “Somewhere Lost In Time” and “Danziland”. I linked up with Danny over Facebook and we arranged to record an interview on 28th September via Skype. We chatted for about 40 minutes about the new album, his recording studio, the previous albums and much more. That interview and four Danny Danzi tracks can be heard on the Friday NI Rocks Show from 1st October which is available now on our MixCloud page - https://www.mixcloud.com/NIRocks/interview-with-danny-danzi-on-the-friday-ni-rocks-show-1st-oct-2021/
The interview will be typed up and posted here later.
Check out Danny’s website - http://www.dannydanzi.com/
Playlist
STORMZONE – This Is Heavy Metal
NO HOT ASHES – Glow
WAYWARD SONS – Joke’s On You
LAST IN LINE – Starmaker
PLANET FATALE – Talking To Myself
MADAME MAYHEM – Afterlife
AD INFINITUM – Afterlife
DANNY DANZI – Do Me A Favor
Interview with DANNY DANZI Part 1 (11 min)
DANNY DANZI – Restitution
Interview with DANNY DANZI Part 2 (10 min)
DANNY DANZI – American Dream
Interview with DANNY DANZI Part 3 (16 min)
DANNY DANZI – Carry Me Back
VAN HALEN – Unchained
WOLFTOOTH – The Voyage
TEMPERANCE – Pure Life Unfolds
LORDS OF BLACK – Bound To You
TEMPT – Living Dangerous
JEFF SCOTT SOTO – Don’t Let It End (with Dino Jelusick)
THE GRANDMASTER – Lunar Water
NO HOT ASHES – Good to Look Back
NI ROCKS – Hi Danny. Thanks for taking some time to talk to us at Rock Radio NI. You’ve just released a new album called “Tribulations” which we’ll talk about shortly. The track we’ve just played is called “Do Me A Favor” and it’s a new track which isn’t on the album. What can you tell us about that track?
DANNY - I'd been out of the game for a long time, and I just wanted to see how this whole streaming thing worked. That was a song that I wrote that I really wasn't sure what we were going to do with it. It was me and the two brothers, Joey and Guy DeFalco. They're my writing partners. I perform everything, but they did all the writing. We just wanted to just test the waters. Let's see what happens. I hear, aahh streaming is terrible, and you don't make any money doing it, and do I need a record label? I wasn't even signed at the time with Escape. I said, Can I do this myself? Is it really possible? Let me see what happens with streams. It was kind of like a throwaway. We wrote in probably, I don't know 20 minutes, you know! Lyrically it was the hardest but, the song itself just came right together and let's just see how we do and if it gets my name back out there. It's kind of like an introduction to what's to come so that was really the purpose of that.
NI ROCKS – The new album “Tribulations” was officially released last Friday. It has been 18 years since the last album was released in 2003. Has it always been a matter of when the third album is released rather than if?
DANNY - The biggest problem is I was broken hearted after the whole MTM (Music) thing went south. I mean, I heard on a message board that MTM went chapter 13, which is total liquidation. So we made next to nothing on “Danziland” (the 2004 album), and I just took a little look around me and I said, what am I doing this for? If I'm going to put my blood, sweat, and tears into something, and something like this can happen at any time, I don't know if I want to do this anymore. I had other things in my life that were going on. I'm actually talking to you from one of the control rooms in my studio right now. But I got into my business very heavily. I produce and all that stuff. And it's stuff that gives you real money in real time. At my age now, I need to survive. It's not like you're in your 20s and 30s. I can go parading around and I hope I make money at this and I hope. The time that you put into this takes away from your survival time and you know as well as I do what the world is now. You've got to be very selective with what you put your time into. So do you... Invest the time, love, and your heart into something that never comes about, or do you go for the sure thing? And I was kind of in the middle. And I said, I'll never go with another European overseas label. You've got to get an attorney in that country to fight that label if there's a ... It's a nightmare. Khalil (Turk from Escape Music) was fantastic to me in everything. We have a total partnership and trust, and I said, You know what? Let's do it. So that's really what the holdup was. I've been writing. I've never stopped. I've never stopped playing. I have so many songs. It's almost like Eddie Van Halen's vault. If you've ever seen, he's got all this reel tape. I have hard drives full of stuff that I could release. You want to do it the right way, and sometimes time is the factor.
NI ROCKS – The album is out now, but no doubt there have been a few highs and lows along the way. You mentioned some there. What have been the biggest challenges that you’ve had to overcome?
DANNY - The biggest challenge was - let me just give you a little background on the album. I'll try to make it short because I don't want to take up all your time. I can sit and talk here an hour about this.
NI ROCKS – We’ve plenty of time.
DANNY - Great and I do as well. I dedicated this part of the day to you. I thank you for everything that you've done for me, your promotion, everything. In 2010, me and two brothers, Joey and Guy DeFalco, decided to put an album together, or just to write. We said we're going to get together one day a week. You know, let's just see what happens. Now, you know, things come up, they have a very busy construction business, which is why they didn't play on the album. I actually have them playing on the pre-production. But, you know, 2017 rolls around, and we have about 25 songs. We chose 15, and we decided to do this concept album of everything we wrote about. 2018 rolls around when we're about to really start recording the album. And the brothers are just so busy with their business that they couldn't commit to coming and recording anything. So they said, we can come every day at night for a month. And I said, but I have to run my business at night. Nobody comes to my recording studio during the day unless you're unemployed, you work nights, or you're a starving musician. I said, I can't afford to do that. So they said, well, that's all we can offer. I said, then I guess we can't do this. And that was December 23, 2018. 2019 rolls around; during the holidays, my fiancee says to me, you do it; you can play all the instruments. I say I can't play like these guys. So in getting back to your question, that was the challenge. January 2nd, 2019, I started tracking the album. I made-up my mind. I'm going to do this, and I'm going to do it better than “Somewhere Lost in Time” (the 1999 album), and I'm going to get good at these instruments, and I'm going play where people think this is a band. And that's why it took me a year and nine months, and that was the biggest challenge, was to play bass like Joey, play drums like Guy. So, I was about 90% accurate, so their spirit is all over this album. I physically had to ready myself to play everything that you've heard. There's no programming, there's no trickery or anything. That is physically playing every instrument. So, that was the hardest thing. And some of this stuff along the way, I lost both of my parents within the last time that I released an album, and many things, businesses I was a part of, we've sold and gotten out of, and you know how life goes. But the toughest was reproducing what Joe, Guy, and I had done as a unit, and that was the toughest tribulation.
NI ROCKS – You mentioned Escape Music there. The album is released through Escape Music. How did you make the connection with them?
DANNY - I've been friends with Khalil for probably, and everybody calls him Khalil with a K, I never knew it was an H sound. I had to correct myself, but I met him in 1998 when I had first tried to shop “Somewhere Lost in Time”. I had seven songs, and a good friend of mine, you may have heard of from Sweden, his name is Daniel Staracina. Daniel said to me, hey, listen, your stuff is good. You ought to send it to this, this. He sent me all the label information, MTM, Now and Then, Frontiers, Z Records, and Escape. And I sent all my packages. I had seven songs. And all of them got back to me. They were interested. And Khalil was just like the sweetest man. He was the first to call me, but he didn't really offer a great deal at the time, and Mark at Z Records had offered. Bastille, which is why I went with them. So, I had known Khalil since I shopped my first album, and we've kind of kept in touch over the years. I contacted him again to see if there would be any interest, and he loved the album. But again, the deals today, you know how they are; they don’t offer you much. Finally, he gets back to me after a couple months and he says, what if we did this, that, this, and this? I said, really? He says, yeah. He says, listen, I really want to work with you. You have something different here. It's not like the same AOR rock that everybody's doing. I want to invest in you. I want to believe in this. I said, all right, let's do it. That's how we came to be. He's a sweetheart of a guy. He has total trust in both of us. I couldn't be happier right now. Considering the way things are.
NI ROCKS – You mentioned that there are fifteen tracks on the album. When did writing start? You said you’d been writing for twenty years, so are those tracks from the last twenty years or have they all been written fairly recently
DANNY - All the songs that you hear, with the exception of “Frozen in Time”, all the songs were written from 2010 when we all got together. “Frozen in Time” is, I think, maybe 2006, if I'm not mistaken, or earlier. That was a song I wrote for a site called Guitar War, where we would get together and play as a bunch of guitarists. We had meetups, and I wrote it about my experiences there and all the guys and their screen names. And one day I woke up, I said, this song is great. I gotta get rid of the lyrics and write something more serious. And it was really hard because I was so used to the fun way, writing about all the guys, and now I'm trying to write something serious about it. This song is about being pretty much crippled by fear, something you see, something you experience.
NI ROCKS – We’re going to play a track from the new album now. Can you pick a track for us and tell us something about it?
DANNY - Oh boy, they're all my babies. (Laughs) I used to have a friend, we would call each other - dude, I just had a baby - written a new song. I like “Restitution” because I think it's got a hint of modern and a hint of something that you're familiar with. Basically, believe it or not, a few of the songs on here bash what it's like to live in the United States. I'm proud to be an American, but I'm not happy about some of the decisions that my country has made in government. I'm not one of those Americans that everybody hates. I'm the same as you. I'm just paying rent here!. “Restitution” is pretty much telling the government, you know what? Stop it. Take up for what you've done, for those that you've hurt. I just think it's a really good song. It's very powerful, lyrically, and I think the music just has a great groove and just takes you somewhere. That would be my choice. I actually wanted to do a video single of that.
NI ROCKS - Will you do a video for that track?
DANNY - I'm hoping. I don't know now. See, you guys are playing different stuff. I got somebody that's playing the death out of “Help Me Out”, and then I got somebody else that's playing “Don't”. They love Don't. So it's all different. So I would maybe like to take something that everybody's gravitating towards. That might be the better idea.
NI ROCKS - Yeah. Okay. We'll play that one.
NI ROCKS – You’ve mentioned on your social media pages that there will be a Danny Danzi Band and I noticed that it will include Sic Vikki bassist Pat Schumaker. Tell us how he got involved and who else will be in the band?
DANNY - Okay. Yeah, it's really funny. Pat and I go back a long way. I used to play in a band called Passion, and of course, he was Sic Vikki, and they had a lot more notoriety than we did. But Pat was always, even the whole band…normally, when you're going up through the club scene and you're playing, when the guys are high up, they kind of look down on other people once they’re a headliner. Pat's band was never like that. Those guys were amazing human beings all throughout. And Pat and I, every time we'd see each other, Hey, how you doing? Hey, how you doing? And we would talk, and small talk. But over the years, I knew he had gotten out of it. The same reason as me, heartbreak, you can't trust anybody, and so he posted something one time. about playing bass. I said, yeah, I'd love to get you playing bass on my stuff. He said, dude, I've been out of it for 20 years. I can't play on your stuff. We joked about it, and time went on and time went on. He had a cover band that he was supposed to play with. They asked him, please fill in for us. I said something like, well you're playing bass now; you might as well come over and check out my stuff; maybe you'll like it. And he fell in love with it. And he says, you just got to work with me. I've been out of it a long time. And, there's a lot of riff oriented stuff on my new album. It's not easy to play. Pat had never played a five string. I got him playing a five string. He's using all different tunings. And so it was a challenge for him, you know, but we've known each other for quite a few years. I would say. I would say at least the late '80s, early '90s. Now we're like best friends. It's like a match made in heaven. I'm really looking forward to getting out and playing with him. The other two guys in the band are really great, too. Andy Slostad, who was my writing partner, he helped me write some of the stuff on “Somewhere Lost in Time”, and he wrote a lot of “Danziland”. It's good to reunite with him. He's playing guitar and keyboards. And we have Carmen D'Amico on drums, who is a phenomenal drummer, plays and sings, plays piano. So we got a lot of talent this time.
NI ROCKS – Having a band put together is a good indicator that there will be some live shows at some point. What are your plans in regard to touring and performing live?
DANNY - Well, if we can do it, I'll do it. If we can go overseas and play, ultimately, that's my goal, that's my dream. I can't wait to get back over there. We'll probably do some shows around here. Another thing I want to do, too, that I have a lot of fun with in this area, you don't really get much notoriety or acclaim for playing original music. They have what's called the covers. What I want to do is, I do have a decent following. I can go and play. I'm going to do some covers, but we want to do them our way. Totally rewrite them. Like we have a beautiful version of “Eleanor Rigby” by the Beatles that will blow people's socks off. It's really heavy and you know, we've done some cool stuff where I think you can keep interest, still get covers, but we’ve rewritten them, and then I'm going to hit them with some of the Danny Danzi stuff. Once you get people in the seats and they're buying drinks and you've got people there, they don't care what you play. That's the thing, but we have to see how we do, and that's what my plan is right now. If we get enough sales and airplay and we can come to overseas to see you guys absolutely in a heartbeat, the guys in the band are ready as well, which is good. In the past, I've had some of the guys are very tied to their careers. These guys are too, like they’ve very big careers, all of them. Like Andy works for one of the biggest radio stations in the tri-state area. Pat works for CBS in Washington DC. He drives from Washington DC to New Jersey to come and play with me. Carmen is some kind of big executive somewhere. So, they're into their careers, but they're willing to let that go and come and play, it's worth it to them, which is fine by me.
NI ROCKS – Over the past few years have you had much chance to perform live? Obviously, with covid things have been different, but have you had much chance to play live over the past five to ten years?
DANNY - I was in a Van Halen tribute band that I played in for a long time, but that was before COVID. I think I left in 2017 or 2018. I've done a few little open mic nights where I was a special guest where they pulled me up. I have a little cover band that I play in that does like old classic rock. They were one of the big bands around here. They've been together for like 28 years. So I fill in and we do a little Southern rock, a little classic rock. So I've played a few shows with them. But to answer your question, not too much really, because since COVID, there's really no money to be made. I want to go out and make money, but it's almost like free entertainment. You know, you go play a show, you're there from, say, seven o'clock to four in the morning, and you come home with $100. Most of it, you drink it away or eat it away anyway. It's a night out. That's the way we've been looking at it, but hopefully that's going to change within the next couple of months.
NI ROCKS – A slow process, but we’re getting there! Has your Danziland Studio been busier over the past 18 months during covid with bands not being able to play live and having more time to record? And how have you coped with the restrictions over the last 18 months?
DANNY - You know, it's funny. I've had a ton of people in my studio that had COVID, and they didn't even know. So my doctor attributes it to me being blood type O positive. You get little to no symptoms. I haven't had the vaccine. I just don't want to do it. I've had people in my family that have really gotten hurt from it and died. Some friends have died right after they got it. I just don't trust it yet. I don't think it's been around long enough to know what happens long-term. That's just my personal opinion. Anybody that gets it, God bless you. I hope that you're okay. As far as the studio goes, no, I don't think COVID has affected it. I think the big thing is you can go to a store and buy software, or there's free software online now that you can use. You won't be great at first, but I think people enjoy doing it themselves and having fun. They had nothing but time to stay inside. It hasn't really affected what I do. Because I do specialty work here. When someone comes to my studio, they're going to get something here that they're not going to get anywhere else. Between the production and what I give them, I don't watch a clock. A lot of studios, as soon as you come here, that clock's running. I don't do that. I play on their stuff. Sometimes, just as a common courtesy, if they need me to sing, they need me to play guitar, bass, drums, anything. I do that. It hasn't affected me because I don't do the little jobs. Like if you have a band of children, if you can't afford my prices, I'm not going to record you. I'm a snob or anything, but I think what I have to offer is worth something. So that deters some of the people away. I'm only going to get the people that really want stuff to sound good coming in here.
NI ROCKS – Are there some bands you’ve been working with over the past few years that you’d recommend that we check out?
DANNY - Oh, boy. I have a friend that I did a project with by the name of Sal Tommassello, and he called the band Red Figurehead. He's got some really interesting stuff. I really like Sal and the stuff that he's done. I've done some instrumental with a band that was signed called Points North (https://www.facebook.com/pointsnorthband ). It was really good. They did their whole album here, mixed and mastered. It's an instrumental. The guitar player (Eric Barnett) is absolutely phenomenal. They played with everybody. They were signed to Magna Carta Records. Who else? I just worked with a bunch of, I don't want to call them…, young men, we'll call them. They're just kind of getting out of school. KinSoul is their name,( https://www.facebook.com/KinSoulMusic ) and they play locally around here, and they just did a four-song EP. That sounds really great. I enjoyed working with them. Everybody I work with really becomes family after they work here. And then I have my corporate accounts that send me stuff, whether it's jingles or stuff like that. Sick audio, we do all kinds of crazy stuff here.
NI ROCKS – We’ll get back to the new album again and play another track. Can you pick one and tell us something about it?
DANNY - Okay, let's see. This is a little political again, and it's funny because Khalil did not like this song. I don't think he understood it’s meaning, but “American Dream” is one of my favorites also. And the meaning behind that is, it's really not the American dream here. You know, you come here, we bust our butts for everything that we have. There is no American dream unless somehow you went to some big college, you're a dentist or a doctor or something like that. Me and my fiancée work six to seven days a week, and I'm not living in a mansion or driving a Ferrari or Lamborghini or anything. I mean, we really put in some serious time. They take it all in taxes. So you're basically busting your buck to survive for your mortgage or whatever that you're doing. So wherever this American dream is, I haven't seen it in probably 30 years (laughs) That's what the song is about, what the American dream is not any longer and how at times we're actually divided in this country; especially with the current political things that have gone on. The country is very divided. And it's that. It's really a shame. But that's what the song is about.