By ERIC SCHELKOPF
After performing in various bands over the years – often as a backup instrumentalist – Chicago musician Daniel Gunderson in October decided to go off on his own and release his first solo album – "Remember."
The album, a collection of his own songs along with innovative covers of tunes by Kenny Wayne Shepherd, Tom Petty, Bob Dylan, Toad the Wet Sprocket, and The Rolling Stones, is streaming at danielgunderson.bandcamp.com/album/remember and open.spotify.com/album/2pUzY5jBce51grhOWZoGip.
I had the chance to talk to Gunderson about the album and his music career.
Q – Great talking to you. You released "Remember" in October. Some people might be surprised that this is your first solo album. Was now just the right time to release a solo album?
It was a combination of a lot of
things falling into place, with the addition of the COVID lockdowns and
isolation. I've always been more the utility person working behind other
musicians and, with COVID, the opportunity to play with others went
away.
I had already started to record the
album before the lockdown started, but since the only people I was
seeing outside my family were my producer and another friend, it allowed
for focus.
Q – You played the majority of the
instruments on the album. What kind of challenges did that pose? When
you finished the album, did it exceed your expectations?
Everything but drums were
instruments that I kept current on, and it required some time to get
back up to speed on them. The real challenge was trying to figure out
whether or not I needed to focus on the tenor of a song or the feel of
an instrument.
The way that I describe it is there was a question of
focusing on a particular instrument (horizontally) or on a particular
song (vertically). The process turned out to be a mix of both.
Thinking about that, there was one
approach I did have to learn from scratch: I'd never played an upright
bass with a bow prior to recording the album and the song "Over Down
Ampney" definitely needed the tone of a double bass, so I had to learn
how to play bowed bass.
Probably the biggest challenge was
recording the Hammond; that is a real Hammond C3 that is upstairs in our
living room and we needed to throw my family out of the house every
time we needed to record.
I found that the album passed the
motorcycle test for me. I was able to put it on and go out for a very
long ride and enjoyed every minute of both the ride and the album.
Q – "Remember" is a collection of your
songs and covers of songs by other artists. How did you go about
choosing what songs to cover? Are these artists that have influenced you
musically?
Each artist definitely has
influenced me in some way, either emotionally, musically, or both.
"Knockin' On Heaven's Door" and "Sympathy For the Devil" have been two
of my favorite songs for years and ones I definitely wanted to include.
In fact, they were the first scratch tracks that were laid down.
Regarding, "Blue On Black," I've always wanted an arrangement that had a
Hammond tying it together.
Regarding the other covers, I knew I wanted
to include a Toad The Wet Sprocket song and a Tom Petty song. I had
initially thought about Toad the Wet Sprocket's "Walk On the Ocean" and
Petty's "Wildflowers" and then realized that I needed to reach for
deeper cuts.
"Little Man Big Man" by TTWS is a song that has deep
personal meaning for me and is really only known by Toad fans and is a
concert favorite. "Climb That Hill Blues" by Tom Petty was only released
on "Wildflowers & All the Rest" and gets no radio airplay whatsoever.
Whichever covers I picked, I wanted to be able to know that I had put my stamp on them and not just played them note for note. I feel I did that.
Q – I understand that your arrangement
of "Knockin' On Heaven's Door" you had in your head for 30 years. What
did you attempt to do with the song? Did you feel a sense of
accomplishment to finally put your version of the song out there?
As you can probably guess from
the intro and solo, there was a lot of influence from the Guns 'n' Roses
version, which introduced me to the song. But I wanted to bring in a
bit more of my folk influences, as well as that underlying Hammond that
ties the song together. So...very much my spin and one that needed a
solo approach to do.
Q – As far as the album's title,
"Remember," is it a reference to both remembering the songs of other
artists as well as your own songs?
The song "Remember Me" was the last song written for the album and was actually written close to the
end. There is a theme to the songs that were chosen, meant to reflect a
"moving on" and reclaiming what I've done personally and the lyrics in a
lot of the songs reflect that theme.
For me, it's remembering what you
should be and wanted to be, not what others wanted to make you.
Q – Will you be performing songs from the album live?
I did a few songs from the album at a music convention in Ohio at the time of the album's release and hope to be performing this summer as a solo artist and with a new band.
Q – Are you already working on your second solo album?
I am very much working on a
second album. My producer and I decided we wanted to create another band
together, based on the work that I did on his solo album and the work
he did on mine.
So the trick right now is when I'm writing to decide
whether the music is for the new band or for my own album. Right now I'm
in the songwriting phase, not the recording phase, although I might
start laying down tracks soon.
No comments:
Post a Comment