05/06/2010: Dan's Thoughts on "Coming Up For Air"
The title 'Coming Up For Air' came to me when I arrived to Jerusalem. I had just spent a year living in India, including 4 months among the Tibetan people in the Himalayan mountains and felt that coming back to writing music after 4 months living in a Tibetan Monastery guest house was very much like coming back from the edge of darkness, breathing again, learning to find a new love for music, a love for melody and the power of lyrics. Jerusalem was for me a perfect blend of ancient eastern culture mixing with modern western culture, and it was here that I built a new production studio to begin recording the new songs I had started writing while living in India, and continued to write in the Middle East.
From 1999 to 2003 I managed and booked a nightclub in Portland, Oregon, my hometown, and during this time had found myself on a fast track of life that I never imagined I would find myself on. Late nights, alcohol and the drug culture surrounded me, and I eventually succumbed to this 'life' style, if one could call it that. I became more and more 'lost' in the fog of the frenetic energy that grips that subculture and in the process could not find my groove as a songwriter, even though I was producing tons of electronic music and performing live, it was not the same as singing, which I had always found was the greatest connecting point to an audience. During this time my father was diagnosed with cancer, and it was this wake up call of taking care of him in his final days that I cleaned up my act and became focused again. After his passing I headed back to Dharamsala, India where I had visited in 1992 to interview the Dalai Lama for SPIN Magazine. I knew that I needed some 'quiet time' to think and dream about what I wanted to do with my future and music.
One day while washing clothes in the mountain streams above the village, Sonam, one of the Buddhist monks, asked me to teach him the lyrics to a song he had heard on one of the tourist's cd players. It turned out that song was Queen's 'We Will Rock You'. It suddenly struck me that music transcends all boundaries... religious, cultural, ethnic. The next day I bought a used acoustic guitar for 60 US dollars, and began writing some simple chord progressions. The first song finished there was entitled 'On Your Side' and is on the new album 'Coming Up For Air'.
I continued to write there, but was also being drawn in to the monastic life and had to make a decision of whether to remain in the monastery and devote my life to study, or come back to music. I chose music and after meeting many Israeli's while in India, decided I would travel to Israel to find out what the conflict there was truly all about. Reading or hearing stories about the Palestinian and Israeli conflict is one thing, but to experience it first hand was necessary to understand what lies behind it all. After visiting Jerusalem, I felt I had found a new home... a place where Muslim, Christians, Jews, and the New Age crowd all lived side by side was refreshing. Conversation at dinner was not about business and shopping, but about spiritual quests and religious texts, the search for a deeper meaning to life. It was in this environment that the new record was born.
Often I would come home from studying at the Jewish Yeshiva, or after a long contemplative walk through the Old City and put pen to paper, writing about how underneath it all we are all searching for the same light, we all fear the same 'monsters' on the horizon. We all long for peace of mind and of heart. And so this record reflects not only my own experiences searching for answers, but also reflects the many questions that were brought to bear in every corner of the physical and mental world I was traveling in at the time.
There is a fine line between having hope in the future, and what some call 'spirituality'. My personal belief is that all roads lead to the same destination, it is only a matter of choosing which road to get there. Some choose the road of turbulence and stress, others the road of acceptance and levity. Both are important and it in this collection of songs I have tried to mirror that duality.
The value of friendship, the wisdom or the lack of wisdom of using violence to bring peace, the necessity of making mistakes to learn from, the tremendous power of silence, reflection and quiet meditation, the chaos of modern life and how us humans must make peace with our earth to survive the challenges that face us in the future... all these subjects brought a tremendous weight and responsibility to write and play music that portrayed these emotions. To use music as a warm handshake, an admission to us sharing the same strengths and the same weaknesses with the audience was and is now my goal. Whether that was achieved remains up to the listener.
'Coming Up For Air' is my confession and my hope for finding balance... for finding light in a world that is filled with shadows and doubt. This record is a collection of songs that I hope do not preach, but instead are uplifting reminders to appreciate all the beauty and all the gifts we are given each day from our friends, family, and often a stranger on the street corner. We humans are the dark and the light... we hold the power to destroy or to create. It's only a matter of respecting the fact that we have been given that choice and through that respect we may just find what we have been looking for all these many centuries? At least this is my hope.
From 1999 to 2003 I managed and booked a nightclub in Portland, Oregon, my hometown, and during this time had found myself on a fast track of life that I never imagined I would find myself on. Late nights, alcohol and the drug culture surrounded me, and I eventually succumbed to this 'life' style, if one could call it that. I became more and more 'lost' in the fog of the frenetic energy that grips that subculture and in the process could not find my groove as a songwriter, even though I was producing tons of electronic music and performing live, it was not the same as singing, which I had always found was the greatest connecting point to an audience. During this time my father was diagnosed with cancer, and it was this wake up call of taking care of him in his final days that I cleaned up my act and became focused again. After his passing I headed back to Dharamsala, India where I had visited in 1992 to interview the Dalai Lama for SPIN Magazine. I knew that I needed some 'quiet time' to think and dream about what I wanted to do with my future and music.
One day while washing clothes in the mountain streams above the village, Sonam, one of the Buddhist monks, asked me to teach him the lyrics to a song he had heard on one of the tourist's cd players. It turned out that song was Queen's 'We Will Rock You'. It suddenly struck me that music transcends all boundaries... religious, cultural, ethnic. The next day I bought a used acoustic guitar for 60 US dollars, and began writing some simple chord progressions. The first song finished there was entitled 'On Your Side' and is on the new album 'Coming Up For Air'.
I continued to write there, but was also being drawn in to the monastic life and had to make a decision of whether to remain in the monastery and devote my life to study, or come back to music. I chose music and after meeting many Israeli's while in India, decided I would travel to Israel to find out what the conflict there was truly all about. Reading or hearing stories about the Palestinian and Israeli conflict is one thing, but to experience it first hand was necessary to understand what lies behind it all. After visiting Jerusalem, I felt I had found a new home... a place where Muslim, Christians, Jews, and the New Age crowd all lived side by side was refreshing. Conversation at dinner was not about business and shopping, but about spiritual quests and religious texts, the search for a deeper meaning to life. It was in this environment that the new record was born.
Often I would come home from studying at the Jewish Yeshiva, or after a long contemplative walk through the Old City and put pen to paper, writing about how underneath it all we are all searching for the same light, we all fear the same 'monsters' on the horizon. We all long for peace of mind and of heart. And so this record reflects not only my own experiences searching for answers, but also reflects the many questions that were brought to bear in every corner of the physical and mental world I was traveling in at the time.
There is a fine line between having hope in the future, and what some call 'spirituality'. My personal belief is that all roads lead to the same destination, it is only a matter of choosing which road to get there. Some choose the road of turbulence and stress, others the road of acceptance and levity. Both are important and it in this collection of songs I have tried to mirror that duality.
The value of friendship, the wisdom or the lack of wisdom of using violence to bring peace, the necessity of making mistakes to learn from, the tremendous power of silence, reflection and quiet meditation, the chaos of modern life and how us humans must make peace with our earth to survive the challenges that face us in the future... all these subjects brought a tremendous weight and responsibility to write and play music that portrayed these emotions. To use music as a warm handshake, an admission to us sharing the same strengths and the same weaknesses with the audience was and is now my goal. Whether that was achieved remains up to the listener.
'Coming Up For Air' is my confession and my hope for finding balance... for finding light in a world that is filled with shadows and doubt. This record is a collection of songs that I hope do not preach, but instead are uplifting reminders to appreciate all the beauty and all the gifts we are given each day from our friends, family, and often a stranger on the street corner. We humans are the dark and the light... we hold the power to destroy or to create. It's only a matter of respecting the fact that we have been given that choice and through that respect we may just find what we have been looking for all these many centuries? At least this is my hope.
