COOL KIDS
#9: THE BREAKS INC.
★★★★★★★
Being in this band and being in a band that people have heard of doesn’t change the fact that you know that you’re not cool. I think it’s becoming comfortable with that, that’s great. I almost hate everything that’s cool. I never want to be cool. … Before one of our biggest shows, I was washing my face in the sink, I looked in the mirror, and I was like, you’re still uncool. I was really happy with that revelation. You’re never gonna be cool, so stop trying.
– Gerard Way
Personally, I discovered The Breaks Inc. when they were playing a show at The Bitter End one night in 2022. I was so insanely impressed with them that I began writing about bands because I thought everyone should know about The Breaks Inc., and I wanted to share the stories of other artists.
– Emma Hug Rosenstein
I love a weekend of really good nights out. Good friends. Good energy. Good fun. Alt Fashion at Boom Boom. Fashion, fashion, fashion. Beautiful clothes. Big, snazzy room. Overpriced drinks. Too many of ‘em. Cool, swaggy people. Excited, drunken hellos. Posing for pictures. Poppers in the corner. Lots of skin. Singing and guitar playing on the bar. Galentine’s pregame. Valentine’s at Classic. “Main character meet-up.” My second living room. New and old faces. Embarrassing dancing. Blurry, bad pictures. Lost jackets. Sidewalk cartwheels. Alcohol blanket. Eating shit on snowpiles. Drunk texts and calls and selfies to lovers. Bar hopping. Lovely banter. More expensive drinks. Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi. Sour candy and Diet Coke. Emotionally draining. True love. Loads of love.
Danny Marra (vox/guitar)
Michael Massiah (lead guitar)
Matt Barouch (guitar)
Gilberto Simmons (bass)
Katie Marra (backing vox)
Jason Ruiz (drums)
Newest release: Hotel Earth, debut album, November 14, 2024
★★★★★★★
Marisa Whitaker: Emma sent me some great notes, and I was listening to the album on my way here.
Danny Marra: Oh, that’s very nice. She refused to tell me what she told you. She was like, I sent Marisa some talking points. I’m not telling you what about.
MW: It wasn’t anything too crazy. Sometimes I try to get a little insider info. I’m so excited, though. I was trying to remember how I first came across you guys. It might’ve just been Instagram.
DM: I remember exactly what it was. It was last summer. I ran into the manager of Wilmah, Brooke [Muller]. I’d been seeing Scott Lipps’ weekly showcase being posted about all the time. I saw that Wilmah played, and I asked Brooke, How is everyone getting this gig? She said, Just DM Marisa. So I cold-DMed you.
MW: That’s what happened. I love it. I love finding bands. I love it when people come to me like that, too. I’m like, Yes, let’s do it. Let’s rock and roll. You’ve played it, what, three times now? Twice at least.
DM: Definitely three. I think last week was three.
MW: That one was your best. Not that any were bad. But we were talking about that after the show.
DM: I appreciate that. I think we felt the same. Sometimes you just put on a good show, and it comes from somewhere else. It’s not something you plan.
MW: And that was the first show of the year for you guys, right?
DM: Yeah. We actually hadn’t played in a couple of months.
MW: Maybe that was it, just feeling like, Oh, we’re back.
DM: Sometimes we burn ourselves out by playing too frequently. One of my friends told me, Take it easy. Chill. Don’t go overboard. So we took some time off.
MW: That makes sense. Everyone wants to play, obviously, but there’s an art to not oversaturating your crowd.
DM: That’s something we never thought about, which is wild because it’s so obvious. I think every other month is good. We were doing every other weekend for a long time.
MW: That’s got to be hard to wrangle with how many of you there are; practices, schedules. Is the show your rehearsal at that point?
DM: I was surprised when I told someone how often we practice, and they thought it was improbable. We practice every week. At least three times a month. We’re lucky because our guitarist has a house in Brooklyn, and we rehearse in his living room. His mom lives downstairs. It’s a blessing. Other bands have to pay for studio time.
MW: That’s huge. And everyone’s working too.
DM: Yeah. It’s wake up at 5:30, go to work, drive home, get dressed, go to Brooklyn, practice from seven to ten, drive home, find parking, then wake up and do it again the next day.
MW: Do you sleep?
DM: Not enough.
★★★★★★★
MW: You’re a teacher?
DM: Yeah. Science and math.
MW: But you were going to be a cop. Did you go all the way through and then decide no?
DM: When I was a kid in high school, I didn’t have a clear picture of what I wanted to do with my life. I wasn’t excited about college. My dad was a cop, so I thought I’d just do that. My dad actually told me not to. I applied to only two schools, John Jay for policing and NYU Polytechnic for physics. I got into both and chose the cop route. I guess I was too scared to go do something on my own. Fear of failure or something. I was a police cadet for three years. It’s not what you think it is. Law & Order is the biggest false advertising ever. My dad was an SVU detective in the Bronx for seven years. But it wasn’t all bad. I wouldn’t have formed my band or met my fiancée if I hadn’t done it. Teaching was a happy accident that happened afterwards. I tutored a detective’s kid and brought his average from a 70 to a 95. I realized I was good at it. I like it a lot more than the police department.
MW: That’s great. What was it about your time as a cadet that made you start the band? When did that happen?
DM: The short version is I was a cadet for three years, and at the end of it, instead of getting promoted into the police academy, I was basically disqualified. It was super frustrating. I’d always played music, but I’d never really tried writing songs before. So I took all that frustration and tried writing a song. My first songs were absolute crap. But you kind of have to write a bunch of crappy songs before you figure it out. It was just me taking my frustration and channeling it into something creative to deal with the misery of rejection.
MW: I read Emma’s article with you guys. It was a great read. I loved how the band was bouncing off each other. I remember you saying that’s how you began writing music. Though what made you play around with music as a kid, pre-cadet days?
DM: I was a fourth grader with an alto saxophone. In high school, I taught myself piano from YouTube. Then, in college, I started messing around with guitar. My dad always played in bands. It wasn’t anything extraordinary. I was just a dude who played in the marching band.
MW: And sounds like you grew up in a musical household?
DM: Very much so on my dad’s side. Not my mom. But there was always Beatles memorabilia in my basement. I knew who The Beatles were before I was even conscious.
MW: Same. I was listening to the early stuff. It’s very Beatles.
DM: I wear my inspiration on my sleeve, I guess.
MW: Were The Beatles your first love? What was the first song you heard?
DM: I remember being a toddler in the backseat of my dad’s car. He was playing the White Album. “The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill” – except I sang Buffalo Bill, for some reason. Yellow Submarine, Help, A Hard Day’s Night; watching the movies as a kid. “Golden Slumbers” was when I first understood the magic. I’m really attracted to the tension in the one-to-three chord change, and that song has it. I use it a lot in my songs. It’s a nice interval.
MW: I, too, was in the backseat of a car when I first heard “I Am the Walrus,” when I was six.
DM: I read that in your COOL KIDS interview. I think it was Gnarcissists?
MW: I think so. That was my college essay. I was going to post the rest of it, but I haven’t yet.
DM: You should. I’d love to read it.
MW: It’s crazy how one moment can set the course of your life. That was the first time I realized music meant something deeper. It took over my life.
★★★★★★★
MW: Where did you grow up?
DM: Hudson Valley. My parents are from Queens, my grandparents too. When I was 18, I moved back down, and I’ve lived in Queens for 13 years.
MW: What was Hudson Valley like?
DM: Peaceful. Calm. Quiet. Dead-end street. Playing in the woods. Riding bikes, stealing apples from orchards. Kind of like Tom Sawyer. I don’t really have anything to compare it to.
MW: Why Queens?
DM: This might offend people, but I don’t get Brooklyn. It’s probably genetic at this point. Even the map of Queens makes sense to me. My drummer and guitarist live in Brooklyn, and driving there is frustrating because I just want to be in Queens. Even meeting up today, I was totally willing to come halfway because Queens feels like this faraway land people don’t go to.
MW: Thank you for coming all this way.
DM: It was 20 minutes on the train. It’s really not that far.
MW: I remember when you first told me you lived in Queens, and I was like, How does that work if school, work, music, and everything else is elsewhere? But now I get it.
DM: It’s not the most happening place, but that’s why I like it. I live right by the park in Woodhaven. It’s trees and single-family houses. No nightlife. Everything closes early. Peace and quiet. I think I’m not like everybody else.
MW: How would you say Queens, or New York in general, has influenced you as a musician and your work with The Breaks?
DM: It’s isolating. I have to put in effort to get on the train and go to Manhattan. It’s not actually far. Everyone hangs out on the Lower East Side or Williamsburg and sees each other all the time. Even though it’s geographically not a big difference, psychologically it feels like one. Being on the other side of that border makes me feel distant from everything. Sometimes that affects whether I go out or not. Like last Friday, I woke up at 10 p.m. and debated going to see Thesaurus Rex at the Bitter End. I was exhausted, but I went because I love those guys. Then you get home at 2 a.m., and finding parking is a nightmare.
★★★★★★★
MW: You met some of your band members at cop college?
DM: My bass player, Gil, and my drummer, Jason, hung out there all the time. Jason didn’t even go there; I think his girlfriend did. I met multiple guitarists there. We’ve been playing together for ten or twelve years.
MW: How many have been there from the beginning?
DM: Right now, just me and Gil. People have come and gone.
MW: This current lineup, the one that’s played Silver three times, this is it, right?
DM: Correct
MW: Michael is unbelievable. His guitar playing is insane. Everyone is phenomenal.
DM: What I love most about him is that his whole purpose is to serve the song. I’ve played with guitarists who just want to solo everything, and it feels self-serving. None of us is trying to be a standalone, impressive instrumentalist. We’re just doing what the song needs. I don’t even consider myself an instrumentalist. I suck at guitar and piano. I can play chords, but I can’t solo. I’ve always considered myself more of a songwriter. But my guys are amazing at serving the song. They’ve gotten used to how I write. Though Mikey writes his own melodic guitar lines. The catchy parts that stick with you – that’s all him.
MW: What’s it like having such a tight-knit group, especially after going through different members? That’s very special what y’all have. Everyone’s there for The Breaks Inc.
DM: I know how lucky we are. What we have is very rare. I try to remind myself of that, because sometimes you lose sight of it. You get frustrated and look for things to blame. It takes time to remember how lucky I am.
★★★★★★★
MW: This album’s been out a little over a year now. It’s beautiful. I love it. It’s a concept album.
DM: It is.
MW: I know this took a long time. You started writing this around 2019, right?
DM: I started writing some of the tracks in 2019. I started seriously about a year and a half or two years ago. I think “Hotel Earth” was the first one I wrote. I wrote it in the attic. I usually start my songs acoustic or on piano.
MW: Why were you in the attic?
DM: I was living in an attic at the time. That was my bedroom. It was small and cramped. I couldn’t really stand up. The song plays into the theme of isolation. That’s the heart of the album. I tend to put a lot of emphasis on lyrics, even though I’m constantly reminded by the fact that most people don’t seem to pay attention to them. My own band couldn’t even tell you the lyrics to my songs.
MW: [Laughs] Someone told me the other day they don’t listen to lyrics at all, and rather, just the sound, how a song feels. For me, the first listen is feel, but then I start catching words. I’m a huge lyric person. I love dissecting them. Sometimes they don’t mean anything, sometimes they do, even unintentionally. But from what I read and from listening, every line of yours feels like a screenshot, like a specific image.
DM: Every line is a distinct memory. Some are woven together from different times, but most songs are memories. Every lyric is very intentional. That’s what makes me fall in love with a song. First, it’s the music; it hooks you. But if I later read the lyrics and they feel inauthentic or lame, I stop liking the song. I’ve been obsessed with “Jolene” by Ray LaMontagne recently. I heard it on the radio and had to repeat the lyrics in my head the whole drive home so I could look them up. That song reminds me of a very specific moment in my life. … Every lyric on the album has significance to me, at least. But I imagine people interpret things for their own lives.
DM: Absolutely.
MW: Are these snapshots from 2019 to 2022? Or from your whole life?
DM: Mostly people. I’m hesitant to give too much away.
MW: Don’t tell me anything you don’t want to.
DM: I want to give you a good interview. I just don’t want to …
MW: Well, let’s go track by track.
DM: Okay.
★★★★★★★
“2055” and “Only a Dream”
MW: What are you going to be doing in 2055?
DM: I’ll be an old man. I already feel like one.
MW: Why does the album start here? What’s it about?
DM: Lyrically, it’s about this frustration I was feeling with the present sucking and believing the future will be better. But what guarantee is there? How do I know life will be better 30 years from now? Maybe we’ll all be gone. I wrote it during COVID. I think a lot of musicians were writing pretty heavy stuff at the time. We were all miserable. I remember being stuck in my house for a year. I grew this insane beard, and my hair was halfway down my torso. … If the first track is the illusion, the second track is snapping yourself out of it.
MW: You said the album is like waking up from a dream. A bad dream. An isolating dream.
DM: It’s not a happy album. I usually warn people before they listen.
MW: You said in an interview: It’s hard to write when you’re happy, and that made me sad.
DM: That sounds like something I’d say. [Laughs] … I was getting into fights at that time, with friends, family. I’d stare at myself in the mirror and feel dissatisfied with what I saw. I looked like a caveman, quite literally. I had never looked like that before. I felt like I couldn’t give anyone what they wanted. That’s the chorus: What is it you want? What is it you need? It’s self-dissatisfaction. Feeling unable to provide for anyone. That leads to more neuroticism and self-loathing. Sometimes I feel guilty putting this music out. Music should be inspirational and help people, and here I am just whining about my life.
MW: But that’s exactly what helps people. When someone’s going through something bad and hears something that mirrors their experience, there’s comfort in that.
DM: I agree.
MW: I just did an interview where someone said, When nothing’s happening to me, I have nothing to write about.
DM: I say that all the time. That’s highly accurate. When I try writing with nothing to say, it always turns out like shit.
MW: A lot of bands were born or got a fire lit under their ass during the pandemic. Watching pandemic movies now feels so weird. I just saw that one with Joaquin Phoenix. We’re still trying to forget it, but enough time has passed to realize how fucked up it was.
DM: For all of us.
MW: But you came out of it with this beautiful body of work. It’s proof that things were fucked up, but you went and created something beautiful because of it.
DM: I don’t want to say the album is about COVID. It just happened during that time.
★★★★★★★
“Something To Find”
DM: That was the dissolution of a relationship that never should’ve happened. It was born out of horrible circumstances. It was the most tumultuous relationship I’d ever experienced. We broke up like ten times in a year. I’d written it immediately after waking up one morning, and I had sent her a voice memo of it. It was basically a letter to her. … And as I’m talking about it, I’m picturing exactly where I was sitting and exactly how I was feeling.
MW: I read that you listened to this album a shitload of times.
DM: Too many.
MW: You know every note, every little part of it. So when you woke up and wrote that song in the morning, correct me if I’m wrong, but I imagine it was more just the feelings coming out, words to paper. Are you also, at the same time, hearing the music in your head? Or does that come later, with help from the band?
DM: Usually, I hear everything in my head as I’m writing the song – how I want the drums to be, or a string arrangement, or a harmony. The band definitely comes in and adds their parts. Sometimes their parts are better than mine, sometimes they like my parts. There’s a split responsibility there. But I self-produced the album in the studio. I’d come in with my little notebook of what needed to be done that day. We’d do these marathon recording sessions, like 11 a.m. to 11 p.m., with maybe a 15-minute pizza break, then right back to it, because we didn’t want to waste any time. We could barely afford it as it was. It was very expensive.
MW: I’m sure. Did you have somebody else mix and master?
DM: Yeah. We recorded at this really nice studio on Long Island. Our engineer there mixed six of the tracks, and Alex Poeppel mixed three of the tracks. Poeppel mastered the whole thing. I’m very happy with how it turned out. I still can’t believe that we made that. It almost doesn’t seem like we could have. It’s a weird thing. It’s like taking a photo. It’s like looking at a photograph of yourself that you don’t remember taking. I do remember making it, but it feels improbable that we could have. Maybe I’m just not giving ourselves enough credit. My guys deserve the credit. Part of me feels like I don’t even deserve any recognition for anything we’ve done. Even this interview. I feel a little like I don’t deserve to be here.
MW: Why?
DM: I don’t know. Imposter syndrome, for a lot of it. Also, the name of the column is COOL KIDS. I’ve never been a cool kid in my life. I’m still not a cool kid. I’ve always been an outsider. Even now, I feel like an outsider when I go to shows. BUT I feel like that’s my own fault. I don’t do enough … I don’t know how to be social. I find it difficult to socialize. I feel out of place a lot of the time. I don’t even …
MW: You sound like Gerard Way.
DM: Do I?
MW: I found an old clip of him where he’s like, I’m not fucking cool. My Chemical Romance is not cool. We’re outsiders, and we’re for the outsiders. And honestly, generally speaking, a lot of musicians historically haven’t been the most extroverted of people. The fact that you can get onstage and sing into a microphone and pull it off – and do it well – that’s something I could never do. I’m extroverted, I talk a lot, I love socializing. It’s in my Southern, Texas-bred blood. But I’ve never thought that makes me cooler than musicians, by any means. I mean, would you call Gerard Way not cool? Of course, he’s fucking cool.
DM: Gerard Way is very cool. From our perspective, Gerard Way might not think he’s cool, and I don’t think anyone’s ever going to convince Gerard Way that he’s cool. It’s funny you mentioned him, because I’ve actually never really been into My Chemical Romance, but I started playing keyboards in a My Chemical Romance tribute band recently.
MW: No way. That’s so sick. I was never an emo kid. I was never into My Chem, but I went to their show at MetLife last year. It literally changed my life.
DM: My friends were at that show.
MW: Life-changing. That’s all I listen to at the gym now. The Black Parade on repeat. I’m obsessed.
DM: I can appreciate it a lot. Some of the songs I still have a hard time getting, but that’s probably a me problem.
MW: I know I’ve mentioned this in an interview before, but I’ve always had dark hair, and growing up, I was surrounded by all these blonde girls who were like, Your hair is black, so you’re emo. So I rejected anything emo at the time. And now, I love it. I’m entering my emo phase at 25.
DM: We all worry way too much about what other people think. That’s what I’d tell my 12-year-old self – just don’t give a shit.
MW: Imposter syndrome is such a weird thing. We all have it. My friend and I were talking about this the other night. It’s crazy to get to a point where you yourself can legitimize what you’re doing. Anyone can call themselves something and proceed to do the work. Then, when you’re actually doing the work, and opportunities start coming your way, you’re like, I don’t fucking deserve that. But it’s like, what the fuck else have you been working for?
★★★★★★★
“For Eleanor”
MW: Who is Eleanor? Is this Miss Rigby?
DM: Who is Eleanor? is a question I get a lot. She’s a very real person. And I don’t think I could ever say who Eleanor is. Eleanor doesn’t know who Eleanor is. That’s actually one of the lyrics in the song. In the first verse, I say, That isn’t your name, but it may as well be. It’s actually two people. The title is a play on one of their names. It’s someone from my past who haunted me enough that I sat down at a piano and wrote music that sounded like the feeling.
MW: That’s beautiful. And when you were sequencing the album, did you kind of know, This is going to go here, this is going to go there? Or was that more of an afterthought? It feels really intentional.
DM: I always knew that “Blue” was going to be second to last. The concept is the death of this character, and at the end of that song, the person essentially dies. The last track, “Floating in the Sea,” is more like an epilogue. They’re just drifting. I also always knew “2055” was going to open the album, because I wanted that pounding opening to feel like a wake-up moment. Like snapping awake. I’m not wording this right, but I just knew certain things instinctively. Some of the middle stuff shifted around, but those bookends were always set.
★★★★★★★
“Death in Spring”
DM: It’s instrumental because I felt it didn’t need lyrics. I had a phone call with a person. The call lasted about half an hour. They told me something really heavy. After I hung up, I lay down on the floor and stared at the ceiling for a while. Then I went to the piano and wrote that piece in about ten minutes. So unusual. I’ve never written anything like that before. My left hand was just playing simple triads, and my right hand was carving out the melody. It almost feels classical, which is funny, because I know nothing about classical music. I don’t know where it came from. Highly improbable that it came out, but it just did.
MW: I love instrumentals and interludes. I think every album should have one. It’s like my cat – she doesn’t talk, but she says a lot.
DM: That’s actually a really good metaphor. That’s pretty deep.
★★★★★★★
“Station IX”
MW: This is the big one.
DM: Yeah, it gets a good response live.
MW: It gets stuck in my head.
DM: Does it? That’s very kind of you to say. When I started writing the album, the idea was this theme of an extremely isolated person who removes themselves from society. Who took a trip to a space station, the most isolating place imaginable. That’s pretty much as far away from humanity as you can get. But even there, you’re no farther away from your own mind, which is really the source of all your problems. You can remove yourself from society, but your thoughts are still haunting you, and now there’s nobody around to help you with them. So the attempt at isolation ends up being completely futile.
MW: That’s why you live in Queens.
DM: Maybe. Even though Queens is densely populated, I still like feeling removed. That’s how I grew up, dead-end street, woods, quiet.
MW: Would you go to space if you could?
DM: I think so. But at different moments in my life, the answer would’ve been different. If you asked me five years ago, I would’ve said absolutely, and that I wouldn’t come back. Now I’m in a much happier place, with better circumstances, so I’d probably say, yeah, send me up in one of those Jeff Bezos things, I’ll come back down.
★★★★★★★
“Hotel Earth”
MW: I love the concept.
DM: Your stay is temporary. I like to believe there’s somewhere else you go, but nobody really knows.
MW: You mentioned that one-to-three chord change again.
DM: Yeah. I play it with a capo, but it’s basically C to E. It’s a really tense change. Lyrically, this song is about acceptance, but not a happy acceptance. It’s more morbid. I’m realizing this now, but the album might actually be the stages of grief. I don’t know how many stages there are, five? Four? Nine songs, nine stages? I don’t know. I’m not a psychologist. I’d have to call my drummer. … One of the lyrics in this song is: This Hotel Earth just wasn’t made for one as I. That line sums up the whole album for me. That’s going back to what I was saying earlier, I’ve always felt like an outsider. No matter how kind and welcoming people can be, fitting in feels hard. Especially when you’re me. This track is me saying, I give up. I’m going to leave now.
★★★★★★★
MW: You mentioned Elliot Smith and The Las as inspirations.
DM: Elliot Smith, especially. I love him because he was no bullshit. He was one of the most authentic songwriters ever. Authenticity is the most important thing to me. I don’t want to be fake.
MW: Do you have a good fake radar?
DM: I don’t think I have a good anything radar. Sometimes I’ll have a conversation with someone, and all I hear are the literal words they’re saying. I don’t catch subtext. Then I walk away thinking, That was weird. Did I miss something? I think I miss something in almost every conversation I have. I don’t know why that is. I’m very literal sometimes, which can be problematic.
★★★★★★★
“Blue”
DM: In Hotel Earth, the narrator leaves his station in space and plummets towards Earth. He’s remarking about how he never noticed how blue the ocean was until he was already hurtling toward it. And it’s too late at that point. So perhaps the metaphor is not seeing the beauty in things until it’s far too late and you’re crashing into the ocean. … There’s a bit of hubris in it as well. One of the lyrics is, You said it couldn’t be done, but look at me now. It’s like, what are you bragging about? You just killed yourself. I wrote this, and I don’t even understand my narrator. … Maybe the person who wrote those things is so far removed from who I am now. That’s why I’m writing very different stuff now. Have you heard of the Ship of Theseus? It’s this Greek philosophical question, this idea of a ship. If you replace each wooden board of a ship one by one over time, is it still the same ship when all the boards have been replaced? Or is it a different ship? I think that happens to all of us. You look back at yourself at 15 and think about something stupid you did and how you’d never do that now. Was that even you? Are you the same person? I wrote this album seven years ago. The most recent track was written four or five years ago. I don’t really feel many of those things anymore. Some of them, yes. Or I’m reminded of them when I play or listen to the songs.
MW: I was going to ask you that. It’s crazy that it’s been seven years. Even 2019 feels like the other day. You’ve listened to this album so much. Every note is etched in your brain. Can you remember the first time you listened to it from front to back? And if you listened to it today, what’s the difference in how you feel?
DM: I didn’t listen to it front to back until it was done. We recorded once a month for about two years. I’d get one song back at a time – we need to fix this, or we need to re-record this. When it was finally complete, and I listened front to back, I knew we didn’t need to go back to the studio. That was when I felt satisfied enough to put it out. But listening piece by piece during the process was excruciating. I wanted the songs to sound like they did in my head, and we had very limited recording experience. I didn’t go to school for this. I’d never recorded professionally. We were figuring it out ourselves. No producer. All real instruments. The first full listen when it was done was incredibly relieving. A huge weight off my shoulders. It probably aged me more than I know. Now, I listen to it when I need a pick-me-up. If I play a bad gig and feel like quitting music forever, I’ll put it on and remind myself, You made this cool thing. You can do another cool thing. Sometimes it almost feels like someone else’s album. It doesn’t feel like I was there and did those things. Maybe I wrote it wanting to be someone else, like Elliott Smith or John Lennon. I wanted to make something I’d enjoy listening to.
MW: That makes sense. I love your point about the ship. I feel like our bodies are the ship. Of course, we change. My brother used to tell me every summer I came home from college that I was a different person. I love that idea. I don’t want to be one ship my whole life. I want to change. I want to live many different lives. But didn’t you say in Emma’s interview that you don’t like change?
DM: I don’t. I’m a very conflicting person. If I could move to a house in the woods and live the same day over and over, I think I’d like that. That feels antithetical to most creatives. Most artists live for change. Sometimes that makes me feel like an imposter. I’m not the person who should be making art. I’m not like the other artists I meet. That troubles me to some degree because it reinforces this idea that I don’t belong. Can I be an artist and want a monotonous life? I feel like I’ve carefully replaced certain boards of my ship. Now I’m technically a new ship, but I like this version. I don’t want to replace more boards. I almost want to dock the ship and protect it from more wear and tear.
MW: Maybe, in turn, that’s what makes you an artist.
DM: I don’t know. I don’t feel like one.
MW: Artists come in all shapes and sizes. I didn’t think I was one until someone told me I was. Bowie’s daughter, Lexi Jones, was the first person to ever look me in the eye and call me an artist. I leaned into it after that.
★★★★★★★
“Floating in the Sea”
DM: It’s what the character wants more than anything, but it’s unattainable. It’s not a viable reality. It echoes some of my own longings – You could be free, and I could build a fire, and fix the broken sink. Just simple living in a small house with someone you love. Doing things for someone else that they want or need, even when you feel unable to do so. Caring for someone well. So many people can’t care for others. I’ve felt in many times in my life that I couldn’t care when I should have. One of my favorite lyrics on the album is in this song: Days they go oh so slow, but every little while, when I see you smile, it spins the Earth. That image – of the right person, at the right time, smiling at you – can feel earth-shattering. For me, that feeling was the reason for the album. It got me out of bed every day to create and tell this silly little story.
MW: I love that. I feel like love is weird right now culturally, like people are embarrassed by it. Thanks to that Vogue article. But love is the reason to be.
DM: The Beatles said it 50 years ago. All you need is love.
MW: They weren’t wrong.
DM: I never understood dating around or flings. I’ve always been looking for my wife. I was lucky enough to find her at a show. It was the craziest of circumstances how everything lined up. I knew two hours after meeting her that I’d marry her. I went home after our first date and wrote about it: I’m marrying her. That was four years ago.
MW: Oh my god. When are y’all getting married?
DM: I proposed two years ago. We still don’t have a wedding date. We’re terrible planners. She’s finishing her doctorate. We’re not in a rush. People shouldn’t be scared to look for love. It doesn’t even have to be romantic.
★★★★★★★
MW: Do you have a favorite memory of making the album?
DM: It had always been a dream of mine to have real strings on a record. I hired a cellist and violinist. I wrote out sheet music and tried to conduct them. I had no idea what I was doing. I’m a horrible conductor, waving my arms around, but that moment was special.
MW: What about a breakthrough moment?
DM: A breakthrough moment was re-recording the first song we ever tracked, “Station IX.” Over two years, it evolved live, and the original recording didn’t capture that energy. We added this cut at the end of the chorus, where the band drops out and comes back in. We would play it live, but it wasn’t there when we first recorded it. It gives a nice cut to the energy. That made all the difference.
MW: Did you always know it would be a concept album?
DM: Yeah. I grew up on concept albums. Electric Light Orchestra’s Eldorado. Jeff Lynne is one of my favorite songwriters ever. The violins in “2055” are a straight inspiration from Eldorado. Dark Side of the Moon was gigantic for me in college. I don’t know if it’s considered a concept album, but for me it is, Midlake’s The Trials of Van Occupanther. I always thought concept albums were cooler than non-concept albums. A non-concept album can feel like a random string of songs. A concept is a story. Has more purpose and meaning. Music should have meaning. There’s nothing worse than random music. I’m not about it.
MW: Right there with you.
★★★★★★★
MW: You have a new song coming, “Drown.” And tell me about the other new music you’re working on.
DM: Our new songs are not as miserable. They’re actually a lot more catchy and get the crowd going a lot more. We get a great reception playing Hotel Earth live, but it’s not a mosh or dance kind of album. There’s something about getting people to jump up and move that’s a lot more exciting. That’s influenced my writing style a little bit. Seeing bands like Cab Ellis and Telescreens, and everyone’s going crazy. “Drown” is an attempt at that. We have a batch of nine or ten songs we’ve written in the past year. We’re going to record the rest very soon. I’m excited to put them out. “Emerald Eyes,” “Drown,” “Bright,” “Alarms.” It’s the upbeat era.
MW: Kind of ironic the song is called “Drown.”
DM: “Drown” sounds sad, but it’s not about me. I’m in a genuinely happy place now. I don’t feel the need to write woe is me songs anymore. I met my wife, job’s going good, music’s going good. I’m chilling.
MW: I’m happy for you.
★★★★★★★
MW: What are the plans for this year? Another album? And you’ll make it faster this time?
DM: Hopefully faster. We self-financed the last one entirely. We funded it by playing cover gigs. Every month, we’d play a three-hour bar set, make about $1,000, and that would pay for a studio day. Original shows? You make nothing. I think the least we made was $17. Covers are taboo, especially in New York, but that’s how we paid for the album. We grinded and learned 50 songs. This one should be easier. We have better recording options now. But I don’t think we have it in us to grind like that again, getting home at 5 a.m. That killed us in some ways.
MW: Any goals outside new music?
DM: I’ve always wanted a record deal. That feels anti-indie to say. But I don’t think we can take this to the next level alone. We need help. Someone to guide us. I suck at social media. I have a flip phone. I wear the same clothes five days a week. I don’t know how to network. I feel like I’m just a lost puppy on stage playing songs. I don’t know how to build a career from it. And sometimes I feel like I’m getting too old for this.
MW: Give yourself more credit.
DM: I don’t like bragging. It’s hard for me to talk about myself. I hope you have something usable from this interview. I want to play bigger shows. I feel like if we were in front of a big crowd, we could put on a great show. I just don’t know how to get there. Maybe we diluted our audience by playing too often. Maybe we took bad time slots. We haven’t always made the best decisions. We’ve played incredible gigs, like the one you just saw, and we’ve played terrible ones. Sometimes I invite someone, and there are seven people in the crowd. That’s not a great impression. It looks like we have no draw. I think our biggest issue is that we don’t have friends in other bands. Other bands pack rooms because each member brings 50 friends. We have like five friends, and it’s each other.
MW: Everyone starting something new goes through that. You have to play bad gigs. I used to be deeply unconfident. I got tired of it. I started leaning into a persona. It’s not fake, but just a stronger version of myself. I’m protecting parts of me. And always manifesting who I want to become.
DM: That’s why I’ve never been a cool kid. I can’t do the persona thing.
MW: It’s not fake. Its growth and protection.
DM: It’s strange how differently we see ourselves versus how others see us.
MW: If people keep complimenting you on the same things, maybe they’re right. Maybe we should believe them.
DM: If I know I sang badly, and someone compliments me, I can’t accept it. Maybe they didn’t notice. Maybe they don’t care. Maybe they meant it. That’s always the last possibility in my mind.
MW: You’re in a new era. Try something new.
DM: That might go against my philosophy.
★★★★★★★