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Origins from a distant star
Muirsical Conversation with Dan Reed

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Since the reunion of the Dan Reed Network in 2013 it’s been the best of the old, new and solo worlds for Dan Reed.

Through releases such as the excellent reunion album Fight Another Day (2016) the Dan Reed Network (Dan Reed - vocals; Brion James - guitars, vocals; Melvin Brannon II - bass, vocals; Dan Pred - drums, percussion; Rob Daiker - keyboards, vocals) have re-established their place in melodic and funk rock while delivering a whole dose of feel-good positivity and fun, live.

Latest album Origins reconnects the late 80s and early 90s Dan Reed Network with the 21st century DRN by revisiting four classic DRN tunes that dovetail perfectly with the four new numbers on Origins.

By contrast, Dan Reed the solo artist is also Dan Reed the personal and intimate recording artist, emphasised by his understated but beautifully crafted fourth solo album Confessions, which was released earlier in 2018.
There’s also a companion DVD, Confessions Tour : Live in the UK.

On the eve of the Dan Reed Network Origins UK Tour the gregarious and ever-conversational singer sat down with FabricationsHQ to discuss Origins track by track, the positivity that frames everything DRN do, the personal and electro-intimate nature of his Confessions solo album and a fair few points in between, including the political, the extra-terrestrial and the possibility of origins from a 'distant star.'

But the conversation started far closer to home and just what prompted the old and new songs dovetailing of Origins and the inclusion of DRN fan-choirs… 


Ross Muir: With no pun intended I’d like to go back to the origins of Origins.
The album is a four new songs, four old songs re-recorded collection laid down at four different studios; it also features a number of DRN fans in the studio with you, supplying backing and chorus vocals.
What sowed the seeds of just such a concept?

Dan Reed: It started off with our manager, Dario Nikzad, saying something about perhaps recording a song live in a studio with an audience, and releasing it as a single.
I thought the idea was interesting as I remembered seeing the band Snarky Puppy on YouTube doing that sort of thing but with headphones, like the silent disco. They weren’t doing a record though, they were doing a concert in the studio.
I thought "well, maybe we could do that sort of thing" but I was also thinking it could be a failure because a hundred to a hundred and fifty people watching us record a song might be, for them, like watching paint dry! 
But, actually, it turned out to be just a magical experience.

My idea was to make it a whole day of it – we would cater it and do a little after-show unplugged concert to make it fun for all those people, having just gone through a whole recording process.
I decided we should also record an old song; I really thought that would be fun for our audience as opposed to just hearing something brand new because that might be little boring for them.
But, as it turned out, the whole thing worked out perfectly – so much so that we thought "why don’t we make a record doing this but move it around"
– so we went to our home town in Portland, the legendary Power Station in New York and studios in Manchester and Stockholm.
It all just blossomed from an idea we didn’t think was possible!

RM: And it all started with Origins opening number and lead-off single Fade To Light, a song that melodically defines DRN in the twenty-first century...

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RM: Fade To Light has that big melodic sound and DRN feel of previous album Fight Another Day but the masterstroke was having the fan-audience sing on the optimistic and uplifting chorus; a choral cry in defiance of a darker, uncertain world…

DR: Yeah, absolutely. I was watching the Supreme Court nominee ruling in America last month, and all the other stuff that’s taking place, and seeing life-long friends falling out over what’s going on.
I’m sure that sort of stuff is going on with you and Brexit too…

RM: Brexit is an incredibly polarising subject and situation; it’s also, in its own way, a rallying cry to Fade to Light when we could, given all the other political and globally impacting decisions being made, be fading to a darker future.
But then that’s the power of music; it can bring people together and form bands of camaraderie in the darkest of times – a song such as Fade To Light seem to be the Modus Operandi of the Dan Reed Network…

DR: Thank you; I really appreciate you saying that. I always try to be optimistic, even in among all this craziness – on our earlier albums too, when we had the Iraq war going on.
I’m opposed to any kind of pre-emptive stuff but I see, even more so now, nationalism raising its head.
And I get it; I understand the right wing and I understand where they are coming from – I just happen to disagree with it.
I think that the more we become a global community
 – one country, rather than building even more walls – the better for humanity.

RM: A world without borders or without flags. I don't think you or I will ever see that, though.

DR: I don’t know that will ever happen in our lifetime either but I’m of the opinion that any planet that has intelligent life on it survives, or has survived, by figuring out their problems together as opposed to fighting to the bitter end.

Unfortunately a lot of the right wing, especially in America, is very much aligned with the Old and New Testaments and similar books that profess there is going to be an end of times; only then will this Christ like figure come back.
So they don’t have an awful lot invested in humanity surviving [laughs]; it behoves them to create a kind of chaos and conflict in the world because that’s the time when their saviour comes back.

I just happen to disagree with that wholeheartedly.

​
RM: In contrast to the big sound and melodic weight of Fade To Light, Right In Front Of Me is, at its core, a simple pop song that’s been fully Networked.
It’s a nice bright song with equally bright guitar remarks from Brion James and a lyric about never taking what we have for granted…

DR: Very much so. It’s the grass is always greener or Home Blindness, as a lot of people sometimes become.
They miss the beauty of where they live because they grew up there; not only the beauty of nature but the beauty of family and friends.
We’re always searching for answers somewhere else when they are sometimes staring us right in the face! Right In Front Of Me is really about that.

RM: Another side of DRN is showcased on the atmospheric power ballad Shameless.
That song is a relationship number but not necessarily as would be more commonly perceived – it could be about the one-on-one romantic relationship but also the plutonic, or a soul-mate bond…

DR: Absolutely. Throughout my life journey I’ve been friends with a lot of different people – I’ve had friends who have been in the mob, for example; I’ve known people who have done some dark things in their lives.
I think we all have the capability to be very dark or very evil – we could all be Hitler but we could also be Ghandi, depending on the path we choose.
Malcolm X started off as a pimp and a drug dealer and ended up being a revolutionary; he hated whites for a long time but the moment he stopped hating whites and wanted to embrace us all living side by side?
That was the moment he was killed by his own people.
​
The same sort of thing with Ghandi; he was shot by a Hindu, a man of his own religion, because he gave too much power to Muslims, they thought.
So Shameless is about the relationships we have that other people don’t think we should – but we should never be ashamed of those relationships.

RM: Lyrically there is a clear theme on Origins – one of bonds, friendships, positivity and optimism.
That’s reflected on the fourth and final new song on the album One Last Time.
Musically though, that’s more your traditional DRN with a dirty big funk rock groove.

DR: And that’s why it was always going to be the next single, because we get a lot of messages from people saying that they miss the old DRN groove and the funk – they like where we are headed lyrically and like the songs melodically, but they really miss the funk!
That song is specifically tailored for our fans and friends who have been with us since the very beginning...

RM: One Last Time is a great song but then all four new numbers on Origins stand strong, while having that lyrical thread or theme of friendship and relationships, or family and camaraderie.
There's a distinct sense of Oneness on Origins…

DR: I’ve always tended to do that, even with my solo material and pointing the music in that direction.
Now, whether I can personally live up to it or not, I think it’s still best that, with a piece of art, we strive for our higher self – whether that be painting, or dancing or literature – while also touching on your darker side and digging around in there, trying to make peace with the demons inside.

We knew we wanted to call the album Origins and we knew we were going to revisit material that introduced our music to the world so I thought it was important we stay on the thread, thematically, that we have had since the early days
 – even although that was stuff the labels’ thought was too idealistic to believe in back in the day! [laughs].
So rather than sing about it in a really hopeful way we now sing about it in a far more realistic way, now that I’m in my fifties!

RM: As regards that revisited material you’ve re-recorded four songs that dovetail perfectly with the four new numbers on Origins
 – Ritual has been given a modern sonic punch but that song, then or now, is DRN underlined and given an exclamation mark.

DR: [laughs] Thank you. Ritual, even back in the day, was a very simplistic version of what I’ve been talking about this whole time – I want all the same things you want, I need all the same things you need.
I think Sting said it best though when he sang "I hope the Russians love their children too."
It’s really saying we’re all stuck on this planet together and unless we become addicted to each other surviving, we’re in big trouble.

RM: You also re-recorded Forgot To Make Her Mine fairly faithfully; it’s got that dirty funk vibe of the original but I detect a little more space this time around; more room for the song to breathe...

DR: That’s really cool that you should say that because we slowed the song down quite a bit from the original and that just gave it so much more air; instead of it sounding a little rushed it sounds more laid back, more funky. It’s even a little heavier because of that change.
When we decided we were going to do four songs from our past, we also made sure to include the song we enjoy playing live the most – and that was definitely Forgot To Make Her Mine!

RM: You’ve also managed to recapture that huge drum sound you had on the debut album and never really caught again..

DR: Our keyboardist Rob Daiker did an amazing job on that as did the sound engineer over at the Power Station in New York
 – Right In Front Of Me and Forgot To Make Her Mine, out of all the songs on Origins, have a big drum sound because they were recorded at Power Station.
That’s the same sort of drum sound we got back in the late eighties when we recorded at Little Mountain Sound Studio in Vancouver, where Bon Jovi recorded a few of their albums. We recaptured that sound by recording at a great studio like Power Station.

RM: The most interesting revisit is Let It Go; you haven’t so much re-recorded that song as completely
re-imagined it. This new version of Let It Go has an uplifting, soul-pop vibe to it; a lovely re-interpretation.

DR: We had thrown around the idea of doing Let It Go because I get a lot of requests to include it in my solo shows and at some Network shows; I know it’s a big favourite with some people even though it was never made in to a single or a video.
We had thrown about the idea of maybe doing it on one of our tours and Brion James took it upon himself to do a demo of the song in that fashion – in fact that’s exactly the same groove, tempo and arrangement that Brion sent me as a demo; I was blown away by it.
I said to Brion "You’ve turned this somewhat macabre, quite sad song in to a Marvin Gaye soul song. I don’t how you did it but I love it; let’s record it and put it on the new record."
That’s all Brion James, that interpretation.

RB: That’s really interesting because I was about to follow up by saying a highlight of Origins is Brion’s relatively short but beautifully melodic solo on Let It Go; there’s an almost a country-rock feel to it.

DR: And what’s interesting about that is there was no solo on the demo Brion sent me!
I played a solo and sent it over to Brion but the melody of that solo I sent him came from me being a really terrible guitar player! [laughs]; Brion turned it into this really beautiful orchestration of the melody I sent him.
In fact a lot of the new songs on Origins, and some of the songs on our previous album, Fight Another Day, especially the singles, like Champion, which is my favourite song from that album, are co-writes that Brion and I did.
Fade To Light was a co-write that came from something Brion sent me; Shameless started off from something Brion sent me with no vocals and no real melody or arrangement, we just started going back and forth with it. So that’s working out well for us but we want to do that a lot more with Melvin and Rob on the next album, which we’re going to release in 2020.
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         The Dan Reed Network (pictured left to right : Brion James, Dan Reed, Melvin Brannon II) have long
         since dropped the first k from funk rock band to become, in the live environment, a fun rock band.​


RM: The final revisit on the album is Rainbow Child. Frankly Dan, having decided to put four older songs on the album, if one of them hadn’t been Rainbow Child I’d have launched a Public Enquiry [laughter].

DR: That was one, especially in places like Sweden, where we re-recorded it, that did very well for us as single. We decided that if we were going to record in Stockholm we had to do Rainbow Child.
We could have done a song like Get To You but we just felt that Rainbow Child was the right song to have a sing-a-long on, to have a choir of fans on. That song is just perfect for that.

RM: Indeed it is and, of course, it’s just so ridiculously infectious as well as being quite trippy – which, given that you have since confirmed you wrote it in a car park after a Grateful Dead concert makes perfect sense.
In fact where else could you have written a song like Rainbow Child?


DR: [laughs] And that song came out of me, start to finish – at least lyrically and melodically – in around in ten minutes! It’s the same sort of thing as something I read about Michael Hutchence and Andrew Farriss of INXS when they working on their record, Kick.
They had finished the album but the producer wanted more songs; Andrew Farriss suddenly came up with the riff and put something on tape; he sent it to Michael Hutchence who wrote the lyrics in about ten minutes. That was I Need You Tonight, their biggest single ever!

RM: There are a lot of similar stories about some of the best known and most successful ever songs.
The one that always comes to my mind is Annie’s Song by John Denver
– he wrote that in about ten minutes, in a ski lift in Aspen, while thinking about his wife.

DR: That’s amazing. I’ve heard the same sort of thing with Stevie Wonder and Superstition 
– I think he wrote that for Jeff Beck, who was working with Stevie; he wrote it in about ten minutes.
It was written for Jeff Beck, but Stevie recorded it for his own album first and it was a number one hit!  

RM: All great stories. Which leads to an obvious follow-on question – songs written in car parks after a Grateful Dead concert aside [laughter] is that something you find happens to you – a lyric or a melody can just come to you, or do you have to work hard at?

DR: It’s both. Sometimes the ones you really work hard at pay off really well though.
I remember a story about Leonard Cohen, when he was talking about Hallelujah
– he spent a couple of years writing that song but that really paid off because it’s probably one of the most well-known songs in the universe [laughs].
He said he really laboured over the lyrics; he would work on them for a week then leave them alone for a couple of months, then work on them again for another week; it went back and forth like that.

I respect that process but unfortunately, I don’t have a lot of time to do stuff like that because I like to put a new solo album out at least every two years and now we’re back with the Network I’d like to be putting a band album out every two years.
I’m also working on a Snake Oil and Harmony record with Danny Vaughn too, so I just don’t have two years to write a song – I wish I did though! [laughs]

RM: And that’s not including the shows and tours you do, the latest of which is about to hit the UK.
The DRN Origins tour includes special guests Mason Hill and Hollowstar, two of many up and coming rock bands in what has been labelled the New Wave Of British Classic Rock – their spots on this tour work as both a showcase for them, and that very movement.

DR: And that’s exactly the point. We had bands give us a shot back in the day when we weren’t well known.
We got a leg up from UB40, Eddie Money, Run DMC, Bon Jovi and the Stones; all great bands who allowed us to support them.
I think also, now, it’s kinda fun to cross pollinate the generations – I think DRN music has an appeal to the younger audience, certainly as far as the groove and the live shows, and at the same time I think that a lot of our audience is made up of hard-core rock fans who really appreciate hearing new music that can blow them away – I know that Mason Hill and Hollowstar can do just that.

RM: The other thing guaranteed at a DRN show is a wonderful feel-good factor and a whole lot of fun.
I know I’ve mentioned this to you before but you really have dropped the k out of funk band to become, live, a fun band; a great hour or hour-and-a-half of feelgood music, celebration and fun in the company of DRN.
That's something we need now more than ever…

DR: I really appreciate you saying that Ross because we talk a lot about that within the band – do we want to put on a polished, professional-type show or do we want to put on something that allows people to celebrate life and let go of their own tensions, or the tensions of the news? We’ve opted for the latter [laughs].

RM: Having discussed Origins and the fun of a DRN concert I’d like to talk a little about what tend to be far more intimate surroundings
– your solo work and specifically the latest solo album, Confessions.
As the title suggest, that’s a soul-baring and musically stripped back album; it’s also a Dan Reed solo album in every way…

DR: On Confessions I did everything; on the other albums I’d have other musicians play drums, bass, guitars, some other parts, but this record was so deeply personal to me, lyrically, that I did all the demos in my studio in Prague.
I also realised as I was recording that I wanted to keep about seventy-five percent of the music I was doing, which made me think "do I now want to invest the time, money and energy into recreating this with a band in the studio or do I want to just keep going with it and add to what I’m recording?"
So, yes, for better or for worse, it is a true solo record
– I did have a couple of guest guitarists on two of the songs, just for some solo work, but other than that I played, and sang, everything.

That’s also the reason Confessions is more electronic; I get the most vision of us being from another world, as human beings, when I hear electronic music.
When I hear Future Sounds of London, one of my favourite electronic bands, I get blown away by it.
Maybe we evolved from apes but there’s part of us that is not from this world; I get that when I hear really good electronic music. Confessions was based on that, thematically. 

RM: I was going to ask why you went with a more electro-percussive texture on Confessions but I’ve just got that answer in an extra-terrestrially shaped form I did not see coming.

DR: [laughs] When I think of the human race evolving, strictly from ape DNA I see us playing drums, and guitars and banging things, stuff like that.
But when I think about the theory that there was some kind of intervention, whether you think that’s some kind of ambient deity, a God figure, or whether it was some other being that came from another planet and came down to earth to do some genetic engineering, I think about digital information, faster-than-light and electronic music. So that’s where I’m coming from on that subject! [laughs]

RM: Well, whether it be extra-terrestrial or electro-terrestrial the fact remains Confessions never came close to getting the attention or wider recognition it deserved – although the DVD you did from the run of intimate Confessions shows in the UK helped spread the word a little, as well as showcase the shape and sound of the album…

DR: I appreciate you saying that, thank you. It’s a different kind of record in the sense that the rock crowd that usually buy my stuff and support my career are not usually into electronic music, so I get that a lot of people were disappointed that I didn’t have a live drummer, especially the ones that are really anti-drum machine [laughs].
I kinda shot myself in the foot there as regards getting any reviews in the rock magazines and what-have-you but, I hope that, in time, it will get recognised.
And yeah, we did film some of the Confessions shows for a DVD – in fact I actually learned the Confessions songs acoustically so I could perform them live.
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RM: I'd like to play out with a song from Confessions and would like you to choose it, whether that be from the album or as performed live…

DR: My favourite song on Confessions is Distant Star; It’s also on the Confessions Tour DVD.
I don’t actually play any acoustic guitar on that track on Confessions but when I decided I was going to play it live I realised I would have to learn how to play it on guitar – and have to say I like it on acoustic guitar a little better!
That’s probably because when I first started to learn the track acoustically I had to start really thinking about the vocal and the finger-picking 
– how to sing a song rhythmically, and how to play a song rhythmically, at the same time, is always mathematically challenging for any artist; but you just have to sit down and do the math and work it out.
I hate to use the word proud but that song is the one I’m most proud of being able to sing and play at the same time! [laughs]

RM: Well having set it up that way and with your fondness for playing it live there really is only one version of Distant Star we can play out on.
Dan, thanks for dropping by at FabricationsHQ once again and talking about your Origins and your Confessions; always a pleasure and always enlightening.

DR: Thank you brother, and thanks for all your support; it’s really appreciated!
Ross Muir
Muirsical Conversation with Dan Reed
November 2018

​Photo Credits: Confessions promotional shot (top image); Adrian Hextall (band image) 
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