Last chapter of our interview with Danny Vaughn of Tyketto. This time we were talking about more personal questions
Travel with us into Danny´s memories, influences and other personal details of a great guy like Danny Vaughn. (Versión en español de la entrevista)
RnB: The first time we had the opportunity to see you live in Madrid, you played alone, an acoustic concert, in a small club, already missing, called Ritmo y Compás. Do you remember?
Danny: Yes. that’s where I first met Jorge Salan. He’s one of my one of my dear friends
RnB: It was one of the most intense concerts we have attended , and the connection with the audience was incredible.
Danny: Thank you that really makes me happy
RnB: Where do you get so much strength?
Danny: you know it’s a funny thing I don’t know if you guys do you guys know Dan Reed from Dan Reed Network. Well Dan Reed and I are good friends and for two years we have done a tour together called snake oil and harmony and it’s just he and I acoustically. Instead of one opening for the we played most of the night together and we played each other songs.
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One night we were talking about what you just asked. I said how do you know for him for instance my for me is forever young For him his song called “Rainbow Child” is like “Forever Young” for me. I said him:
– “you’ve played it for 30 years, how do you play it with passion”
And he said:
– “I tried to pretend that it’s the first time I’ve ever played this song”
and I smiled and I said:
– “well that’s interesting because when I do it I tried to pretend this is the last time I will ever sing this song. I want to make sure you saw -Forever Young- and if this is your last day of the earth you would say: –he really really sang it that night and it was the last night-” .
There is a mindset to it and I think also very simply. I think you really have to like what you’re doing because it’s not the hardest job in the world, don’t let anybody tell you it is, it’s not, we play music to avoid doing the hard jobs and you know I’ve had some of those hard jobs and I don’t want to go back to them.
By the way snake oil and harmony me and Dan Reed we’re going to be coming to Madrid in March so keep an eye out for that those dates will be soon but there’s a lovely little rock bar called “7 Rock Bar” and I played an acoustic show there last year so we’re gonna be there again it’s not in central Madrid it’s a bit outside.
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But anyway I just find the strength in the audience, in people. I look at people’s faces and they want to be moved. You can’t move people if all you’re thinking about is oh I only got three hours sleep and the bus was late and there was so much traffic …
Whatsoever and ten minutes before a show sometimes I can be thinking I just wish this night was over I just I’m so tired but as soon as I step up to what it is that I do and again I see faces who are so ready, everything changes it’s like thirty years just gets taken away from you and suddenly you’re in your 20s again and you feel strong.
RnB: Who are your favorite vocalists or those who have inspired you the most?
Danny: Wow there are so many so many the ones that jump into my mind. The fastest would be Stevie Wonder, the latter Steve’s Stevie Wonder, Steven Tyler, Steve Perry (hahaha). Certainly Mick Jagger, there are a lot of vocalists that inspire me but that I don’t sound anything like. For instance Joe Cocker. All my life I listen to Joe Cocker I just I love him but I don’t sound anything like that. I always felt like I’ve seen you I saw him live two or three times and it’s the same you know he was older he was heavier but he just bang he came out and the voice was there, attitude was there, his love of music was very big.
RnB: What about other musicians? Who do you have as a reference? What are your influences?
Danny: It´s a lot of the same a lot of the classic rock bands I mean but every now and then somebody comes along that makes me think twice I really liked rival sons and the temperance movement I think are brilliant bands and so those are band newer bands that if they’ve got something coming out but I also I listen to different things a lot of different music as I said why one of my favorite guitarists is a guy named Tommy Emmanuel who isn’t mostly an acoustic guitarist but often fingerstyle you know but better and crazier than anyone you’ve ever seen.
RnB: What´s the first thing you tackle when writing a song? Guitar riffs, melody, lyrics?
Danny: usually the best songs start with the melody and the lyrics together for me. For instance this is a story I’ve told many times but on Strength in Numbers the song called “the end of the summer days” was written of course back before the days when every phone had a recording device on it and all that. I was driving somewhere in southern New Jersey which is by the beach and for two months out of every year it is very busy because everybody from New York goes to the beach in New and then for the next eight to nine months there´s nothing. Nobody lives there and I was driving through it when that had happened that it all of a sudden become this ghost town.
I don’t know why, but all of a sudden that just all the words so I had the lyrics and then generally when I have the words I already know how I would sing them. So I’m going to a store where I’m going to buy something and I’ve got the whole chorus just popped into my head and I have no way of recording. So I spent the next hour just repeating that chorus over and over and over in my head. I was in the store walking around and people are looking at me. That’s my favorite way that songs happen. I think if you get a very strong lyrical idea how you sing it seems very obvious to me.
In the Reach album “the run” was like that alright. The song was written about my uncle who had just died. When I wrote it he had just died a few weeks before and I knew very much what I wanted to say about. It was only later that somebody pointed out to me “you know there’s no chorus on this song” wow I didn’t even think of that.
RnB: You’re involved in many projects, tribute to Eagles, with Seoane. Have you any new personal project in mind?
Danny: Well, this thing with Dan Reed is snake oil and harmony again we’re gonna do a UK European tour February March. People have really been pushing us to write music together but he’s the busiest person I know so if we can manage to find about a month together we’re going to get together in this and start writing some songs and see what happens because we have a really special friendship and I think it could result in some good songs this.
I also got involved in doing Queen songs in Spain too that was something new. This company moon-world that does the Astoria that rock which is in Madrid Oh a lot but they also do the symphonic Rhapsody of Queen and the summer I did three shows with them and it was a lot of fun so hopefully they’ll call me back at some point and we’ll do a little more of that next year.
Jorge Salan and I are always talking we need to do an album together. So we’re gonna try and figure out a way at some point what was the personally life concert you attended.
RnB: What was the first live concert you attended to, as an audience?
Danny: the first live concert for me was Stevie Wonder at Madison Square Garden. All it was incredible. It was the year that superstition was the big hit single.
RnB: What was the first record you bought?
Danny: first one I ever bought was by the temptations that’s called psychedelic Shack. I grew up in New York City in the Upper West Side and it was an area that was very very mixed back then I didn’t know nothing about race color or whatever where they were just my friends and of course all my black friends were listening to Motown and that album was really big.
RnB: Who first turned you onto loving rock and roll?
Danny: In my house my family listened to a lot of music but it was more folk music Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Joe Cocker got mixed in there. I’m trying to think … It would be somebody at school and I can think of the album was a Doobie Brothers album called the “Captain and me” and was the first time I think I ever really heard cool electric guitars and they mixed them in with the acoustic guitar. So it was a big influence on me later. Back in those days no internet, things like that, the only way you learned about new music was when you got together with your friends and everybody had one or two of the newest albums
RnB: This is all. we want to insist on our admiration for a person with your charisma and strength on stage. Thank you very much.
Interview by Ape Navarro and Oscar Ricoy
You can read part I and Part II of this interview here:
