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WEHM All Access - Sag Harbor American Music Festival - Kevin Daniel & Bottom Line · WEHM All Access

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_01: It's EHM All Access, the Stand Harbor American Music Festival, getting ready for a whole bunch of free music all throughout the village.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_01: It kicks off Thursday, September 24th through Sunday, September 27th.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_01: And joining me is one of the performers as we get to know a lot of different performers at this festival at 12 30 p.m., Kevin Daniel and bottom line performing at the Marine Park State Saturday, September 26th.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_01: Welcome, Kevin.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_01: How are you?
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_00: I'm doing good, man.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you so much for having me.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_00: I appreciate it.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_01: My pleasure.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks for doing this.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, where are you uh where are you based now?
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_01: You're done in Nashville or yeah, I'm in Nashville.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_00: Yep.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_00: No, we're but I used to live in uh New York City for a long time.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_01: So well, I was curious how you got hooked up with the uh the St.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_01: Harbor Music Festival.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I just have a bunch of friends that live there.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I've gone there a lot.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_00: They've told me to apply over the years.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_00: I hadn't, and then I guess it took me leaving New York to finally apply and get accepted.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, I just you know, I lived in the city for 12 years.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_00: I'm a big surfer.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_00: I've surfed all over the Hamptons.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_00: Um, it was just kind of people telling me to do it, and I was like, all right, let's give it a shot.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_01: This will be fun.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_01: Uh coming this year to the festival.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_01: I appreciate you uh visiting Stag Harbor.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_01: And uh let's go back though a little bit.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_01: And I guess first off, where are you originally from?
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I'm originally from a very small town in eastern North Carolina called Tarborough.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_00: Um grew up there, kind of bopped around North Carolina for a little bit, eventually made my way up to DC and then New York and COVID, tough breakup, ended up in Nashville about five years ago.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_01: Now going back to when you first were younger, uh, when did you first, I guess, uh start uh getting involved with music and realize this is something you wanted to do?
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I've been a musician my whole life.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_00: Um since I was a little kid.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_00: Starting at five years old, I started taking piano lessons and then I really focused on uh saxphone, jazz, and classical saxophone, probably until I was about 21 or 22.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_00: Um I got a guitar when I was younger, but I didn't really think about songwriting um until my early to mid-20s.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so yeah, music has been a part of my life forever, but this sort of iteration is Kevin Daniel, it's probably about 10, 15 years old.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_01: Oh wow.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_01: Was there a looking back, was there someone like a teacher or a mentor that really um encouraged it?
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_01: And you kind of could point to that saying that that was really a huge influence on you to follow this musical path.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, honestly, I mean I've had a lot of great instructors over the years, um, especially with saxophone.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_00: I've worked with some of the best people out there.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but to be honest, like my mom, um, who passed away about 13 years ago, unfortunately, um, she was always my biggest you know, booster, biggest fan, always, no matter what kind of music I was doing, whether it was saxophone, guitar, you know, doing musicals, whatever, like she was always there to just tell me how proud she was and how good I was.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_00: And and when she passed away, that was sort of the impotence I needed to sort of take a step back from, I guess, what I'm calling like my regular normie life, and uh and sort of start seeing what I can do with music full time.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I and I I did read about the the passing of your your mother and stepfather um in 2013, and that certainly uh reshaped your relationship with music.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_01: Uh how you I think I already wrote more than a dozen songs, um, kind of processing everything.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_01: And it sounds uh how do I ask this without sounding?
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_01: What was that like to what I'd imagine that was kind of like a safe place to move from?
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_01: Uh to I'd imagine just kind of cocooning and getting back into music certainly helped um during the grief.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I was sort of like starting to do more um guitar stuff like right before that, but I was kind of just playing guitar in a bluegrass band, just trying to like get my chops up a little bit.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_00: But I think the songwriting sort of came into its own when they passed, and and I went back home for a couple weeks to sort of go through their estate and and the funeral and all of that stuff.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_00: And I just found myself writing a lot of songs, you know.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_00: It just it just was coming out of me.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_00: It wasn't, I think with songwriters, a lot of us we have to force ourselves to sit down and write tunes.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and this was probably one of the few times in my life where they were just like coming out of me with like reckless abandon.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_00: And I turned uh about half of those songs into my first EP, and and that sort of just got the ball rolling for me, you know, because after that I just had more songs and more songs and more songs, and then I realized that songwriting was the thing that um was really calming for me and was also a way for me to sort of connect with other people who had experienced, you know, maybe not a similar loss, but a loss in their life.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_00: And um it kind of gave me that outlay.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I've never been a big journaler, so this is really my way of journaling.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_01: Where did you record the uh the EP?
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_01: Were you down in Carolina still at home?
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_00: Or no, that was in Brooklyn at a place called DeGrasse Sound with an amazing producer called Ben Rice, who's worked with Valerie June, is probably my favorite artist that he's worked with.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_00: He was nominated for a Grammy for that record.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but yeah, he's still pumping out some amazing stuff over in Brooklyn.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_01: Uh that really did reshape it and then going through that tragedy um certainly reshaped your your musical outlook and career.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_01: What drew you towards uh the kind of the blend, not the sound of country rock and a little bit of pop mixed in there?
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_01: What what kind of took you in that direction?
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I think like after my parents passed away, I sort of reshaped my relationship with the South.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_00: Growing up in the South is always a pretty strange experience for me.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_00: Um I'm Jewish, my family is from Philadelphia, and I'm third generation American, and I was kind of surrounded by this very, you know, old school, like generational wealth um in North Carolina, just a lot of like good old boy club type stuff.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_00: So I always kind of felt like I was on the outside looking in.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_00: So I never really felt like comfortable claiming my southernness.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and then once I sort of reconnected with North Carolina and the South in general after my parents passed away, I sort of like became more comfortable accepting that I was Southern, um, and that I was heavily influenced by stuff like bluegrass and gospel and rockabilly.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_00: And um, those were the things that sort of just came up for me.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_00: And and I also met a crew of guys in New York who were just like bluegrass nerds through and through, and they really like took me on a deep dive of of bluegrass and roots music and folk music and my natural affinity for rock and alternative music sort of blended together with all that stuff.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_01: I was reading about your your second EP after Fly, which was directly uh with the results, those songs of of the tragedy you went through.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_01: What was that like to do to work on another set of songs?
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_01: Um, because obviously you were building on uh something you had done in the past, but it it's it was different that time.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_01: I'd imagine and I read you brought in a lot of different musicians uh for that kind of collaborative effort for that that EP.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_01: Myself Through You, I think is the name of it.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so Myself Through You, I would say, is the one that kind of put me on the map.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_00: Um, Fly was like the album that I needed to release, and Myself Through You was the record that I wanted to release.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and Myself Through You just brought some of the best musicians that I could find in New York.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_00: It was uh Ben was great on the first record, but like I said, it was like kind of a traumatic event for me, so he kind of let me do whatever I wanted to.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_00: And then with Myself Through You, he definitely took much more of a producer role, and he has his hands all over that thing.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_00: And for me, it was really like I think cultivating my sound and the sound that would sort of follow me for the years to come.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_00: I think now that I've moved to Nashville, it's changed a little bit, but Myself Through You is definitely like the foundation of what I consider to be my sound and my brand of music.
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_01: You've you've lived in Carolina, DC, Brooklyn, and now Nashville.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_01: Uh how has each of those places kind of left and imagine a market influence on you?
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_01: And you've you've you've kind of grown over the years in in different places.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_01: Do you kind of look back and kind of say, oh, that that's where I learned this, or this is kind of the feel for because now you're you're kind of a product of all those places.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I would say that like, well, first off, like country music, folk, and roots are kind of like an Americana music.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_00: They're like they're blowing up right now.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, like, I live in Nashville, so it feels that way, but I also just know for a fact that like it is kind of taking over at the moment.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_00: Um, it's had a real comeback in the last 10 years or so.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_00: And I think like particularly in Nashville, I tell everyone that I came here to be a better songwriter and a worse guitar player.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and that's sort of coming to its own.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_00: And I think every place I lived, especially in New York and DC, you know, just being exposed to so many different kinds of people, being exposed to so many different kinds of music and cultures, um, that's been a huge influence influence on me in terms of knowing that there's so much different stuff out there.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I feel like in Nashville, if you've only lived here and you've just grown up here, you can get really good at one kind of thing, but you sort of forget about all the other stuff that's out there.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_00: And in particular in New York, like no one really cares who you are in New York City.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_00: Like you're basically anonymous, like you don't really matter, um, which scares some people, and I think some people like that.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and so for me, like songwriting in New York, like I didn't care about what anyone thought of it.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it never even crossed my mind of, oh, am I gonna make waves in the New York Americana scene?
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I just I wasn't thinking about that.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_00: So I I I definitely give New York um credit for giving me the ability to do my own thing without caring too much about what people might think of the product.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_01: Um, how is I know you signed with the label, I believe.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_01: Has that changed your approach to to making music at all?
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_01: Or have how do you how do you view it through that lens now?
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so I was working with Organic Records for a couple of years.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_00: They uh helped me release The Life and Adventures of Kevin Daniel and what's the last record I released in 2023.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_00: Um and then actually to release this new record that I'm releasing in 2027 that's already recorded, done, and ready to go, um, I did not work with the label.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_00: And I think there's look, there's pros and cons to working with labels.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_00: Like everyone at this at Organic was great.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_00: Um, John, who was the guy that signed me for AR, like me and him still write music together.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_00: We still hang out when I see him.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_00: He's in Nashville all the time.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_00: I go back to his town all the time.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but I think that like for me in this world where there kind of are no more rules for releasing music, like the rules are just kind of thrown out the window, I think.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_00: I wanted to do stuff that was pretty dramatically different than what most people would do.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_00: And I just couldn't do that with kind of a label breathing down my neck.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_00: And I couldn't do the things that I wanted to do without having to run it by a million people.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_00: And I just want to do stuff and I want to do it right then, I want to do it now, I want to do it quick and dirty, and I want to get it out.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so I just kind of took the chains off and and was like, all right, I'm gonna go back to doing whatever I want to do.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_00: But I think having a label is great because it gives you a team, and that is that you can't like I can't say enough about having a team, like it it's really helpful.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_01: No, and I imagine too, you learned a lot from that experience as well, and you're applying that in this this new project.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_01: You mentioned a record for 27.
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_01: Uh what's it what kind of themes or stories are you uh kind of exploring in this one?
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_01: That that's because you've you I'd imagine as you grow in your songwriting, uh what were you looking to put together in this record?
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I think a lot of it is sort of like kind of trying to claim who I am now.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_00: You know, this idea that I live in Nashville, I'm from North Carolina, I spent the majority of my life living in DC or New York.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_00: And so I'm kind of like reclaiming my heritage, reclaiming where I'm from and who I am, and that being a Southerner can look different now than when it looked when I was growing up.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_00: Like I had this idea of what being a Southerner meant growing up, and now that I've grown up and I've seen the way that the South has changed, um I feel more comfortable being like, hey, I am a Southerner, and I think like these are the best songs I've ever written.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_00: I've really, really focused on songwriting over the last few years.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_00: I recorded this record with Bobby Holland, who is a Grammy nominated producer here in Nashville.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_00: Um, he's worked with like Maggie Rose, American Aquarium, Drake White, Kesha, just some really amazing artists.
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_00: And he just is, I mean, he's a genius.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_00: Anyone who works with Bobby will tell you that.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_00: But it is really, I would say, my first time where I fully was like, You're the producer, these are my songs, but you're the producer.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_00: I love your work.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna give you control to do whatever you want.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_00: And um, it was a little scary, and I had a hard time sometimes letting go.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_00: And he would be like, dude, you hired me to do this, let me do this.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but it's a really, really good record, and it's the start releasing in early 2027, and I'm I'm pretty excited about it.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_01: How do you write?
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_01: Uh is it is it lyrics first?
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_01: Is it that the music?
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_01: How how where does it start for you?
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_00: I would say for me, it usually starts with um it usually starts with a melody in my head, and that melody is often the chorus.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_00: And so I just have thousands.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, a lot of musicians will tell you this, I have thousands of voice notes in my phone, which are just little like little things like that.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes I'm at a bar, sometimes I'm driving the van, like sometimes I'm just about to go to sleep.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and then you know, maybe 50% of those I listen to the next day, and I'm like, what the hell is that?
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and then 50% of those I can be like, all right, we got something to work with here.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_00: I'd say the biggest thing for me for writing is it is a muscle and you have to train it.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you can't wait for it to come, or you're not gonna have like you can't just wait to be heartbroken, can't wait to be really happy.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you gotta write stuff as it comes to you, but you also have to sit down sometimes and just and put some songs out.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_00: And you know what?
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe they suck, but you finished it, you never use it again, but it's still good to flex that muscle.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_01: What is it like?
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I you're touring a lot, and that's kind of the way you make money uh to do live shows uh these days because of streaming and releasing stuff.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_01: How uh how do you design your your your your set list, so to speak, uh, as you're looking to kind of how do you incorporate new stuff, older stuff?
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_01: How are you looking at I guess this the Sag Harbor Music Festival performance?
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I have five records out, so I could play three hours of original music, you know.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and there's some deep cuts in there that even I have forgotten about, you know, like I'll go back and listen to a record trying to figure out what to play for a set.
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, oh man, I forgot I even wrote that song.
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I think for me it's it's kind of a blend.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, I do for Sag Harbor, I'm sure I'll likely do about I'll probably do one or two covers that I just love that are important to me and that we sort of put our own spin on.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of it's gonna be off the new record, so a lot of it will be stuff people can't listen to yet.
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but a lot of it will also be stuff that people have out.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_00: And I think with Sag Harbor, especially when it's a festival, I just want it to be really high energy.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I want people to come in there and have a good time.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_00: It's not just about the music for me, it's also about the performance, being on stage, interacting with people, engaging the audience.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_00: I've always told that I'm like a songwriter, a singer, and like a performer, you know, because it used to be in plays, used to be an actor.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_00: I've done stand-up comedy.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_00: Everyone calls it the Kevin Show when I'm at a party and I'm just like being obnoxious and grabbing all the attention.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and so yeah, I'm really excited.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_00: I think I I often, you know, play for a lot of Southern people who are wanting to hear like Chris Stapleton or like Morgan Wallin.
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_00: So it's good to it's good to go to a place that's gonna embrace my music and be like, we want to hear what this guy's gotta hear, you know, or what he's gotta write.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_01: Well, we're looking forward to it.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_01: Kevin Daniel coming to the Sag Harbor Music Festival.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_01: It's uh happening at 12 30.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_01: Uh Kevin Daniel, and bottom line, uh, it's the Marine Park Stage, Saturday, September twenty sixth.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_01: And get all the uh full lineup, sagharbormusic.org.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_01: And of course, we'll tag uh Kevin in all of this and uh get it out to you and make sure that uh we mentioned you and uh get people to your site and check out your music and looking forward to the new record coming in twenty seven.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_01: Kevin, thanks for just spending some time with us.
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_01: I appreciate it.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_00: All right, thanks so much, brother.