WORDS GRACEY MAE - SPECIAL THANKS MAE MANAGEMENT
Not many artists can say they recorded their album in the middle of a bomb raid but Duncan Daniels can. Not many singers can say they featured a hand-less guitar player on their project but Duncan Daniels can. Not many musicians can say they broke the record for longest charting #1 Rock Album in Nigeria but Duncan Daniels can. Following the release of his latest project, ‘Dan Cain: Honesty and Nostalgia’, the Uber-talented star sits down with F Word to dive into his life, his love and his legacy.
Gracey Mae: Congratulations on your brand new project, ‘Dan Cain: Honesty and Nostalgia’. What inspired the name?
Duncan Daniels: Initially, when I wanted to do this project, I wanted to make it about me, and still have the messages of honesty and nostalgia cut across. I didn't want to call the project Duncan, so I looked up the phonetic pronunciation of my name. A lot of people thought that I was changing my stage name at first.
GM: On the theme of nostalgia, what is your first memory of music?
DD: My dad was big on vinyl and had a lot of The Temptations, The Beatles and the likes. My earliest memory of music is at either my second or third birthday - the year that ‘Off The Wall’ album; I was listening to Michael Jackson almost everyday.
GM: You've named some greats there. Do any of them influence the type of music you make today?
DD: Not necessarily. I think I really got inspired to make music after I started listening to a lot of the late '80s, '90s rock music. I was very much into a band called ‘Michael Learns to Rock’, a Danish band which is still charting in Nigeria today. I started creating my own palette, listening to bands like Bon Jovi. I tapped into a lot of Eric Smith, Meatloaf, The Cranberries. Later on, early Coldplay and Craig Davis. I started owning my own skills. The first song I wrote was called ‘Live Before I Die’ which was penned when I was 11 years old. It happens to be the final track on this album. I wrote that song over thirty years ago, but I never recorded it until this project. That's the point of the whole ‘honesty and nostalgia’ piece. It's that you're hearing songs that I wrote in the early '90s, and I'm only putting them out now.
GM: The version that you released and the version that you originally wrote, how similar are they?
DD: It's the same exact version. I didn't change anything about it. I've known that song in my head for that long. Anytime I am called to perform, there's a default song in my head that I can sing from start to finish without changing lyrics… that song is one of them. There are similar songs that I've written 20 years ago that made it to this album.
GM: What inspired you to create such a mature song at such a young age?
DD: As a young kid, I felt like I was very different from my environment in Port Harcourt. At that time, it made me a little bit sad and depressed. I wasn't an introverted kid, I was very outgoing and playful but there was a part of me that did not feel stimulated. My escape was when I realised that if the music I listened to made me feel better, then maybe I could actually do the same thing and not just make myself feel better, but others as well. That's what led me to start writing songs. Most of the time when I'm writing, I do it like I'm a character in that story. Funny enough those stories, even now that I'm all grown up, make more sense to me than they did when I wrote them as a child. That's the beauty of music and how music works. It has the ability to transcend time and space exactly like a time machine.
GM: Congratulations on charting number one in Nigeria for 16 days in a row. How is the music being received?
DD: Honestly, I didn't know what to expect because when I was creating the album, I decided to completely erase the audiences’ expectations from my entire process. I just wanted to create from a place of pureness, not thinking about what people are going to say or feel. How I felt about the music is what governed the project all through. I feel that it made the album special, in a sense that a lot of my emotions were felt. I've gotten feedback of someone crying when they were listening to one of the songs on the album; of somebody remembering their childhood. I even got a message from a very big influencer, telling me how listening to my voice and the album makes her want to give her life to God. Why it's appealing to me is that the album is not your mainstream popular music, especially from an African artist and that's also a good thing because it's the honesty that a lot of people are missing when listening to music today. A lot of music that's out there is targeting a specific audience, or is created to generate viral content. So many things are disconnected with that deep, emotional aspect of humans; to quench the thirst that a lot of people have, but I feel that's what this album does. It's an album that gets better with time. I realised that when I look at all the charts, especially in my genre field, most of these albums have been released ten to twenty years ago, and they are still charting today. People still have a void filled by those songs. I feel I'm creating something that thirty years from now, people are still going to find and listen. That, to me, is bigger than any award or recognition that I get from Tiktok or any social media outlets.
GM: Amazing to hear the stories that people are sharing with you. I do know that there's quite a few interesting tales from your collaborators on this album. Tell us more!
DD: This project was massive in skill and in terms of collaboration. I collaborated with nearly 50 musicians across 15 countries on this album. The more minimalist the song was, the more people were involved. ‘Holy Water’ involved a twenty-two man orchestra and some of the best mix engineers at ‘Abbey Road Studios’. I'm talking about people that worked on Black Panther, Infinity Wars, Jurassic Park; to a three-time GRAMMY award mastering engineer. The entire album was done in such a way that everything is organic. Everything was recorded on a track: guitars, drums, bass, strings were all recorded live. Firstly, I'll give a shout out to the guitarist, Vitali, who is based in Odessa, Ukraine. He played guitar on all the records on the album, with the exception of the two songs. Normally, Vitali had a timetable as to when to expect Russian bombings because they were frequently being bombarded by air raids. We tried to record around these. ‘Take my Hand’ is ironically about being taken away from all the problems of the world wars - it's kind of a metaphorical song that is dedicated to anyone who's dead. The song is basically a comfort for grieving people. We had a session and got towards the end where there's more intensity in the song, when we started hearing the sirens go off, and heard the bombs go off in the distance. I asked if he was going to stop. I was shocked because that was the first time I was in a session with him and heard it happen. Before I knew it, his wife came to the door. “We're going to the bunker” she said, just speaking frantically in Ukrainian. I didn't want to interrupt him because one of the beauties of recording live is that you're recording based on a feeling. That was what was happening to Vitali. He was in this mind bubble that none of the chaos took him out of that moment. He stayed on to record the guitars and finish the track and did not go into shelter. When you listen to the song and hear his guitars being played, it's like you get transported out of this world. The other guy, Jonathan Bastos, who is based in Brazil, was born without hands but plays the guitar using his toes. I don't know how but he makes everything look so easy when he does it. He’s on ‘Peacock Feather’: a Christian country song about how God makes things beautiful. I ran into a viral Facebook video of Jonathan playing guitar with his toes so I was led to send him a DM. I wasn't expecting a response but by the next day he replied. I sent him ‘Peacock Feather’. He listened to it and loved it. So we scheduled a zoom call where we did a recording, and it came out amazingly. The lady who also wrote and was featured on the song, is a Korean Nigerian, her name is Victoria Ajagunlabi. She told me that she was being pushed into the commercial ‘Afrobeats’ which is dominant in Nigeria, but she felt that she needed to go back to what she really loves to do. I actually ran into some of her songs that she recorded herself on Audiomack and I was impressed. That's just some of the stories!
GM: I love how much detail you're giving. We know that you are a member of the GRAMMYs, do awards matter to you?
DD: Not all awards matter to me, but some do. I'll say this, one thing that makes the GRAMMYs special is the fact that it's not governed by how popular a person is or ,how many records they sell, or how well the project did commercially. Most of the other awards are based on those things that in today's world can be gotten if you have the right connections and money. The GRAMMYs boils down to the actual artists. Yes, there might be a bit of favouritism, but the majority is unbiased. That's why I actually value the Grammys. I wanted to be a member of that body so that I can have a voice as well. Fame has never been something that really attracted me. If it comes, it comes. if it doesn't, it doesn't. That's why I've been making music for 20+ years. Most people get into music for money or fame, but when they don't get that, they leave it. Personally, I went into music through a feeling, and that feeling hasn't expired.
GM: You touched on being in music for two decades. What keeps you going?
DD: One reason why I keep making music is because of how much love I have for it. Being able tell stories that touch and change lives in a positive way. Anything can be used in a positive and a negative way so I stress positivity with my music. I'm always going to make music. I'm always going to be a part of that music making process. I don't ever see myself quitting music.
GM: You are a multi-hyphenate. You do so many things outside of singing like marketing and production. How do you find balance?
DD: What matters to me most outside music is my family. I need my family to be able to do what I do. The support system that I get from my immediate family is huge, whether it be a smile every morning or watching my daughter try to sing lyrics to my song. That support system is very important to me. My journey starts from a place where I didn't have the tools that I needed to actually make music. My parents weren't very supportive of the music and did everything they could do to try to push me away from it, which didn't work. It also came with me not having access to instruments, for instance a piano. For someone who actually loves the piano. I had to learn how to play it at a friend's house. Then, I didn't have any money or sponsor to get me to the studio to produce. I had to learn how to produce to be able to create my music. So that involved me finding a studio that would hire me as a pianist where I learned how to produce. I produced a song that was able to get me a scholarship into ‘Berklee College of Music’. I also I learned how to mix, the business aspect, and all the technological aspects. I had to find other skills that could complement my need to create music, so I got into tech. I got to the point where I needed to be able to market my music and distribute it but I had to rely on third party people to do that so I got into learning marketing and how to own my own distribution. I learned how to create strategic third party partnerships that I can control, monitor and work with. These skills that I gained was just to make music easier, produce it and get it out to the world a lot faster, rather than sitting around, waiting for somebody to do it for me.
GM: Looking back on your time in music, what would you say has been the biggest lesson and the biggest blessing?
DD: Lesson? The journey is success in itself. It took me a while to understand this, but once I understood this, it made everything clear to me. Many people are on their paths, and they have goals that they want to accomplish but they don't understand that they're already successful. I don't envy artists that get signed to record labels and get all those advances early on in their career because sometimes that spoils you and makes you lazy. Blessings? Getting to perform at the stadium in Port Harcourt was a huge moment for me because Port Harcourt was so instrumental in my upbringing. Being able to go back there and perform at a stadium to a large audience, who actually knew my songs, was great to see. Another thing also was joining the Recording Academy and participating in some of the amazing work that they do. Most recently I broke the record for the longest number one Rock album in Apple Music Nigeria. I broke it in just seven days which I think is remarkable. I didn't see that coming. I'm very optimistic.
GM: In ten years time, when you look back at this moment right now, what would you like to remember?
DD: I'll just look at it as that moment where I tapped back into what made me get into this journey in the first place. I think that's what this moment is about. Honestly, it’s easy enough to get caught up with all the things that happen with music. You want to please people so much that you forget your goal and why you want to accomplish them. I think this album reminded me of all the feelings that I used to have when I was a kid, that inspired me to actually go this route in the first place. So, this is a redefining moment for me musically.
GM: What would you like to leave our readers with?
DD: Whatever you do in life, make sure that you're doing something that makes you happy. You take wins and losses but you're consoled by the fact that, regardless of what happens, you're happy.
GM: With that said, what is your favourite F word?
DD: My favourite F word is food.
