Danny Ross Goes it Alone

© Danny Ross

Danny Ross is not your typical Brooklyn musician. Drawing inspiration from bands like the Beatles and Wilco, musicians like Bob Dylan, and albums like The Who’s Tommy, Ross’ sound is worlds away from the run of the mill indie hipster music scene. And Ross likes it that way. A self-taught musician, Ross sings, plays piano and guitar, and uses a six-piece band as backup, which sometimes makes him sound Beatle-esque, and other times makes him sound just like himself.

Ross recently released his first album, Danny Ross Presents One Way, and was nice enough to give me the low down on it, and his (John) Lennon-like artistic tendencies, recently over coffee.

You self-produced One Way, which is a pretty big task. Tell me a little bit about what went into that.

I actually started making it as my college thesis in Cornell. I made up my own major there called “Popular Music, composition and performance.” So my thesis was to write and perform an album.

That’s the coolest thesis I have ever heard of.

I know right? I’m self taught, so I had no idea how to score for strings and horns and I didn’t know how to arrange for a big sound, which is what I wanted. So I worked with professors in jazz and English and poetry. I wanted my record to have all the characteristics of all my favorite records ever. I wanted to do something totally ambitious tapping into all my favorite songs but in a professional way. So, that being said, for school I wrote this thing and performed it with a seventeen-piece group and a couple hundred people came and that was my project.

Your lyrics are really autobiographical. Do you feel that this is an important element of writing?

Well, yeah I guess they are. But you know, there are singers who create characters and write stories. And I try to think about that a bit too, it may start autobiographical but then takes a life of its own. But I start with the idea that you write what you know, and I know certain feelings and I start with that. Maybe now I can start to play with form. But at the end of the day, there is something that John Lennon once said that was something like: "You know Paul McCartney always wanted to create characters, lovely Rita and Elenor Rigby but I always wanted to write about myself." And I’m kind of the same way, because I’m kind of feeling, "Well, here's what I went through, so someone else out there must have gone through it as well." But I don’t know if that’s totally self-serving. I like to try to take music out of that sacred bubble its been put in, lets bring it back down to earth, it’s a form like literature like movies, and it has a formula. Maybe albums should be categorized by non-fiction or fiction or horror.

That’s a fantastic idea.

Write that down!

Do you always bring a large band in to perform with you during your shows?

Yes, I have a minstrel show.

Really?

(Laughs) No. I have a six-piece band and they perform with me. I have been playing with the same core group of guys for the past year now but I did go through a bunch of different players to find these musicians who are the right fit. And I went through different combos of instrumentation as well. Its hard to conceive it as this big thing and then you hear it as something smaller and its not the intention. But with organs and two guitars, base and drums you do get a very full sound.

There is a very specific sound that is coming out of New York City and Brooklyn right now and you don’t sound like that at all. How do you think this is helping or hurting you in this scene?

I think that in the short term it is hurting me, because people want the sound of the day. You go to certain clubs in Williamsburg or the lower east side and you expect a certain sound. But I never cared about that at all. And I feel like a lot of bands feel that way too. I think that’s a media thing, lumping everyone into a certain category and sound, but to a certain extent its true. For me it always started with mid sixties pop music: The Beatles, Phil Spector, you know, big productions, full sounds, lots of melody and catchy melodic lines. Ultimately for me it’s always been about The Beatles.

There are certainly worse bands to mold yourself after.

Exactly. I figure you try to be the best and if that doesn’t work out and you're not the Beatles at the end of the day, that’s still not too bad. The type of musicians that inspire me and the songs that inspire me are the ones that have great curiosity and focus in on their craft and jump around from genre to genre. The Beatles, the Bob Dylans, and more recently Wilco and Ryan Adams. Learn how to write a good song in one genre and you can learn how to write a good song in any genre. They taught me about country music, and for a kid from Long Island it’s a big impact. It’s also about life perspective, life is short and you have to enjoy it. Work past the bad things and enjoy the good; have a creative positive outlook on your work.

What are your feelings about your next album, I know you mentioned that you are writing now? How is that process going for you?

It depends on the song, some songs write themselves. About a month ago I wrote a song in a day or two and it was done, great. Then I had another idea and I wanted to get it ready for our gig on Saturday and I thought I could whip it out and I got nothing. It has to strike you. For me the music comes easier and I have to fight my way through the lyrics. I’ll come up with a beat and a line will spit out. It’s irrational unconsciousness and then my rational mind reels it in. But now I am at the point where my last project was four years in the making and its finally done and its like, well now what? I like to say that making an album is like making a film; you can take your time with it and get everything exactly right and make it tight. And a live show is a theater piece, where you have to connect.

Do you think you are at an advantage or disadvantage being on your own?

Mostly an advantage. I was in a band in high school, the typical thing where we practice in a basement for two years talking about how we are going to play a show and then we play a show and break up. What I took away from it was I don’t want to have to deal with this "family" or "bad relationship" where you want to be able to say what you think but you don’t want anyone to react badly. This is my profession, this is my life, and that’s absurd and ridiculous. Believe it or not there are still tons of bands that deal with that kind of thing like Metallica, and these are grown men going through this, and I thought to myself let me do this myself and if I want to join a band later I can. I will have already proven myself to me and to others that I have the chops as a songwriter and a musician. And then I’ll go into it like that. Its like life, you have to branch out on your own before you can get involved with someone else.