Before Largo show, Daniel Donato gets Cosmic talking about Country

From busking on Nashville’s Lower Broadway as a teen to headlining historic theaters like the Beacon, Daniel Donato has spent the last decade blending traditional storytelling, jam-band improvisation, and a restless curiosity into what he calls Cosmic Country.

Before his show at Cowboy’s Dancehall in Largo, Donato opened up about the magic of small venues versus larger stages, the hunt for authentic country bars, the cosmic energy of his Telecaster, and the philosophies that guide both his music and his life. It’s a glimpse behind the curtain of an artist exploring what modern Americana can sound and feel like.

Happy Birthday, man.

Oh, thank you. 

I know you were born in Florida, even if you never lived here, but where exactly?

Bradenton, Florida. 

Okay, so just across the bridge there.

Yep.

So, I recently listened to your Episode of Andy Frasco’s podcast from a few years back, and you seemed really stoked on the idea of getting to tour on a bus. What was it, a year or two later you got the Snowman?

I think so. I think it was probably a year or two later, maybe three.

How has touring changed, and did that upgrade bring any new dilemmas along with it?

On a foundational level it’s very similar. And thank god for that. New dilemmas? I think there’s like this omnipresent, intelligent, corrective mechanism that does this as-above-so-below-ness. So, if anything ever gets bigger, the shadow of it gets bigger as well. And, I guess you would be able to qualify dilemmas into that shadow. So, you know, things cost more money, or the bus can break down, you could be late to a gig. But ultimately, everything’s fantastic.

Glad to hear it. So, I know you started out busking as a teenager on Broadway before really cutting your teeth at country bars like Robert’s in Nashville. But, was it just the other day you played the Beacon?

Yeah, we played on Saturday.

Nice. What differences have you found between playing honky-tonks and historic theaters like that?

Well, Robert’s, fortunately, is one of those historic places as well. It’s not as old as the Beacon. The Beacon, I believe, was built in 1929, going on 97 years. Robert’s though, has been around since the early 50s though. It was the Sho-Bud Steel Guitar factory, which is where Willie bought his infamous acoustic nylon guitar, Trigger. I will say though, the more people that you can fit into a room, the more raw cosmic power you have to work with. That said though, magical things happen in small rooms. So, I love them all, I really do.

But, there is this thing too, about the Beacon, you know, New York City. It’s hard to qualify the importance of that city to our nation’s history, especially in respect to music. So, the Beacon Theater is one of the places for the past hundred years essentially, where it’s an actual, recognized, collective continuous, milestone place to play. So, it’s a true blessing to be playing one of the same six-strings that I once did on the street that I did in one of America’s most renowned venues, you know?

Yeah.

I love that.

Right on. You know, you mentioned the cosmic kind of energy being increased with the volume of people, but what about seats? Is there anything different about that energy?

I think it’s better. I think it’s better for people when we can get into a seated venue. You know, the sound is usually better, the lights are usually better. And especially in the Beacon because they have that beautiful line array, Sphere sound system in there. 

But, for the people who are coming to the show that aren’t playing on stage, if you have a seat, you can put your stuff down. You can go to the bathroom and not worry about fighting your way back up to the front row, you know? People have more space. I like that they get more bang for their buck at that rate. It’s becoming exceedingly difficult to come to live performances for people. It’s very expensive, it’s very time intensive. It’s also socially a lot to go into a room with hundreds or thousands of people, it’s a lot to do. So, I think if you can sit down in the midst of all that, it doesn’t hurt.

Definitely. And on this tour, you’ve mentioned looking for the best country bars to play around the country. What characteristics make a great country bar? And how do you go about seeking those spots out?

We go about seeking those out just through our network of living in Nashville. I have access to so many different people that have had careers where they came up playing in bars and doing that. And the thing about Cosmic Country is we’re really well known in the jam scene and we’re not really known in the country scene yet. So we’re just trying our hand at that. That’s how we go about it, we just ask our friends, really.

And, coming from Nashville, the best bars in town, there’s typically two kinds of spots. There’s a spot that’s been around for a couple of years, and they have the old Budweiser Clydesdale signs hanging up, and the wood on the floor is not new, you can tell there’s been some dancing there. And then there’s the second kind of bar, which is you get a bunch of venture capital, and you get at least twelve 48” flat screen TVs, and you put them up around the bar. That serves its purpose, and it’s great and all that, but Cosmic Country’s a traditional adventure, so we try to go to the more tried and true places.

You know, I love when I hear you break down music, but a lot of it is totally lost on me, especially when it comes to guitar sound. That being said, I do have three guitar questions for you.

[laughs] Ok.

Why do you prefer sticking with one guitar throughout a show?

You know, Roy Rogers always had Trigger. There’s something about having a reliable horse. I think it’s as simple as that.

Yeah, ok. And I love the Telecaster–the look, the sound. But why is it perfect for your style?

That was just one of the many cosmic inventions that came out of America that shaped the world. And when Leo Fender designed the Telecaster, it was one of those relatively sophisticated fruits of necessity and innovation. Sometimes you can get too much innovation and you lose necessity. Sometimes you have too much necessity, and it’s too old, and it’s too hard to operate, you know what I mean? Like, we’re not speaking on Motorola Razrs right now. There needs to be a dance there, between innovation and necessity. And the Telecaster, pretty much right out of the gate from 1952–it had relative improvements, but nothing approaching 50%, maybe 30 at the most–so when it came out of the gate, when he designed it, it was pretty much where it needed to be. And I just love that. 

And the adjective that stands out to me the most when you describe sound is “wet”. What makes a sound wet?

I think maybe I was talking a lot about reverb. “Wet” is a word I’ll use to describe it to people that perhaps don’t know or don’t use the tool words of music when you’re actually creating music. In older country music, like Merle Haggard and Buck Owens, the studios they recorded in had these brilliant reverb chambers that they would put microphones in. And then all of the sound the band was making, all the vocals, all the drums, all the bass, all the guitar, all the steel guitar, all the fiddle, all the acoustic guitar, every source of sound would go into that chamber and the microphone would pick it up, and they would mix that microphone into the overall sound. So, they would use it as a seasoning, like salt. And wetness in music is a lot like salt, and wetness changes over time. If you were to listen to “Chattahoochee” or “Gone Country” by Alan Jackson and compare that to “Today I Started Loving You Again” by Merle Haggard, there’s a wetness there, there’s a salt there. There’s a savor there, but it’s a different kind of savor, so it changes over time. And so I like wetness. And Florida is pretty wet, so it works out.

For sure. And salty. You know, you’ve mentioned seeking truth as your driving purpose, both in music and in life. When it comes to performing for a crowd, are there any sensory clues in the room that kind of let you know you’re heading in the right direction?

Yeah. Yeah. Have you ever gone to a show that felt like the band was playing at you?

Absolutely. One jumped right into my mind [laughing].

That’s one way to go about doing it. That’s fun, but it feels like you’re watching something. It doesn’t feel as much as if you’re part of something. There’s this invisible thing that happens, it can’t be qualified with a photo really. But there’s this feeling that happens when there’s this unity, so “unity” would be my big word to that response. There’s this unifying feeling when the audience is there really making the music with us. They’re doing that through energy. Music is energy, because you can measure a soundwave, and that’s literally energy. It’s just a form of energy, it’s not like heat you would get from a flame, but it’s energy, so that’s one way to measure it. But there’s this invisible frequency that happens that unifies the stage with the people, and it turns the show that usually is the band playing at people, and now it’s more something like the band playing with people. And this is a very special thing. So, I would say unity is the thing that I can, I can just detect it in the room. And listen, some nights it does not happen. Some nights it might happen just for a few minutes. And some nights it happens from the second we walk on stage, and we haven’t even played a note yet. It’s one of those things, you know?

Yeah. And you’ve mentioned meaning being more important to you than happiness, with stress and every other emotion being part of that truth that feeds your inspiration. Does that outlook come with any sacrifices in your personal or professional life?

All the time. All the time. Absolutely. Yeah.

Anything come to mind?

You know, just being on the road as much as we are. Everyone in my band is married, so it’s time away from their family. And then there’s also a grave physical toll. There’s just the reality of the fact that every night you’re playing a show you’re losing a little bit of hearing, you’re getting a little bit older.

And there’s such an integrated reality that I’ve never read anybody ever really talking about on the artist side or the journalist side, that you know, you’re in your car right now. Wherever you go, unconsciously you are betting your mission of where you’re going, your bullseye, you’re betting that against the odds of all the potential terror that rightfully could come your way. If you go on a plane to fly anywhere, if you go on the highway to drive anywhere, you are less safe there potentially than you are at your house. And so, we’re doing that over 200 days a year. We’re going on an adventure more or less, so we’re betting our life on wherever we’re going. It’s not something that people really talk about, but it’s logically very true, and it’s really with everybody. That’s why I’m also so grateful for people who travel to come and see us, because there is danger around every corner of this world that you turn. And so just on that level alone, that’s also a sacrifice.

Right. And you know, you talk about Cosmic Country as more of a frequency than a genre, kind of blending traditional structure and storytelling with improvisation and exploration of the moment and the feeling. Were there any inspirations outside of music that influenced that blend of ideas?

Yeah, I really love the teachings of Jesus. Not so much in an institutional sense. I don’t go to any church, therefore I don’t have any denomination of anything that I subscribe to. But that’s my biggest influence, and I try to make that my biggest influence. And something that is a true influence in your life is something that is a bar that you try to reach. So musically, there’s a ton of bars that a musician will try to reach. For me, as a guitar player, there were just players that I would hear, or there’s singers that I hear, there’s writers, where if I could write something that feels like that, that’s a bar I’m trying to raise myself up to. So, the way that I view the life and teachings of Jesus is, he’s part of the creation of music in itself, part of the actual electricity and the air in which music moved through. And so that’s omnipresent throughout all my inspiration.

Gotcha. And I know you play new songs quite a bit live before you actually cut the track. What makes that audience feedback important to your creative process?

There’s this latin term called Vox Populi, Vox Dei. The voice of the people is the voice of God. It’s a relatively democratic term, so we can tell when we play in a room full of people what they think of it. And that’s very honest feedback because people respond in ways that they don’t know they’re responding in. So, if you’ve been on stage for years and years and years, and all I’ve done is watch people react to music, I can tell when something is moving to both the band and the people as opposed to something that is just moving to the band and perhaps not the people as much. So the empathetic dance that I think everyone is trying to do on stage, is they’re trying to see a reflection of meaning back at them. “Does this mean as much to you as it does to me?”

You’ve also mentioned that sometimes songs evolve quite a bit from that, specifically naming “Dance In The Desert”. What changed throughout that process?

The shape of the song. So, the tempo, the dynamic. How hard some parts of the song are, how soft other parts of the song are. And also what the music can say beyond what the words can say. Music and lyrics are kind of like socks, you try to match them. And sometimes it takes time.

[laughs] I like it. So, as a performer, what role do local music scenes and independent venues play in that pursuit of connection through music?

There are times when we’ve gone to venues that are not independent venues, where the venue does just fine and the audience members do not. Sometimes they’ve paid more money than they were used to as opposed to going to an independent venue, and they don’t get treated as well. This is all relative to scale obviously, but with the scale that we’re at now we can still play independent venues. And in our process we’re not shy about the way we want our community to be treated. We let the venue know who’s coming to their establishment, and what to expect, and to treat them well. And if not, there have been times where we go back to the same market and we don’t do business with the same venue. So our choice in moving forward with independent venues in the select markets that we do is usually based on the fact that Cosmic Country is for the people, it’s built by the people. It’s very American in that sense. So, it’s really kind of the classic duality of going local versus corporate, you know? It’s the same reason why somebody would go to a diner as opposed to, like, a Cracker Barrel.

But with that said, there are many corporate venues that are just incredibly well run, like the Beacon Theater, Mission Ballroom, the Ryman here in Nashville–incredibly well run venues. And I think it’s because they realize too that it’s the people that keep their doors open,you know?

Right, so kind of a third leg to that connection. Not just performer and audience, but also the hosting venue as well?

Yes, of course. The venue is, for all intents and purposes, kind of the universe unto itself that day. Just like in the Genesis story, “then there was light”. All the light, all the sound that’s happening for the experience is happening in that room. So, it does make sense to be discerning, intentional, and imaginative in the curation of where that experience happens.

Right on. Well, I do have one more question. 

Please.

You got hair tucked under that conductor cap or did you cut it?

[removing hat] Oh no, I got hair.

I’ve been trying to figure that out this whole time. He’s gotta have it up.

Oh yeah. I’m at home. I’m off.

Well I do appreciate your time. This was quite enjoyable and I’m looking forward to Friday.

Likewise, John. Thank you so much, brother

Tickets to see Daniel Donato’s Cosmic Country at Cowboy’s Dancehall in Largo on Friday, April 10 are available at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/daniel-donatos-cosmic-country-largo-tickets-1976665272039?aff=oddtdtcreator