Stephanie's World - Daniel Maitland
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Mood:
 tired If everything old is new again, then Daniel Maitland is working on being very, very new. Daniel has made his career thus far working with other acts such as All Saints, the RSC, and the legendary Geno Washington, but is only now looking to release a serious effort of his own. And it is a definite case of getting back to basics. Clean and simple recordings of music unfettered by samples, loops, and all of the other digital bells and whistles used to flesh out the sound in must modern popular music - often, to my mind, mostly as a means to try and mask musical mediocrity. No, there is none of that here. Dan is even going so far as to threaten to release his music on vinyl! Well, I don't know that I really WANT to go on a quest to find a new needle for my old turntable, but I do know that I am enjoying what I have heard so far. There is a folk/rock feel to much of Dan's music that reminds me of some of my favourite bands of the 60's and 70's. It is comfortable to listen to, in the warm and unassuming way of an old friend come to visit. Lyrically? Well, Dan isn't always what we might call "work safe" if we were browsing images. And while normally that isn't my style, he delivers it with such a soothing sound that it doesn't come across as being for shock value as is often the case in such instances. Besides his performing, Dan also helps mentoring the next generation of musicians through the New Deal for Musicians program, and is also an accomplished poet - being published in several UK magazines and featured on Sky twice. I had a chance to speak with Daniel this past week and he agreed to answer a few questions for this feature. I have to admit, he had some rather strong political opnions I had not expected.  An Interview With Daniel Maitland 1) As a child, did you grow up in a household with any musical or artistic background? Not really. My dad was an English and drama teacher was the only thing. 2) When did you discover that you had musical talent? I wrote my first song when I was about 5 - changing the lyric to a popular children's song and making it about the Irish Political situation...I know - weird. 3) At what age did you start to take your music seriously? 17. I joined my first band as a singer. I couldn't play any instruments then. 4) Did you have support from your family & friends when it came to your music? Yes. My parents liked the artistic idea - they encouraged me to be in bands - vicarious living I think. 5) What is your best memory or story about playing music? Being on tour with the soul singer Geno Washington, and , having travelled for many hours across a freezing crystal clear Scottish highland day, arriving at a tiny hamlet on the edge of a Loch where we were going to play that night and seeing the whole vista spread below us as we crested the hill, whilst the last track of Tom waits Blue Valentine died away on the car stereo. There are many actual transcendent musical experiences whilst playing on stage - but because you lose yourself in the moment its hard to pick them out of the memory individually.  6) I have to ask, why did you depart from what appears to be your style to write and sing "Oh Joe" ? Well, I had a riff i was messing with, I had a chorus which was sort of OH OH and i realized that it sounded like a Joe Jackson riff - and so I went further in that direction than In otherwise maybe would have done and made a sort of tribute - name checking him in the chorus as a background to a true story of my first attempt to lose my virginity - in this way I think there is a lot there that is typical of my style - just a borrowed groove. Also myspace has a lot of quite acoustic stuff as that is more finished now - but there are a loot of upbeat - band tunes also in my catalogue - think Neil young versus crazy horse... Phew - long answer. good question. 7) Which aspect of your musical talent would you say is your strongest ability ( vocals, songwriter, guitar, bass, piano, organ, sax, sound engineer) ? I get most work as a sax player and a singer. I am most proud of my songwriting. 8) If you were granted one wish, what would it be? I would have the world go back 7 years and not rig the American election and have a Democratic environmentalist in the white house who would sign the Kyoto accord, and in fact be leading the world to sanity - as opposed to the evil fucking moron that America has now. I could also do with the extra time - ie. seven years to finish and promote my work - as I am getting old too fast. 9) Do you have any current projects on the go that we can look forward to? Yes. I am self releasing an album before summer. I am finishing some mixes now. I have a number of titles: A Bad night for automobiles; Better, quicker; Slags 'n'B itches; Look who thinks he's nothing!...I think I like better quicker - its the newest. I have also started getting some gig offers which is nice - and so am setting up a full time band of multi-instrumentalists to rehearse and tour - as opposed to the session muso friends I have used so far . I'm using a very good website called musofinder.com. Also one of my myspace friends wants to fix some gigs for me in New York and I hopefully will go out there and play my stuff with some local musicians - I have never been to America!! I also have a friend publishing a book of my poems - which is a long labour of love - to we, being equally useless, are stalled on the cover.  10) I ask all my features this question. Given the state of turmoil in the world today, do you have any thoughts or beliefs that you would be willing to share with us? See my above Al Gore rant! I think we are in deep deep trouble. And we are all lazy fat lemmings walking towards the cliffs. I think our leaders are at best bumbling and powerless and at worst - such as yours - deluded and malign. I think the religious resurgence is the worst thing that could have happened. People, having been failed by earthly leaders, instead of turning off their TVs and taking to the streets are going to look to the fucking sky for divine help and we are gonna spend the end of our amazing civilization blowing each other up over which interpretation of god we believe in and whose got the water.We must stop having so many children now! We must stop the consumer culture now! We must turn off huge amounts of power now! We must open all borders now. We must all, particularly Americans, agree to be massively poorer, and you know what, no-one will be any unhappier. 11) Is there anything that I may have not asked you that you'd like to add? Good for you, and people like you x Daniel also has a lot of info about him at sonicbids.com it can be found here;  I wanted to thank Daniel for being my feature this week! Thanks Daniel!  | ||||||||||
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