Virgo Season: Dana and Alden X Fresh Off The Scene
Interview by Alec Moody and photos by @robbklassen
You've mentioned previously how you were both taken under the wing of a jazz musician by the name of Kenny Reed, could you go into a little bit of detail on the kind of impact that he made in your lives as budding musicians?
Alden- Our dad dropped Dana off at this jazz club, called The Jazz Station, and Dana was pretty petrified. You were, what like 13?
Dana- Yeah and super nervous. I was wearing my soccer outfit and flip-flops at this club with like my Tenor Saxophone. I sat back row, hoping he wouldn't see me and I hid my saxophone under my chair but he spotted it from his drums. He said “Hey young gun, come up and sit in.” I started sitting in with him and then he became Alden’s first teacher too. It was really everything for us to learn from him because I think without music we would have been crazy kids. Probably more me than Alden, I was a really crazy and rebellious kid.
Alden- I was the good boy
Dana- Yea, Alden was the good boy. I was just crazy rebellious, all over the place and I don't know what I would have done without music. I would say really, he gave us at a young age the ability to express ourselves fully.
Alden- And taught us the jazz tradition and the showmanship
Dana- I was an insecure kid and him teaching me that I could express myself through music gave me all the confidence in the world so he really gave us a gift of music that we’ll have for the rest of our lives.
Primarily you Alden and you Dana, are the main focus points of the group. But could you explain who else is a part of Dana and Alden and what they each do musically to bring the whole project together?
Alden- We’re a Quintet, and we have Dana on Tenor primarily. I’m on Drums primarily, and then we have Salim Charvet from Lyon France, he’s on Alto Saxophone and Synth.
Dana- then Andrew Mitchell on Bass who's from St. Kitts and then Eli Torgersen, he's from San Rafael, California, right near San Francisco and He’s on Guitar. To add to that, I think our band is so strong because we all get along so well. We made it through our first opening tour without killing each other. We all slept on floors and did 12-hour car rides in a five-seater together. I also think all of us have different musical interests that all overlap in really interesting ways, and at the end of the day, we're just all super big music nerds.
Alden- We kind of started cooking music just by filming bedroom TikToks and busking on Newberry Street in Boston. So it was never really going to be a band, it was just fun, and we kind of felt like the puzzle pieces all just fell together. Now we have Dana living here in New York, so we're just ready to take it to the next level.
Do each of you have a favorite feature on Coyote, You're My Star?
Alden- I feel like yours is Melanie Charles, and I’m going to say mine would be Cinya Khan because those are each of our different styles
Dana- Yeah, Melanie Charles sang on Family Garden, which was a song that meant a lot to us because it was telling the story of how our mom was really sick. She had been our rock and raised us single-handedly, we planted this garden with her and through the process of taking care of the garden, she started to get stronger, healthier, and happier. It really meant a lot for her to sing that story.
The song Bourdain, when I first read the name it made me think of documentarian Anthony Bourdain, what part did he have to play in the inspiration for that song?
Alden- Salim is actually a big fan of No Reservations. There was a weak stretch where he was just home alone in our apartment and I think one day he just sat on the couch with his Synthesizer and watched a No Reservations episode about Brazil and then he kind of mindlessly started playing a chord progression and simultaneously birthed the song
What was the process of recording “Coyote, you're my star?”
Dana- we met Jared Solomon, aka Solomonophonic in LA in a backyard one day and we just hit it off with him. He’s really become our guy ever since then.
Alden- he's a wizard
Dana- We were hanging out with him a bunch and then we were like, hey Jared what if we made an album with you and he was down! From there we were like, okay we just need to figure out some way to get the band into Jared's place. So we flew out with the band, our guitarist Eli lives in LA so we spent almost two weeks sleeping on his floor. We only had four official days in the studio because we're still you know kind of small fish. We fleshed out the songs as much as possible, we knew we'd only have like a couple of takes to get it done, and then we just went in and busted it out over four or five days. it was basically, waking up at 7 a.m. cooking breakfast for the band, doing the dishes, driving over to Jared's place at like 10 or 11, and then just going for the rest of the day.
Is there any meaning or significance for the album’s theming of Coyote's?
Alden- The first time we took the whole band to Jared’s studio was in the fall, coming off of the Benny Sings Tour and we basically were bringing a song to Jared and it had a different name at the time, but while we were recording the song a bunch of coyotes started howling outside so then we decided to sample the coyotes and make it like coyote themed.
Dana- Jared sped up the song and it completely transformed how it sounded, the energy of it started to be really big in the room and right at that same moment a pack of coyotes came howling down the street. Jared stopped what he was doing, grabbed his phone, and ran out into the street chasing them with his voice recording on and got them howling. You can hear that underneath the whole track, especially at the end.
What do you guys hope to covnvey with your music and or what do you hope audiences will take away from listening to your music?
Alden- I think first just feeling like the raw joy and love that we try to pour into a lot of our songs. Feeling that exuberance, but also there are a few songs like Bourdain, Paper Tiger, and Popular Front that all have like anti-imperialist and pro-Palestine massaging. Political messaging that we want people to kind of absorb and think about. You also hear different audio samples throughout, that kind of blend with the music but if you really listen to them they're pretty radical.
Dana- one of the main things is, we're young people right now and we see the younger generation around us really stressed out and anxious about the state of the world. Whether it's climate change or the genocide in Palestine and Sudan, you know just a general sense of the systems that be, not taking care of people and not taking care of the planet and if things continue on the way that they're going right now, the ship is going to go down at some point. I think with all that, comes a lot of anxiety and we as young people have turned towards distractions or numbing it out. Whether that's technology or drugs, but if you tune out all the bad stuff then you can't feel the good stuff either and we're trying to make young people tune back into life and pay attention to what's happening politically and to help them realize that we don't have to accept the reality that's been forced upon us.
Is there a dream jazz club or venue, in general, you wish to perform in one day?
Dana- Definitely for me, it’s the Village Vanguard, it would be a dream to one day play there.
Alden- I'm gonna say Red Rocks or maybe Oregon Gorge
This is going to be the first time you all tour as the headlining act, what can fans and audience members expect at your live shows?
Alden- I think a whole lot of shenanigans. Obviously our first priority is just playing the music and putting our whole heart into it, but I think the second priority is having fun and being silly. I think sometimes musicians take themselves too seriously and we're looking to almost provide a variety show at times with unexpected comedians coming out and crowd surfing,
Dana- Alden’s trying to set the record for most jazz crowd surfs.
Is there anything that you want to promote or let us know about that’s in the works?
Alden- check out our new album “Coyote, You’re My Star and come see us on tour, dana-alden.com coming to a city near you.
Dana- Come say hi! don't be shy.
