JASON DANIELLO PROFILE


During my interview with Albuquerque singer/songwriter Jason Daniello at our neighborhood coffee shop, a passerby recognized him and launched into a flood of questions about Naomi (Daniello's defunct first band), even going so far as to beg for some Naomi CDs to replace those his wife had taken in their divorce. Anonymity is a relative thing.

Daniello, like so many struggling talents, has yet to see music fandom at large offer up some much-deserved recognition. Locally, though, the exuberant musician has been a subject of praise for nearly ten years, with his tireless dedication yielding a wealth of soulful material, including two albums by Naomi (Hurts and World Spinning) and two solo records (Re-creation and the just-released Everything Good).

Touchstones for Daniello's songs range from Wilco to Sparklehorse to Paul Westerberg to Neil Young. "There's no genre I don't like," his says of his multi-faceted work. "I love music, period. I do enjoy mimicking certain styles for fun, but there's something to be said for focusing, and I think I did focus on the new record." That much is true--Everything Good is accessible indie pop throughout, while the Naomi records and Re-creation are generously interwoven with folk, rock and alt-country threads. "In the long term, I want to write all kinds of songs," he adds. "On the next record I'll probably do something totally acoustic, weird sounding and rootsy. I don't care about being in a certain genre."
A native New Mexican, Daniello grew up near Mount Taylor, moving to Albuquerque in 1991 to study vocal performance at UNM. It didn't take. "I studied for two years and didn't like the classical methods or formality of the training," he reflects. He didn't leave the program emptyhanded, however, having met fellow singer/guitarist and eventual Naomi counterpart Ben Hathorne. "We just wanted to make music for a living," Daniello says. "We got gigs as a duo for about six months, both playing guitar and singing. We’d play a lot of shows in a month, sometimes as many as twenty when we were just an acoustic duo, so we got kind of a buzz going. [Then] when the band started the gigs tapered off a bit, but we still had the buzz."

The band was soon rounded out with drums and bass, and began playing throughout New Mexico, Colorado and Arizona. Naomi went on to record two albums that showcased a soaring dual vocal approach and the complementary voices of Daniello and Hathorne. What sounded like musical harmony, though, was gradually becoming less than seamless between Naomi's chief architects. "I got into this countryish, folksy phase," Daniello says, "while Ben wanted to get heavier, and in the end I was ready to move on more than he was." A testament to their remarkable chemistry as players, Naomi's songwriting process had always been highly individualized as well. "We didn't really co-write; [Ben and I] each just brought songs to the table. I'm still yearning for that collaborative effort, but I've never really had it."

Simultaneously, Daniello had also taken the first inadvertent steps toward the next phase of his musical career. "I was invited to go record at Thunderbird Studios as a guinea pig for a recording class, and they kept inviting me back, so I kept accumulating these songs. I was probably halfway done with [Re-creation] when Naomi ended."

The period immediately after Naomi's demise saw the release of Daniello's first solo album (1999), along with some dabbling in other projects, and he admits to a bit of uncertainty in his direction. "At the time Naomi broke up, I was thinking seriously of a solo career, but then started a band called Boss Tweed with local musician/producer Ryan Martino, along with Johnny Cassidy from Venus Diablo and Jeff Romaniuk [Naomi's drummer]. It lasted six months," he laughs. "It's all therapeutic, though, and I believe everything happens in its right time." Fortunately, he now had a solo album to get behind in a live setting, even without a full band. The album, Re-creation, is a more cohesive work than Daniello's above reference to focusing indicates. At fourteen songs, it moves quite naturally from twang to mood rock to Caribbean balladry and back, with his wistful yet buoyant voice uniting the disparate styles. Further, the record is a telling snapshot of an artist finding his way; standout tracks "Across The Country In A Bus" and "It's Alright" are as dissimilar as the roles of solo musician and band member, yet Daniello's equal ease in performing each highlights the inherent connectedness of it all. Compare his recorded output to that of The Beatles, and Re-creation is his Revolver.

The last several years have seen Daniello's time divided between an ongoing solo performance schedule as well as batches of shows with The Argonauts, the trio he formed after releasing Re-creation. "With the solo thing, you don’t have to rely on anyone or coordinate anything except yourself, and it definitely gives you more freedom. I have so many songs as a solo artist that I don’t have with the band, so it gives me more freedom to pull from all of that or experiment in a live setting. But I also want to be able to rock out, and that’s where the band is great." His second solo album came together during this period as well.

Co-produced with longtime friend Martino, Everything Good's lyrics convey a sense of Daniello more at home in his skin than on previous material. It's powerfully earnest, yet leaves room for a listener's own notion of meaning. "Lyrics tend to just pour out of me, and I don't necessarily want anyone else to interpret them the way I do. A lot of times it's raw emotion, and usually the meaning comes from the subconscious; then I'll read back over them and say, "Okay, that's what's happening here."" Asked whether he enters the writing process with specific themes in mind, he laughs. "Hardly ever. I'd love to write with more direction... but a lot of songs become what they are through evolution."

Extremely prolific, Daniello chose from over forty songs in constructing the new album. "I wanted to make a concise record. Personally, when I listen to a record now, I like to be able to take it all in and there to be more to look forward to later. Is this the best ten out of the forty? Not necessarily, it's just the ones that worked best together... to make a thematic record." What's the theme? "It embodies a relationship... kind of an ending of one relationship and the start of another one. Some of the songs date back to before I met my wife, and it was kind of a yearning... I mean, my last record was in 1999, so this definitely encompasses a pretty broad period of time." And his favorite on the album? "The title track, because it's very drony and I like the words. It just kinda reminds me that life is repetition, no matter what you're doing, and you have to embrace that, somehow, to get through it and have some contentment or ease."

Hearing this last statement, I naturally wondered how he views his career right now. "At this point I’m just relying on synchronicity, and I’m gonna keep playing gigs and putting out CDs. I think things take time, and sometimes they take more time than you would ever have expected them to, especially getting more widespread recognition." With Daniello nearly ten years in and still awaiting that turning point, one can only agree. "I don't measure success by how many records I've sold; I measure it by how much I enjoy playing and singing," he continues sagely. "I have the reality of perspective."

By Jadd Shickler

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© 2005, Jason Daniello Music.