Our WKU Libraries Java City Noon-time Concert Series, now in its sixth year, opened its Fall season this past August 27th with a new voice in this area; Daniel Glen Timms. Although from Nashville, Daniel’s pleasant, easy-going musical style quickly drew a crowd that stayed. I thought you might like to know a bit more about Daniel, so we talked after the show.

1. I know you are currently from Nashville but, can you tell us a bit about your personal and musical history? How did you get started? Who have you worked with before?

Yes, I moved to Nashville about a year and a half ago, after having lived in Los Angeles for 20 years. However, I am from Louisiana and that is what I consider to be my home state. I was born in Winnsboro, Louisiana, but went to school in Shreveport and Baton Rouge, and I spent a lot time in New Orleans, and I had been living in New Orleans for about six months before Hurricane Katrina hit in 2005. I started playing guitar when I was about 14 years old and starting playing in garage bands for fun soon thereafter. When I was in the seventh grade, it was the first year there was forced bussing in Louisiana, so I was bussed across town in Monroe, Louisiana to Carroll Junior High School, where I was one of about five white kids in an all black school. I made a lot of friends there and I use to play drums with them in the band room, and they eventually made me the host of their musical variety show, which was pretty comical. I remember always playing for people in high school in my hometown of Shreveport, and I had a major role in the senior play in high school, which also got me hooked on performing.

I had my first professional band in Shreveport, Louisiana when I was about 19 years old and played mostly around Louisiana, including in the downtown area of Shreveport on the Red River, which is now dominated by casinos, and has changed quite a bit. That band was primarily a rock cover band. I did that for a while and decided to move to Los Angeles to try to pursue a music career.

Once I moved to Los Angeles, I realized what a challenge it was to break into the business, especially at a time when my style of music really wasn’t in vogue. At that time grunge, punk pop and hip-hop were taking over. I was lucky enough to land a couple of house band gigs in the San Fernando Valley, which paid the bills, but that was sort using up all of my vital artistic energy, so I decided to get a straight job, and convert my garage to a little project recording studio, so I could dig in and work on original material.

At that point I had found a little cabin up near the top of Topanga Canyon, which is a really inspiring place. It is in Los Angeles County, but is sort of an island within itself. When you go there, you feel like you are in a bit of a time warp. It almost feels like you are in the 1960’s Woodstock era, with communes, nudist colonies and a beautiful state park, where I use to do lots of hiking and communing with nature.

A lot of famous musicians and writers have lived and worked there, including, as far back as, Will Rogers, Charles Bukowski and Neil Young wrote and recorded some of his great music in the canyon.

I spent 10 years working and spending all of my free time writing songs and recording demos at the cabin. The transition from Louisiana to Los Angeles was quite dramatic. I think you can hear some of that expressed in my new album “La La Land.” Back in 1998, when I decided to release my first demo to community and college radio, and to some publications, I was happy with the way it was received. Several radio stations played it and Music Connection Magazine, which is the west coast music industry publication, gave my demo the highest rated rock review of the year, and featured me again at their end of year Top Rated Demos edition.

Following that I was invited to be the host band at the Topanga Days Country Fair and Music Festival. The festival has been going on for about 30 years in Topanga Canyon, and is held over Memorial Day Weekend at the end of May. We had a lot of fun there and due to the great response my demo received, I got the money together to go into a big studio, Artisan Sound Recorders in Hollywood, and had my friend Jon Lowry co-produce my first album, “The Highway Home.” At that point, all of the major labels were combining into the conglomerations that they are today, so although I had major label interest, we could never make a deal happen, so I decided to release the album myself.

With my limited release of that album, it managed to get on about 35 or so commercial, college and community radio stations, and my song “Soldier” was a bit of a regional hit in Louisiana and surrounding areas, so I followed up by doing a solo acoustic tour and I did a lot of radio interviews and local morning television appearances.

During these years, I was also playing gigs at clubs, bars and some small festivals in California, while still having to hold down a day job, doing everything from working in the oilfield, doing environmental cleanups, construction and driving delivery trucks. All the time I was continually working on my original music at night and all the weekends, at every available moment. Years seem to fly by as I sort of had tunnel vision and my artistic journey became sort of an epic adventure for me.

After saving as much money as possible to make my new album, “La La Land,” I was lucky enough to have some great musicians record with me.

Gregg and Matt Bissonette, the enormously talented rhythm section, and Brett Tuggle on piano, B-3 organ, as well as, Wurlitzer. Brett has been playing with Fleetwood Mac, Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks for many years, and even played with Jimmy Page on the Page/Coverdale tour. The list of artists that the Bissonettes have played with reads like a list from the rock and roll hall of fame. So, to have these guys play on my relatively low-budget record, was really a blessing and I can’t thank them enough for supporting my music that way.

I was able to get a good deal on mixing my album in Nashville through my friend Jon Lowry at Sound Stage Studios so I flew there and mixed it in five days. While I was in Nashville, I fell in love with the city, as it had that same small southern town feel that I grew up with and I was at a point in Los Angeles, where I needed to make a move and get more grounded again, and to live in a place where I had fighting chance to survive and where my style of folk rock and alternative country was flourishing in the growing Americana market. Since I have been living in Nashville and with the release of my new album on Blue Earth Records to Americana, Texas Music, Roots Music and European Country radio, things are really taking off for me. I am happy here in Nashville where it is so much cheaper to live than in Los Angeles and with the music business here, more mature artists like myself, are not considered to be yesterday’s news, the way they are in Los Angeles. People here and throughout the world that are into roots-oriented music tend to not care if you are still in your twenties and are more into music itself, than the youth-oriented scene of Los Angeles. Some of the songs on my new album do reflect some of my observations on that culture. I use humor and some sad songs to reflect my feelings and experiences, which is what happens when a young man from Louisiana moves to the crazy world of Los Angeles, and the culture shock that ensues.

2. What bands or individual musicians have influenced you as musicians?

If you listen to my music, you can probably tell them I am influenced by an eclectic mix of artists, including: The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, James Taylor, Neil Young, Steely Dan, The Eagles to other influences such as Bach on classical guitar, and from traditional country artists like Hank Williams to more modern country artists like Vince Gill and Keith Urban.

I am even love old Celtic traditional music, and I am into listening and playing blues music, with some of my favorite blues musicians being Eric Clapton, Stevie Ray Vaughn, B.B. King, Robert Johnson, Albert King, and many others. When it comes to jazz, I am a big fan of Sonny Rollins, Charlie Parker, Miles Davis and love Pat Matheny, as well. Some of my favorite classical composers are Beethoven and, as I mentioned, Bach, and I love some of the great classical guitar players, such as: John Williams, Julian Bream and the great flamenco player Paco De Lucia.

Music to me is like food for the soul and listening to these great artists is like a feast and they inevitably influence my music in ways, I probably don’t even realize.

3. How would you define your particular sound?

I would describe my sound as acoustic bluesy folk rock that tells a story, then occasionally rocks hard and can even get funky. I love playing and blending different styles of music. I always admired artists like James Taylor, The Beatles and Eric Clapton, where their albums would go from a country tune, to blues, to rock, then followed by a funk song with a full horn section. These kind of records would stay on my stereo because they had a flow to them that was interesting and changed mood and energy and were never boring, and had musicianship. Although their standard is so high and is really unreachable, I have still worked hard at trying to maintain some of that tradition in my music, mainly because those are the kind of songs and albums that I love the most.

4. What is your favorite sort of gig? What is your least favorite?

I see you’ll be touring soon. Where are you headed?

My favorite kind of gigs are festivals where there are other musicians and bands playing and the atmosphere is one of celebration, especially when the weather cooperates and the crowd is there to have a good time and enjoy good music. I also love those late nightclub gigs where the band is firing on all cylinders and certain magic takes over and the intimate crowd and the band feel like they are sharing something special. It is a kind of spiritual and magical experience.

I think my least favorite kind of gigs are in some industry centers like Los Angeles and even some Nashville venues, where the whole audience consists of people pursuing the brass ring of a major label record deal and they sit with their arms folded and have an expression of like what makes you think you deserve a record deal more than me. The irony is that I don’t want a major record deal. I am perfectly happy releasing my music independently, where I have creative control of my music and my life. I find that when you get away from the music industry areas into the real audiences in most cities and small towns across America and in Europe, there is a real appreciation for music for the sake of music, and that is something I find refreshing every time. Most of Nashville still thankfully fits into this category, which is one of the things I like about living here.

This is why I look forward to our upcoming tours through Louisiana and Texas later this year, and throughout Europe early next year. These are all places where I have performed and I find the people tend to be real music fans and even connoisseurs of my style of music. I am really looking forward to playing throughout Europe, which will include playing at the International Country Music Messe Festival in Berlin on their main stage. My music was recently released to Europe Country and Americana radio and has been very well received. After only a few weeks, my song “La La Land” has entered the German Country Music Chart at number 20, and several tracks from my record are also in rotation at stations in Ireland, England, France, Spain, The Netherlands, Denmark, Switzerland, Austria and Belgium. I toured Europe when I was younger in

1989 by myself, the summer the Berlin Wall came down, and I played guitar, busquing in the streets throughout Europe, so this should be a triumphant return with a band and music on the radio.

5. I notice you don’t do a lot of covers during your sets. Do you think presenting original music helps or hinders your getting gigs?

Yes, you know I played in so many cover bands over the years and I have been working so long on my original material, I like to play my songs and see what kind of reaction they get. There is something inherently more satisfying when people love a song you wrote in your living room than when you perform someone else’s creation. At this point, I don’t think it hinders us getting gigs, in fact, I think it helps us get the gigs that we really want. Don’t get me wrong, I love playing some of my favorite songs by other artists, just because it is such great material and I love their music. I think we have a good mix of mostly originals and some covers. Hopefully we won’t ever play frat gigs again where they throw beer cans at you if you don’t play “Shout.” However, we do have specially equipped helmets for those gigs…haha.

6. Can you talk a bit about being a songwriter? What inspires you? How do you craft your material so as to fit into your band? What steps do take? I’m sure younger musicians would like to know.

I started writing poems when I was in my early teens. I always had a need to put my feelings down in words. Once I picked up a guitar, I started writing songs too. Most of the early ones were real stinkers.

That is when I realized that becoming good at music and songwriting does not come overnight. I think the instinct that caused me to write down my feelings when I was a kid is the same instinct that inspires me to write songs today. However, after having done it for so long now and the experiences of hearing my songs on the radio and from playing them to crowds, now I do think about what is going on in the listener’s head and heart and I try to express myself both lyrically and musically so that is has some universal truth and I have tried to dig as deep as possible within myself to find that combination into what I really am feeling at my core without filtering the essence of what it is. Of course writers use metaphor, characters, both fictional and autobiographical to tell a story or sometimes to make a point or to evoke a feeling, and I am no different from other writers in that sense. I usually write my songs on acoustic guitar only. I don’t really think in terms of the band or the other instruments when writing. I typically think of the arrangement of instruments after the song is written. That is why there is an acoustic guitar in most of my songs. I do sometimes just write an electric blues tune or funk tune in a traditional way and I think about how much fun it will be to play a guitar solo over it or maybe have a sax solo. For example, when I wrote “Ode to New Orleans,” which is about my Hurricane Katrina experience, the whole mood of the song came from my memory of hearing a lone saxophone echoing down the empty streets of the French Quarter the day before the storm hit, as I was about to evacuate the city. I had never seen the Quarter that empty before and the sound of that horn created and brought back the memory to me much later when I wrote the song and it was almost like a movie playing in my head and I wrote the song in one sitting describing what happened.

So, songs tend to come to me in different ways, but one thing that inspires me always is the lyric and what is it that I am trying to say in the song and does the mood of the music and chord structure express what I am saying. For me when a beautiful melody comes to me, it is the most mystical and magical experience, as a good melody to me is not craft but true inspiration. I am happy that today music seems to be coming back to good melodies and acoustic instruments. I have always loved the beauty of an acoustic guitar and an inspired melody. I wish there was formula for writing a good melody, but to me, it is like divine providence for which we really are not in charge.

7. What do you see for the future of the independent singer-songwriter?

I think the future for independent singer-songwriters is quite bright. I have seen things change dramatically over the last twenty years. Prior to the invent of computers and affordable high quality recording equipment, being a recording artists was only in the realm of big budget major label projects. Now that this equipment has become available, the number of “recording artists” is now approaching the number of stars in the Milky Way, which is about one hundred billion…haha. The downside is that when you release a CD, you are releasing it into a sea of CDs and can be difficult to expand your audience. However, I am a good example of someone who has used the internet, radio, gigging and guerilla type marketing to get his music out there. At a certain point, you have to be smart and find your audience that loves your style of music. Once you find that audience, it is exciting for independent artists these days, because you can distribute and market your music worldwide. It has evened the playing field for independents with the corporate artists. I think that due to the changes that have occurred at the major labels, they have inadvertently created the opportunities and successes that are occurring in today’s market. As far as singer, songwriters and musicians being able to record their music at home, I think it is a wonderful thing. If you just play, write and record music because you love it, then the gifts that brings to you as a human being far outweigh anything money can buy, and I think it is good for society.

If you want to make a living as a recording artist, I think this approach is still the best way to have a career. Look at me, I am just now emerging as a recording artist and I am in my forties. However, I can’t measure how music has enriched my life for the last thirty years, just for the love of music.

8. I met you for the first time on myspace. How does the Internet impact your music?

I have found that the internet has exposed my music to thousands of people worldwide that would have been impossible a short time ago. It is so inspiring when someone from Japan or New Zealand or Russia sends me a message and tells me how much they love my music and they found it on My Space or one of the many other websites. I think that it is great that you can now find an independent artist’s music online, listen to it, see photos, and read about their history, then order the CD or download it instantly anywhere in the world. This business model will definitely win out over the old way of major labels controlling distribution. I think the majors have realized this and the consumer definitely has and it will be interesting to see how the music business evolves over the next several years.

9. Where do you want go with your music say, in the next five years?

I hope to be touring most of 2009 and playing festivals throughout North American and Europe. I would love to make it to Australia and South America in the future also. That is what is cool about the internet, you realize that your style of music is appreciated in locations like these, as well. After touring next year, I hope to record my next album. For me writing a song, going into the studio to record with great musicians and listening back is an inspiring experience, and is what I live for.

However, I do love performing too, and I think the way things are going, next year should be full of fun gigs and adventures to come. I also want to produce other artists, as well. I also think I have a lot to offer as a producer, so living in Nashville will hopefully bring with it some opportunities to produce artists that I admire and who I can try to capture their sound and essence. I would also like to work on film music, as I am a real film buff.

10. I have a copy of your CD “La La Land” which is great. Where can people buy your CD?

First of all, thank you! You can buy my CDs online at Target, Amazon and CD Baby among others. You can download it at Wal-Mart, I-Tunes, and many other online retailers. My CDs are also distributed by Super D, which means if you go into your local record store and they do not have it in stock, ask them, and they will order it for you right there. This can be done at over 1,700 record stores worldwide. They way things are going though, downloading is kind of taking over, although I really wish people would buy the CD and get the full sound quality and the great artwork, as well. I hope to see you out on the road and feel free to contact me on My Space. Just goggle me, I am easy to find.

Don’t worry Daniel, once people have heard youm they will find you again and again.

http://www.danielglentimms.com

http://www.myspace.com/dgtmusic