Tuesday, January 3, 2012

Daniel Levi Goans and The Creation of Brother Stranger



Faith W: I really enjoyed listening to Brother Stranger. This is your second album?

Daniel Levi Goans: Yes, m’aam , this is my second folk album. I was in a band before this and we had a couple records out. We formed in 2003, and it was more like an indie, rock/pop sound, and I was not the lead singer. So this folk stuff is what I’ve been doing for the last three and a half years or so.

FW: What led to the transition to folk music?

DLG: In the old band, the other guys were older than me, and they were married with kids and they were like, “We want to take a break.” And was writing a bunch of songs on my own and I just wasn’t really using them. It was just like an expression to myself.  A buddy of mine heard one of them, and said, “I think you’re a folk singer, and you need to start recording these songs.” He said he listened to that song 25 times in two weeks. This was about three and a half or four years ago, while everything with the band was winding down.
I’ve always liked folk music. It’s always been the music of story, and community. I’ve always been drawn to it. When I write, I like to tell stories. My father is a storyteller as well, so when I started writing it came out in that genre.


FW: There’s a lot of imagery and introspection in your lyrics. I listened to your songs on ReverbNation, which was cool because they have the lyrics to you songs as well. And I read the lyrics before listening to the songs, and they read more like poetry, and that’s because of your use of imagery.

DLG: Words are very important to me. I studied English Literature at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and I think that really informed my songwriting. I’ve written with pop artists who use less images and less poetic language, and it’s never quite as fulfilling to me because I think that many of the things I try to talk about are things that are beyond words, and so I find metaphors and images. The ties that connect us are deeper than words can ever express. We have to point to images and the beautiful things in this world, or the haunting things in the world that catch our eye and kind of stir us up.

FW: What authors influence your music?

DLG: Yeah, this last record was heavily influence by an author from North Carolina named Thomas Wolfe. He wrote a novel, “Look Homeward, Angel” when he was my age. He was 26 when he wrote it. John Steinbeck also influenced the themes more than the songwriting. “East of Eden” was a great influence for this album as well.

FW: You often use contrast in your music. Is that something that naturally comes to you?

DLG: I think when we’re younger we believe that darkness and despair is somehow deeper and more substantial than lightness. But, I think the reason for that is that lightness and hope is often portrayed in a “pie-in-the-sky” or a trite way. I believe that real hope exists, and I believe that people can change things. Civil rights is a big inspiration for me. I live in Greensboro, NC and that’s where the movement started. My father has worked in different capacities for racial reconciliation in the South. So I think about these kinds of themes quite a bit, and I hope that my music takes a honest look into the darkness and the hardship that does exist in this world and in our lives, but also affirms the hope and beauty that is deeper.

FW: So, you focus on the greater good of humanity.

DLG: I think that we’re going somewhere good. I’m sorting through this stuff in my own life, but I believe that in order to love other people, we weep with people who are weeping and we rejoice with people who are rejoicing. I think that it’s important to acknowledge the difficulty in life and in our experience. But  I also think that to be fully alive means to address both sides, and not to diminish one to focus on the other. Much indie folk music focuses on melancholy introspection. I think it’s selfish to just write songs about only about how you feel and your experience and the darkness of that. It’s like giving yourself over to despair. I think it’s a greater thing  to acknowledge the fullness of life. Not to be afraid to be sad, but not to privilege sadness over joy.

FW: It’s easy to fall into the trap as an artist to allow negative feelings to take on a life of its own in your work, when the truth is that there is a bigger world out there.

DLG: That’s right. And I’m still working on how to articulate the mixture of things. I’ve noticed in my own process that there’s two ways for me to create. One is that I can look down and into myself, and go deeply inside of myself. Or I can look up and out. It’s a lot harder to create “up and out” than it is to create “down and in”. If you have a wound, and you keep touching yourself and messing with it, you can get deeply involved in your own wound. But if you look up and out you’re not going to remove yourself from your own perspective, so you don’t have to focus on making sure you are included in your songs. It’s a natural thing.

FW: Is this how the message of hope gets into your songs?

DLG: I believe there is hope in the world and I believe it’s not in people, but I believe people are involved in it. I think it’s my job as a songwriter to point out the undervalued and the overlooked beauty in the world, and hopefully help people to connect with it.


Do You by Daniel Levi Goans

Do You by Daniel Levi Goans
Brother Stranger by Daniel Levi Goans

Buy Brother Stranger

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