Daniel Donato is genuinely one of a kind, so when it was time to thread together his first album of entirely original music, the Nashville singer, songwriter, bandleader and guitarist extraordinaire had a unique theme in mind for its 15 songs.
“The album is about embracing the individual,” said Donato of Reflector, which released a few weeks ago. He and his band will perform songs from the album in concert at Rockefeller’s Thursday, December 7.
“We live in a country today where the narrative kind of pushes people away from individuality and pushes them more into groups,” he said. “I feel like one of the great privileges of being an American is the fact that you can be an individual and still contribute to the group. You don’t have to be beholden to a group. The album is about embracing individuality and finding freedom.”
Donato found freedom in music from an early age. Growing up in Nashville, his dad introduced him to guitar and music from a broad swath of genres. As a kid, he became familiar with Hendrix, Clapton and Slash by playing the Guitar Hero video game. By the time he was 14, he’d turned his fascination with the instrument into a true musical pursuit, first by busking on Nashville street corners, then as a player at Robert’s Western World. The legendary Music City honky-tonk was formative to building Donato’s sound, which has been dubbed “Cosmic Country” for its combination of Southern rock, bluegrass, classic country and California folk styles.
Because he’s young – not yet 30 – casual music observers might mistake him for an overnight sensation, a phenom whose virtuoso skills got him proximity to players like Nashville pedal steel legend Paul Franklin, who is featured on Reflector, or Vance Powell, the album’s producer. Powell is a six-time Grammy winner who’s worked with acts like Chris Stapleton, Phish and Buddy Guy. But it’s been a steady climb for Donato on his rising trajectory, filled with hours of playing live shows. He’s worked hard, been patient and kept the faith to get where he’s at in the industry.
“I find that all things come at the time they’re supposed to, even if it doesn’t make sense. It’s never the timing’s fault, it’s always your perspective that needs the adjustment and the alignment,” he said. “That’s part of having faith, I think. Having faith in where you’re at and where you’ve been and where you’re going. Even if some of it’s dark or not what you expected it to be or what you feel is best. That’s a real, living issue. I don’t feel like it’s something that you just wake up one day and you’re liberated from it. It’s probably always happening.
“People and places are always informing me,” he added. “There’s a part of me nobody can really touch, which I guess is just my soul, on some level. But there’s a whole part of my identity that contributes to the music that people and places have a great influence on. That’s always being informed and updated with new experiences and new people and places you go.”
Donato’s played a lot of live shows and that’s where he excels. The word of mouth on his music starts with fans recalling some Donato concert that blew them away. Was it a struggle to step away from the stage to create that energy in the confines of a studio, we wondered?
“It’s a natural feeling and something that qualifies it as natural is that it might be a struggle on some level,” he said of the recording process. “The studio is a lot. We really have our producer Vance Powell to thank, he really helped us a lot. A lot.”
Because he’s a guitar hero in his own right now, we asked if Donato had a favorite Texas gunslinger. The stage he’ll be playing at Rockefeller’s has hosted legends like Stevie Ray Vaughan, Albert Collins and Freddie King.
“When it comes to Texas you really can’t get away from Willie Nelson. I love Willie Nelson and I love Bob Wills. He had a fantastic band. They weren’t all from Texas, his guitar player, Eldon Shamblin, was from Oklahoma.
“Someone who doesn’t get talked about a lot is Tiny Moore,” Donato continued. “Tiny Moore played four-string mandolin with Bob Wills and he played one of those Paul Bigsby mandolins, and he’s from Port Arthur, Texas. He’s one of the great improvisational musicians of country music. He doesn’t get nearly enough love and he’s as good as it gets. I’ve been listening to him for a while. And also Waylon Jennings.”
Obviously, Donato’s a student of music, teaching us more about Bob Wills in five minutes of phone interview time than we’ve learned over years of talking with Texas musicians. When he began working on his own music in earnest in 2018, he chose what he loved best about every artist he’d studied to create his “Cosmic Country” sound. He and his band hit the road hard once COVID’s lockdown lifted, fine tuning the songs that would become Reflector by playing more than 200 shows in 2022.
During the lockdown, Donato hosted a podcast called Daniel Donato’s Lost Highway. He interviewed artists like Orville Peck, Adrian Quesada and Joe Bonamassa. The episodes allowed him to riff on all sorts of notions on life. It would be a mistake to think someone as young as Donato isn’t wise. One can gain plenty of wisdom from touring the entirety of the States three times over. You can learn a lot from those you encounter over 2,000 nights in honky tonks, VFW halls or at the Grand Ole Opry.
Because those riffs are some of our favorite parts on the podcast, we closed our interview by asking Donato if there was anything on his heart he wanted to speak to, anything he felt he needed to share with the world. His words reverberated like his Fender Telecaster.
“It’s the value of speaking the truth and seeing what happens next,” he said. “Sometimes the truth may start a fight. Sometimes the truth will bring tears. But the truth is always worth it, regardless of the price. Seeking the truth and living the truth, trying to embody truth is kind of what I’m about, as much as I can be, you know?
“Music is just like life. It’s a reflection of life and life is a reflection of music. You’ve just got to stay truthful the whole time. Nobody looks at the truth the way that you do. You look at the truth your own way and the person next to you looks at it their own way and that’s totally cool. It’s great to live in a place where that’s the rule and that’s the lay of the land.”
Daniel Donato performs at 8 p.m. Thursday, December 7 at Rockefeller’s, 3620 Washington. With Eggy. $22-$75
This article appears in Jan 1 – Dec 31, 2023.
