{"id":21495,"date":"2014-05-20T07:30:06","date_gmt":"2014-05-19T21:30:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/maytherockbewithyou.com\/mtrbwy\/?p=21495"},"modified":"2014-05-19T10:44:00","modified_gmt":"2014-05-19T00:44:00","slug":"dan-wilson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maytherockbewithyou.com\/mtrbwy\/2014\/05\/dan-wilson\/","title":{"rendered":"Dan Wilson"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\n<\/a>\u201c\u2026I just kept writing and I probably ended up with forty or fifty songs, and a lot of the things that fit together had that kind of lonesome and mournful vibe, but there were some that were also like sunshine was coming in, and that\u2019s how it all kind of came together, it was like the songs that fit together had that lonesome but with hopeful and sunshine at the same time.\u201d<\/p>\n

You may or may not know who Dan Wilson is, but one thing is for sure, you\u2019ve heard a song he\u2019s written\u2026 best known for his band Semisonic as song writer and front man, Dan has had a string of hits with the band as well as many more due to his collaborations with other artists, you may have heard a song called \u2018Someone Like You\u2019 by Adele? Yeah, he co-wrote it\u2026 the list goes on and on and on\u2026 but when he\u2019s not working with other artists, he still releases his own material and now with his newest solo release \u2018Love without Fear\u2019\u2026<\/p>\n

We had the pleasure of speaking with Dan Wilson about his new solo album and its creation, his collaborations and song writing, and also maybe a question thrown in about the future of Semisonic\u2026<\/p>\n

You\u2019ve just released your newest solo album, your first of all new original material since 2007, I guess the obvious question is, what took so long?<\/strong>
\nThat\u2019s right, damn\u2026 well a couple of different things, one thing is I guess I\u2019m pretty damn picky about things being good, at least by my own likes, also I did a whole version of it that I finished about two years ago and something was wrong with it, it wasn\u2019t clear. I did a whole version of it that was just me solo playing alone and playing all the instruments and that was an interesting experience and very cool and I thought it was a good idea, but then when I listened back to it and I showed it to my trusted friends, nobody was that excited, it was like it wasn\u2019t really quite coming to life and I just had to have a bit of a break from it and think again. One thing I realised is that I had moved to Los Angeles, I was in the land of geniuses and amazing musicians and I somehow was still working on this record all alone and it didn\u2019t make any sense, and once I got my friends to play on it and on the songs and started over, everything came together. So I guess I made it twice which is the reason for the long time.<\/p>\n

In the seven years what has inspired you to create the songs that have ended up on the album?<\/strong>
\nWell the first batch songs I did was in the winter months of 2010, early 2010 and I had this idea to isolate myself, cancel all my co-writing, stop seeing anybody and really be alone with my song writing, because I had done so much collaborative song writing for several years before that, and I just thought it would be an interesting experience to just really, really isolate myself so I did that for a couple of months. The first batch of songs that came out were probably somewhat coincidentally, or by maybe actually makes perfect sense, a lot of them were lonely, isolated, disconnected type songs like \u2018Disappearing\u2019, and \u2018When It Pleases You\u2019, and \u2018How Long?\u2019 These songs that are just waiting to connect with somebody, or feeling like somebody\u2019s drifting away, so that was all lonely, super mournful songs and then the year after that I just kept writing and I probably ended up with forty or fifty songs, and a lot of the things that fit together had that kind of lonesome and mournful vibe, but there were some that were also like sunshine was coming in, and that\u2019s how it all kind of came together, it was like the songs that fit together had that lonesome but with hopeful and sunshine at the same time.<\/p>\n

What does the title \u2018Love Without Fear\u2019 represent to you?<\/strong>
\nI think just very plainly, I wrote it in a song after I had a confusing conflict with a friend of mine, one of those conversations that just get worse and worse and you don\u2019t know why? I was kind of confused and bummed out about it and after a while of thinking about it, he said I was gonna do some stupid stuff that was gonna hurt him or cause him a lot of problems and trouble, and once I realised the whole conflict was about him being worried and fearful about what I was gonna do, I was able to just chill out and I was able to maybe decide that the thing to do was just love him a lot and show him I wasn\u2019t going to do something dumb. Then after I thought about that, I just wrote the song in a very short amount of time, and interesting combination of words, love without fear\u2026\u00a0 a friend of mine said as soon as you say \u2018without fear\u2019 it makes it scary, why couldn\u2019t you just say love, do you have to say without fear? Now I\u2019m scared, but I think it makes some kind of sense, if we\u2019re trying for some larger type of love then you have to do it fearlessly.<\/p>\n

I was intrigued by the \u2018A Song Can Be About Anything\u2019 Project, can you tell us a little bit about it?<\/strong>
\nWell the song called \u2018A Song Can Be About Anything\u2019 is interesting as I tried to make sort of a list song, I was trying to make a list that sounded awesome, and then it turned into this very other thing, it turned into this very heartfelt song, and then I just kind of had this notion that if people could join in the list making and add a crazy new topic to the list that would be really cool. I think someone in my record label office had the basic idea for it in doing a collaborative project with people and I got really excited with it, like what we can do is we could try to spend six months or four months gathering people\u2019s song subjects and kind of a sense of how broad or are there patterns, do people say the same things now and again? Then create a video clip for it, I thought that would be kind of cool.<\/p>\n

Now many will know that you are a prolific songwriter and have had a hand in many huge hits for artists, what is it you enjoy about collaborating with artists and seeing them perform your work?<\/strong>
\nThat\u2019s a rush especially as I have been very lucky with the people that I work with, so many of them are just amazing singers and performers, and I get to see ideas of mine performed by the best voices around you know? That\u2019s amazing. There was a point when Semisonic did \u2018Feeling Strangely Fine\u2019 I had written sixty songs for that record and at that time I didn\u2019t have any practise writing with other people or helping them with their songs or whatever, I saw the writing on the wall and it was going to be writing sixty songs every three years for an album that comes out. So write all these songs and only use a fifth of them on an album and maybe a few others as B-sides, and have like forty five songs that weren\u2019t getting used for every album and I just felt like geez, I wanna be prolific but I also want some chance of my extra output having a life in a world also, so I happened upon an idea to write with other people for their albums\u2026<\/p>\n

Oh and it works\u2026<\/strong>
\nYeah, the first one I did was with a New Zealand born artist named Bic Runga, I asked all my friends in Minneapolis if they wanted to write a song with me and they said no thanks\u2026 they were all just kind of scared of it I guess, but Bic and I got together and wrote a song and it ended up in this movie called \u2018American Pie\u2019 and it almost made things kind of easy to me. Wow I co-wrote this song for the first time and it ended up in a movie, that\u2019s pretty easy.<\/p>\n

How do you decide what songs you keep and what songs you give to other artists?<\/strong>
\nI try to do it this way, if I\u2019m with somebody for a session, if I have a great idea I just show it to them no matter who they are or how precious I feel about the idea I just show it to them right away, I always feel if I could use my best idea today then I\u2019ll think of a good idea tomorrow for something else. So I don\u2019t really pick and choose in that way, if I have a really good song idea in a co-write session I\u2019ll just show it to my co-writer, \u2018do you like this?\u2019 and they\u2019ll either say yes or no and I guess sometimes if they say no, I\u2019ll finish it for myself and sometimes they turn out to be really good.<\/p>\n

This will be near impossible to do, but do you have an all-time favourite song you\u2019ve written or had a hand in writing?<\/strong>
\nOh\u2026 well I guess I have a couple that I feel pretty great about. \u2018Someone Like You\u2019 is probably my favourite one\u2026 There\u2019s a song I wrote with Gabe Dixon, he\u2019s a Tennessee based singer song writer, he and I wrote a song called \u2018All Will be Well\u2019 and it\u2019s one of those songs where I feel if I hadn\u2019t written any other good songs then I\u2019d still have done the job with that one song, but very few people have heard that one comparatively\u2026 I like \u2018Secret Smile\u2019 of Semisonic\u2019s that meant a lot that might be up there; there are a little handful that mean something special.<\/p>\n

You\u2019ve worked with our own Aussie in Missy Higgins, how did that relationship come about?<\/strong>
\nMissy and I had actually, I think we were each on each other\u2019s radar as potential co-writing partners for several years and for one reason or another it just didn\u2019t work out, maybe she was not interested or it was just the timing, but I had the feeling we were supposed to get together and write, and I had heard a lot of her music and I was familiar as a fan with her music. I think it was probably 2010 she was passing through LA after she had been at the Burning Man festival I think, and we just got together and we got introduced by some mutual friends and got together and wrote several songs, and had a great time. We wrote a couple of things that ended up on her recordings, and then it was many months later I was working on \u2018Even The Stars Are Sleeping\u2019 and she was passing through town and we were talking about we were going to get together and do a little more work on this song that was \u2018Set Me On Fire\u2019 or it\u2019s maybe called \u2018Melody\u2019, we were going to do a little more work on that song and I asked her if she would also sing this other track with me. So that\u2019s how \u2018Even The Stars Are Sleeping\u2019 came about, it was almost like \u2018oh yeah while you\u2019re over here let\u2019s do a performance of this other song too\u2026\u2019 and she was gracious enough to say yes.<\/p>\n

I saw you in Sydney play a solo show a number of years back and just watching and listening to the way you command the crowd was amazing, what do you think it is about your music that people relate to?<\/strong>
\nIt\u2019s funny because I was talking with Rick Rubin about his musical taste and he was saying that in one way he\u2019s got really good musical taste, but it\u2019s really the good taste of a suburban kid from Long Island New York\u2026 it\u2019s kind of normal guy good taste, and I really related to that, I feel in one way that if I hear a new piece of music and I suddenly go \u2018oh this is amazing, this is my own special little discovery and no one\u2019s ever heard of it and it\u2019s never gonna be huge\u2019 for example the last time that happened I heard this song by Lorde before she was on the radio and I just thought \u2018this is so special, I\u2019ve got to know more about this person, she\u2019s gonna be my new private discovery\u2019 and then always, what always happens is they become the hugest thing that everybody\u2019s heard a billion times.\u00a0 It\u2019s like my taste is very much in line with everybody else\u2019s *laughs* or the broad run of people. So in a weird way if I write a song that really makes it to my standard of awesomeness, which doesn\u2019t happen all the time, it happens every twenty songs or something like that, but when I make a song that really pushes my buttons and I say \u2018oh fuck that\u2019s a really great song\u2019 I don\u2019t even think everybody\u2019s gonna like it, I never go to that place, but those are the songs that lots of people like, the same ones that I think are really great, it\u2019s just that I\u2019ve got maybe a super power in the area of making music, but my taste is very relatable to everyday people, I just have that kind of taste.<\/p>\n

I also enjoyed when you performed songs that you\u2019d written for other people but with your version and I thought that was great\u2026<\/strong>
\nI have this kind of principal that I figured out maybe six years ago, I\u2019ve been trying to figure out when it first started, I had this thing that happened when I was in a co-writing session, I\u2019d be thinking this is not so good or I don\u2019t like what we\u2019re working on, but maybe they like it, maybe their fans are going to like this bad song, I don\u2019t know? So I would kind of go along and then we\u2019d finish the song and neither of us would ever mention it again, it always turned out that it was bad. I started to think how can I avoid that kind of thinking? What mental tests can I do to make sure I\u2019m really digging what I\u2019m working on? One of the things was if I could picture playing this song for an audience of my fans, and that makes me feel good then I know we\u2019re onto something good, then I know that I dig it and I\u2019m not second guessing anything and I\u2019m really being honest, so if I\u2019m working on a song and we\u2019re nearly done and I kind of mentally imagine putting it into the set of my own shows and how did that feel? Did that feel good? That\u2019s how it turned into me thinking well why don\u2019t I actually just do that? I could do \u2018Easy Silence\u2019 or \u2018Lullaby\u2019 I\u2019ve been playing \u2018Someone Like You\u2019, I do \u2018Don\u2019t You Remember?\u2019 that I did with Adele, I did \u2018Treacherous\u2019 at a show last year that I did with Taylor Swift. I just really try and do more of that and it\u2019s great as it integrates more of my musical practise.<\/p>\n

Can we expect to see you back anytime soon?<\/strong>
\nBoy I really wanna go there, I\u2019m not sure when it\u2019s gonna happen but everybody that works with me knows it\u2019s something I really wanna do, and the last time was 2008, it was quite a while ago, a long time, so I always have loved travelling in Australia and New Zealand, it\u2019s all been sort of a dream for me, so I wanna get back. I honestly am banging the drum here with my whole team to get back as every time has been dreamy and really inspiring and I always come back to America like with a whole refreshed perspective on lots of things, it\u2019s really interesting, I don\u2019t say that about every country that I\u2019ve visited, it just seems to happen when I go down there.<\/p>\n

Australians would probably best know you from Semisonic, I do have to ask, any chance we\u2019ll ever see the band out there rockin\u2019 again?<\/strong>
\nWell every time I say there\u2019s a chance then the headline of the article is \u2018Semisonic \u00a0might be back together\u2019 *laughs* so my honest straight up answer is, that I would love that, we\u2019re all still really good friends, Jacob and John and I still see each other at least a couple of times a year, as we live in three different cities, but we visit each other\u2019s homes and talk on the phone quite a bit, so it would actually be a great pleasure for all three of us to do more Semisonic records and tour, I think that would be great. What\u2019s holding it up strangely, is me, writing the songs, I just have to get into the right mood of writing for a loud, loud rock band and I think it would all just come together. For some reason it just hasn\u2019t happened, I guess I\u2019ve been super busy writing for other people and making this solo album and drawing a lot of pictures\u2026 but I sure love the thought and I definitely don\u2019t want to rule it out as I think it would be a very fun thing to do.<\/p>\n

The year is well underway now, so let\u2019s predict the rest of it, so if you can finish this sentence for me, by the end of 2014 Dan Wilson will\u2026<\/strong>
\n*pauses* oh\u2026 have written twenty five more songs\u2026<\/p>\n

Yeah that\u2019s by next Thursday, so what about the rest of the year?<\/strong>
\n*laughs a lot* I just don\u2019t want to hold myself to too high of a standard because I want to take some vacation this summer.\u00a0 Plus if there\u2019s ever excess that\u2019s no problem\u2026<\/p>\n

Essential information<\/strong><\/h2>\n

From:\u00a0<\/strong>\u00a0<\/strong>Minneapolis, MN, USA<\/p>\n

Latest Release:<\/strong> Love Without Fear<\/p>\n

Website:<\/strong>\u00a0http:\/\/www.danwilsonmusic.com<\/p>\n

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