Daniel Gannaway
by Veda Dante
New Zealand independent singer, songwriter and surfer, Daniel Gannaway is home - for now. With four albums under his belt and a new one in the works - he talks to AllAboutSurf about swapping London for the beach, rediscovering surfing and making music.
 How does it feel to be home?
It feels great. Great to be here, great to be with family and friends, great to be sharing it with my girlfriend, great to be surfing with my sister and friends, great to be reconnecting with so many people and places down this way after so long.
You've been living everywhere but New Zealand for a while now - are you back for good?
Yeah, I've lived in a bunch of places over the past 12 years, but my musical journey has only been going for half that time. For now this is the right place for me to be. I've got plenty to occupy me. I can never say what the future will hold and certainly my lust for travel is not quelled, but as I said, for now this is the right place for me to be.
So I guess you're getting more surf now than in London?
Well, after not really surfing for the last 3 years that's not hard! [laughs]. I skated a bunch and I was lucky to get some time snowboarding in Italy and a couple of borrowed board sessions down on the South Coast. After living in cities like Amsterdam and London most recently, Auckland felt kind of empty and without a centre - so it was an easy choice to live on the west coast. It's really grounding out here. I regularly surf Maori Bay and Muriwai Beach now - both places are black sand beach breaks that have their days. I come from Gisborne though, which really can be an amazing place as a surfer. To get back down there is wonderful.
What's in your quiver?
I'm kind of lucky to have a cool deal for boards from kiwi shaper Graham Allen of Super Session www.supersession.co.nz. I pay for some and trade some, so I get to ride and test really interesting boards. Currently, a 5'9" fish, a 6'2" stretched hybrid fish, and a 6'5" pin. I also ride my girlfriends 7'2" single wing pocket rocket from time to time. I met Graham through my good friend and stylish mal rider Pete Morse [check his site www.surf2surf.com if you're heading NZ way].
 I'd returned from Indo with a separated hamstring after a squashing at Outside Corner Ulus. I couldn't walk real well and Graham made me an amazing wooden laminate epoxy mal, second to none that board. I slowly got my strength back over a year or so and the relationship continued into different and more experimental boards. Double wing pins, pocket rockets, stingers, extended fish etc. Graham has got a lot of concepts hidden away in his head from the 70's etc and it's just been amazing getting to ride these creations. I've never had a competitive mindset, so the exploratory freesurfer nature of this suits me down to the ground. It's also pretty cool seeing guys out having great time on boards that I know are a direct result of some of the testing that Graham and I have done together. He shapes a ton of real conventional stuff for people, but I'm really into the offbeat ideas. I see music and surfing as intertwined in that respect. Like with surfing and equipment designs evolving over time, music is also a really evolutionary, exploratory process. Riding a wave is a kind of free form jam.
 How important is surfing to you in regards to the process of writing and making music?
In the past I definitely drew on surfing less than I find I am now. I was missing the surf like crazy in London, so rather than record in London, I'm here. Surfing is back to being a real necessity in my life. I've been able to manage without for long periods of time but I've realised surfing just adds something unfathomable to my life. I'm not as good as when I was when I was 18, but I'm getting some confidence back and enjoying/appreciating the ocean more than ever. It's humbling the beauty and power of it all, the moods. I get hung up in trying to do good turns or whatever, you know performance stuff, and then the ocean kicks me in the ass and I kind of stop and look around again, just take it in. What a blessing. I wish we'd value that sea out there a little more. Globally it's seriously worrying pollution wise. I mean even here in Auckland if there's a stormy surf on the inner east coast harbour they close the beach because of raw effluent. I'm hoping through my music I might be able to help draw attention to these sorts of issues.
 What other sorts of issues - do you mean Political ones?
Certainly, as you'd know if you'd received any of the mail outs from my website for free mp3 MD recordings or 4 track demos of socio-political type songs. There's a ton of social/environmental/political links from the 'links' page also. Seeing as I've been away for 3 years this time around, I'm still trying to get a handle on what's going on here in New Zealand, although Helen Clark, the NZ Prime Minister, just said yes to GE which I think is extremely questionable when the EU and UK are rethinking the whole thing. Like most places where people have to live together it's not perfect and New Zealand has got it's own problems to sort out. In the last few years I feel it's just been impossible to ignore George Bush, no matter where you've been living. The decisions he and his administration have made, and are making, are impacting not only America, but the whole world. I wrote a song called 'A flower down the barrel of a gun' back in March 2003 against the Iraq war. I just felt all the cards weren't on the table for everyone to view. Radical things have gone on since he's come to power, and this endless war is being used to justify all manner of things. As far as I've experienced, he is not doing Americans any favors in the eyes of the average European, or in the eyes of friends of mine that are American, and certainly I've not heard any positive comment since being back in New Zealand. It's a real shame as you'd hope a President would be a great example to his country domestically, and also a great ambassador internationally. It was this feeling of disappointment in the Bush Administration that inspired another song 'It's amazing Grace'. I just kind wondered if 'Grace' knew what was happening. I've spent a good deal of time in the US, I love the place, it's an incredible country in so many ways. It's given me some great American friends and a lot of amazing experiences.
Other inspirations?
Well I'm lucky to have a bunch of pretty inspirational friends and family. They've been through the roller coaster with me. I like to think I'm an encouragement to them as they are to me. Then there's life I guess, the twists and turns it takes. Like most people, I've been through some pretty crazy shit. I guess that's what I draw on. We're moving so quickly that it's real important to slow down enough to notice. This is something I have to work on. My surfing's slowed down [laughs], so I'm getting there.
 Your music's been described as "like walking alone on the beach at night and seeing Jim Morrison and Jeff Buckley strumming and singing at the water's edge" - true or false?
Ahhhh... well that was a pretty flattering quote, but accurate in some way I guess. Maybe the darker more melancholy side of my music is where that quote hints at, and certainly the tone of 'Bound and Suburban' was kind of quiet, introspective and ethereal perhaps, but I've got a pretty upbeat kind of kooky side too, as evidenced even on my first album in a song like 'Jetwash'. The range I sing in is probably somewhere in between Jim and Jeff too, so that would account for a quote like that also. Certainly my musical influences would include both of them amidst a pretty wide musical taste. I like pretty much everything and it's just something very cool, to be able to add to that wealth of music out there.
 What's your plans for this new album?
Well I can give you a title [laughs]. It'll be called 'Darling One Year', which is also the title of a track on the album. I guess it kind of continues off in the direction that Bound and Suburban was heading in. It might not be so sprawling in that so far it looks like the average track time is less than on 'Bound and Suburban'. I've challenged myself musically again, but one similarity is that I'm writing another 'album', not a bunch of singles. I'm kind of old school in that I love 'albums'. I've never been a big fan of the "you have to have a radio hit song for it to be any good" kind of thing. I love it when an album takes me on a ride. I've also gotten my friend Mike Brennan from 'The Feds' to play bass on everything. I'm just kind assessing things as I go. I'm probably about 3 months off putting it out. I'm excited, I'm digging what I'm creating.
 After it's finished - what's next?
Two things are definitely on the boil. The first is a side project with Mike and Warren from 'The Feds'. We're creating some kind of rock/pop amalgamation between our collective styles and have written some great songs so far. The two of them are brilliant and it's really satisfying working in a completely different fashion from when I'm on my own. Secondly, I'm trawling through my archived news section. I have probably an album's worth of purely social/political songs that I've mostly given away from my website in a real raw demo form. I'm looking at them again to see what could work. I'd like to re-record them differently from how they were to me at the moment of writing and posting. It will be a challenge to retain the intent that they had at the immediate time. I'll just have to see how that goes.
 You also set up your own label a few years ago - how's that going?
Well, it's not easy, but I knew that when I chose this route back when I put out 'FINE BY ME' in 1998. I had this idea that I wanted to record an album with a 4 track in a stripped out bedroom overnight. It felt true to what I was doing at the time, I'd only been strumming a couple of years, playing in my bedroom wherever that was. My friend Richard stepped it up a little for me after that by getting me out to people's places playing for my dinner [laughs]. But 'FINE BY ME' was not a commercially driven idea, nor have any of my albums been since. For me it's always a personal creative endeavour. This of course can mean a sacrifice somewhere. For me it's been a process of working hard to save money towards the album ahead. I've completely self financed everything from the word go. Sometimes it means doing work that doesn't really rock my soul, but to get my music out is the biggest thing, it's my art and I always try to remember that. I think it's a real achievement to get out 4 albums so far, and to be working on a 5th. I'm proud of putting out what I want, how I want, but it is a harder road sometimes. Naturally, my dream is to be able to earn a great living from my music where I can devote myself 100% to it, not having to work any other job. It's the thing I'm most gifted at, and the thing I think I give the most back to the world through. My label is now called 'Truly Independent' and it's a name that just seems to affirm what my music is about for me and also the wider indie community that my music is a part of - CD Baby, Audio Lunchbox etc.
 Who are you listening to at the moment?
Ok...I'm enjoying immensely a bunch of music I bought through 'in music' the company that now distributes my music here in New Zealand. Let's see... 'The Notwist'-Neon Golden; 'Shannon Lyon'-Wandered; 'M.Ward'-The Transfiguration of Vincent; 'The Handsome Family'- Singing Bones; 'Spoon'-Girls can tell; 'Lambchop'-is a woman. That stuffs all imported into NZ, but you wouldn't believe some of the material being put out here. We've got a real ethnic diversity in New Zealand, particularly from Polynesia. I've just been cruising to Soane's new album 'Tongan Chic', and Nesian Mystik's album 'Polysaturated' is a favourite. Scribe is another musician writing some really positive stuff. I've barely scratched the surface of the current local music scene, although I hesitate to say we're being led into this whole dubious TV ratings scam that is 'Pop Idol'. Meanwhile great original music is overlooked.
 Hey, thanks for taking the time to talk to us.
Oh, no worries. Big thanks to AllAboutSurf.com and thank you to anyone that supports music, particularly indie music. And if you bought one of my albums, thank you again.
Veda Dante
AllAboutSurf Magazine |
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