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For Vancouver’s Dan Mangan, success hasn’t come overnight. From an outside observer, it may seem as if his critically acclaimed, 2009 Polaris shortlisted Nice, Nice, Very Nice came out of nowhere. In reality, Mangan’s been slogging (mostly solo) for at least six years, even before he released his debut album, Postcards and Daydreaming in 2005.
Over the years, the singer–songwriter has gone through many character–building steps a travelling musician has to endure: performing at open mics and near–empty bars and spending long days on the road. Mangan recalls his last gig in Hamilton, not being particularly inspiring.
“I played downstairs...in the bar and I remember the show clearly, because the bartender refused to turn off the televisions while I was playing. I was like ‘Hey man, can we just shut those off while I do my set?’ And he was like: ‘No. People like to watch the sportsticker.’ And I remember thinking, is this a concert or is this background music? What’s going on? So, I’m happy to move to a different venue,” laughs Mangan.
“Nothing against Quarters, but it was a stepping stone. I’ve played a thousand gigs like that, where you’re playing alone, solo, in some basement bar and trying to get people’s attention. It’s all part of paying your dues.”
Mangan and his six–piece band are more than halfway through their current tour which started in California opening for Blind Pilot. 11 gigs later, the band crossed the border and criss–crossed through Canada. One wonders if playing to American audiences while touring through Canada can be difficult, as breaking into the US market is a seemingly tricky experience.
“Audiences are audiences, like in terms of connecting in a particular place, it probably has less to do with the crowd in that town, then it does the country it exists in or the state it’s in. It’s like anywhere else, wherever you go, you have to start from the ground up. And we’ve just had more time to do that in Canada over the years, more repeated returns. Whereas in the States, we’re still very much kind of working on the ground level fan base.
“Very few people know who we are down there, so it’s familiar. We spend a lot of times playing in small bars and it’s just kind of part of the work now,” says Mangan. “It gives us some freedom to try out songs that we haven’t played live in a while or to try a song we haven’t rehearsed. If you end up playing a show to a handful of people, the stakes are pretty low, you can kind of do whatever you need to do to just let go and have fun. Each concert has an opportunity to be the best concert you’ve ever done.”
Written primarily on the road, Oh Fortune is Mangan’s newest and most comprehensive album. While it’s more complex than previous albums, it still a delightfully easy listen. The upbeat “Post–War Blues” bounces along with a sturdy beat, that almost explodes when then playful guitar solos rain down on the end of the chorus. In contrast, “Daffodil” is a beautifully simple sprawling ballad, that shows Mangan’s range. Oh Fortune, might not be as easily accessible as Nice, Nice, Very Nice was, but if you put in a couple serious listens, you’ll find that Mangan’s put together a finely–crafted album.
“Oh Fortune [was] arranged on the road, on tour with these guys. It was a much more collaborative experience for me. The lyrics and melodies were all mine, but in terms of how to make them sound; both in arrangements and sonically, [we asked] what kind of tone did we want and how is it going to make you feel?
“All in all, we were recording this album for five or six months, which was really healthy for me. I had felt rushed most of the other times I had recorded albums,” mentions Mangan. “This was a far more expansive project, sonically and also just in terms of my experience recording it. It’s nice to have some time and feel like you can make deliberate decisions and then realize you didn’t like them and then we would go back and redo it and not feel like we had to settle for what we had already done,” explains Mangan.
On top of being shortlisted for a Polaris Music Prize in 2010, Mangan has also won a handful of other awards including three CBC awards, iTunes Album of the Year and an XM Verge Artist of the Year award. Despite the accomplishments, the singer has maintained a humble and realistic perspective on the ebb and flow of the music industry.
“I feel like one of my strengths is downplaying my accomplishments; I don’t put too much weight into them. I feel like hype and buzz come and go and it’s very fleeting. A band can get a ton of attention here and there and it can be gone in a minute, people move on to something else. You cant really believe what people write about you, even if they’re writing something really nice about you, it’s just their opinion in that moment. If you believe that you have to believe in un–nice things. At the end of the day, you have to come back to the music, and work on the music and make sure it’s interesting and relevant and progressive. For me it’s just been about continually trying to surround myself with people who inspire me and people who make me want to make better music and I feel like I have a long way to go.
“Hopefully I’m just getting started, hopefully I can keep making records, hopefully they’ll keep getting better. As much as I appreciate the attention, I try not to pay too much attention to it.”
And when asked if the Vancouverite has a big mantle to house all his awards, Mangan playfully quipped, “I’d feel really embarrassed displaying things at home – I have a closet at home, seemly full of different awards. I can’t bring myself to get rid of them, but I also can’t bring myself to put them up in plain sight.” V
DAN MANGAN
w/The Daredevil Christopher Wright, The Crackling.
Thursday, October 27, 8pm.
@ the Studio at Hamilton Place.
10 MacNab St. S. Hamilton.
danmanganmusic.com
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