Feature Interview: Dan Craig

I first saw Dan Craig open for The Autumn Film and was extremely impressed. I’ve been lucky enough to catch Dan in a few more performances since then and it is a treat every time. I would describe Dan’s music as being somewhere in between that of Josh Ritter and Damien Rice with a sure streak of originality. His carefully crafted music and lyrics reflect sincerity and brilliance. Really, Dan Craig’s music speaks for itself, but I’m going to keep telling you about it anyway.

In addition to playing the Denver circuit, Dan Craig had the song Further To Fall from his 2008 album Skin Grows Thin on the television show One Tree Hill. This opportunity exposed Dan’s music to an incredibly wide audience.

In show, Dan Craig is accompanied by a unique backing band of Geoff Burghardt on mandolin, Seth Donovan on cello, and Mike Hall on drums. The choice of instruments makes for a rare and pleasant experience. Dan and his band are bursting with talent and are able to make each performance feel like something new and different. Craig’s kind and whimsical personality shines through on stage, allowing him to connect with the audience.

I met up for a cup of coffee with Dan Craig where I discovered that we shared a love for my favorite musician, Josh Ritter. We also discussed his decision to leave medical school to pursue music exclusively, an understandably incredibly difficult decision to choose between two such passions. I did explain that life is much easier when you’re talentless and not that smart, you just don’t have those decisions to make. However, I am thrilled that Dan is making more and more music that I love.

How did you get started as a musician?


I started playing music in middle school, when I was twelve or thirteen. I started playing guitar and I pretty much started writing right away. I think early on I just realized that the music I listened to got to me a lot and really affected me, so that was a logical outlet for me. I always kind of loved it. I had a band in seventh grade and was in a band in high school, neither of which were very serious, but it was always kind of there. I started playing on my own in college a little bit. I always kind of secretly wanted to do it, but it was hard to make the transition of quitting other stuff to go do this. It wasn’t just going to happen to me, I can’t just sit in my room and hope someone knocks on the door and says, “You’re awesome! Can I please put your record out?” It’s been a journey the last four or so years, since college, going back and forth between medical school and doing music full time and really enjoying both of them, but realizing that I can’t do both the way I want to. I started playing guitar because my dad had guitars around. I enjoyed it a lot more than playing piano. I knew I loved music, but I hated piano lessons. It was very frustrating to really enjoy music and then have to play music I didn’t like.






Did you go to medical school here in Denver?


Yeah, CU.






I looked at your website…I always feel creepy when I know details about people, from Googling them and reading about them on the internet. I don’t know if I’ll ever get over that.


You’re allowed to. If we were just hanging out and you Googled me it would be a little strange.






Yeah that would be weird. You can Google me if that would make you more comfortable.


I remember the first time that I did that, when Google, to me, was pretty new. I was getting set up on a blind date in college and my friend asked, “Did you Google her?” and I’m like, “That’s so creepy!” He said, “It’s just a tool to be used. You don’t have to be a jerk about it.” So I did and I felt so awful and so creepy. There’s always some picture of somebody online and the one of this girl didn’t happen to be very flattering. It put a totally unfair image in my head. It made me feel like such a creep. But that’s not the same thing as what you’re doing. This is your job.






Then I go to a bunch of shows and take pictures of them. It’s just a very creepy profession.


I’ve got Daniel Craig the actor that steals all my Google hits.






Oh yeah. Do you get mistaken for him a lot?


No. It’s everyone’s favorite joke. I was at the airport in New York a couple weeks ago and the security guard asked, “Are you Daniel Craig the actor?” I just looked at him and said, “No, I’m not.” The security line at the airport is not where I like to joke around. I’m not in a happy mood right now and I just want to keep my mouth shut and get through the line. I know you think it’s cute, but…






You’ve seen Office Space, right?


Uh huh.






It’s like the guy named Michael Bolton.


Yes, “It’s funny. Never heard that before.”






“That’s original!”


It is weird though. For me, with all the MySpace and stuff, I honestly don’t know if I should have pages like that if I want to do music. Because it does feel creepy sometimes how much personal information you put out there. You have to have boundaries.






People will take advantage of anything you put out there.


You learn when you Google stuff about people that it all pops up somewhere.






Oh yeah.


If you blog it or put it anywhere, someone can find it. That makes me feel sometimes a lot of pressure to expose your whole life, to constantly tell people everything you’re doing and I think, “If they’re really my friends, then they’ll know.” And if they don’t already know… I find out from Facebook that my friends are divorced or getting married or having children. If I didn’t already know this, then maybe it’s none of my business.
I didn’t know how to use MySpace until we made one for the website. I really don’t know how to use it and am a little afraid of it, but it is necessary in this business.
You have to have it. It’s a necessary evil, but I think it’s good practice for drawing boundaries. You have to be part of it, but you have to know when [to stop]. It’s okay to not reply to everybody, it’s okay to not a bunch of [personal information on it].






You went to an Ivy League school?


University of Pennsylvania, yes.






How did you like Pennsylvania?


I think I pretty thoroughly enjoyed it. It was good. The first year was really hard because it was such an adjustment from Colorado, but by the time I left, I really loved Philadelphia a lot. I had a really great time at college. I didn’t see a ton of the rest of the state, but I drove through it a couple of times.






It’s big.


It is big. There’s some pretty mountains there, different from here. Yeah, I really liked it.






Have you lived here your whole life?


Except for college, yeah. I grew up here.






There aren’t many people who are actually born in Colorado.


There’s less of us than you think. There’s a lot of transplants. I’m a native. It’s a really awesome place to live and I think we take it for granted a little bit. I do love traveling and seeing other places. We get a lot of sunshine.






Have you done a lot of music outside of Denver or Colorado?


It depends on compared to whom. I haven’t toured a ton, but I’ve traveled a fair bit. I’ve played pretty often in New York and other spots on the east coast sometimes. I’ve played the Midwest and L.A. I’ve done a little bit of touring, but found I had a hard time making money with it. Denver’s the home base. New York’s probably the only other place where I have a significant foothold.






What has been your biggest challenge as a musician?


Making a living. It is the hardest thing to combine trying to be really freely creative with constantly thinking about how you’re going to sell it. You have to, it’s not selling out to think about how you’re going to make a living doing it. I think the hardest thing for me has been to learn how that can actually make me better as a songwriter. It’s good to write music that people like, but you need to find a way to do it that’s also music that you love and you really, sincerely want to make. And how do you sell it? That has been the struggle for me the last five years and especially now being married and I’m feeling even more pressure to make a living. I don’t care how good the record is, or how good I think it is, how do I make more money? You’re constantly thinking about it, well not constantly, but often. Also, people ask you all the time, “What does that mean to be a musician for a living? What is your goal? What are you trying to do? Are you going to try to get on a label? Are you going to try to tour more?” It’s hard to answer that when the truth is, “I don’t know”. I really don’t know. The music industry is in a weird place right now and I really don’t know what to do. It’s a huge challenge. It challenges everything from how you spend your days to how you write songs to “Do I need to have forty different profiles on line? Do I really need to have a Reverb page? Maybe. I don’t know. Do I want to spend time doing it? No, not really. Can I afford to pay someone else to do it? No. Can I afford to pay my electric bill? Probably.” So it’s a lot to take in. That’s the hardest thing. The music part is a lot of fun. I love playing around Denver. The shows are great. There’s a lot of talent. Not that that’s easy, but it’s not as challenging as making a living from it.






Tell me about the Denver music scene.


The Denver music scene was started by me and Dave Herrera [of Westword] a few years ago. We just decided that there should be more music in Denver. I think there’s a lot of talent in Denver overall and I think there are a lot of positive people who support each other. You don’t always get that. A lot of scenes feel really competitive. You feel like there are only so many opportunities, so you’re fighting for shows or whatever. I think Denver, overall, feels like a collaborative kind of family thing. The UMS is a good example. You just sort of walk around and see all of your friends. I never thought I’d have this many actual friends; all of the bands that have become actual friends that you bond with and figure stuff out with, and play on each other’s records. It’s really cool. To me, I really like the fact that there seems to be something cool happening in Denver in that bands are starting to break out of here, but there isn’t really a Denver genre. They’re kind of all over the place. It’s not like there are twenty bands that are all the same. It’s not like the grunge movement, where there’s a bunch of awesome bands, but they’re all the same genre. On one side, it’s good to not have too much music industry because it gives you the freedom to not be competitive, but the flip side of it is that it’s hard for any of these bands to break out. It’s a hard city to tour from because we’re so far away.






You have to drive eight hours to hit another city.


And when you get there, it’s Salt Lake City or Omaha. I’ve played both of those places and they’re relevant, but it’s not like you’re going to San Francisco or Chicago or L.A.






So was it your dream to have a song on One Tree Hill?


I wrote the song about One Tree Hill. I was inspired by the show. No, it was cool. Obviously I didn’t plan on it. I had never seen it before the episode that my song was on and it honestly freaked me out a little bit because it happened to be some high point. That summer I just had decided that I wanted figure out how to get my stuff published so I reached out to a lot of publishers and most of them said no, but one of them worked out. It was cool. It’s a trip to hear your song on TV. It took me a minute to realize that it was really happening, that everyone that was watching the show was hearing it, it wasn’t just me. It was way bigger than I thought it would be, too. There are a lot of kids who watch that show. And adults, too, I guess.






I like to wash a lot of trashy teen television, but I’ve never seen that particular show.


Oh you’d love One Tree Hill then.






I’m too busy watching serious things like Gossip Girl to fit that into my busy schedule.


We make fun of it, but I watched Dawson’s Creek while I was in high school occasionally and a little 90210, that’s the same idea.






Who do you think would win in a fight between the characters on One Tree Hill and the characters on Dawson’s Creek?


I don’t think there would be a fight. I think the Dawson’s Creek cast is too nerdy and wordy and they would talk their way out of it. Remember how stilted the dialogue was in that show?






It was terrible.


It was like Gilmore Girls, but not as intelligent.






I watched that, too.


I love Gilmore Girls. To me, it’s like watching a game show, like how many allusions can I understand? If I can get like 90% I feel like I’m winning. I don’t even care what the plot is. I just want to know if I get the references or not. It was weird.

I don’t know how to describe [the moment they used my song in]. The music ramped up and there was this guy just like silently crying in a gym and you’re just like, “How did we get here? What a strange place for a song that I wrote about a friend of mine years ago that now, all these people who love this show, are going to associate with this thing happening. But it was really cool. I think it has become an important way for people to find out about music. I know people who are exposed to new bands by the television shows that they watch. But anyway that’s how I got famous. That’s why I’m huge now.






Well, I really appreciate you taking the time to meet with me and help us out.


I like to reach to the community, back to where I started my roots.






Yeah, well that’s understandable.


They can’t hear the sarcasm when you transcribe this. They can’t see the air quotes.






I’ll make it all serious, like you’re just saying this.


Make me sound like a real asshole if you can. Like really pretentious. There have been a few things that I’ve said that gives me more sympathy for people who are in the public eye a lot because you realize, “That can’t be what I’ve said!” But I did say that. Sometimes I sound like an idiot. When someone is writing down everything I say, it’s not all gold. It’s like that Almost Famous moment at the end, when they’re going over the article. “I didn’t say that. Did I? Is this really how I come off?”






What inspires you?


That’s a hard question. I like to find new ways to tell stories. There are so many experiences that are common to everybody and when it comes down to it, there are only a handful of really powerful, shaping emotions that we feel. Somehow there is always a way to make it feel new, or nuance it in a cool way. I get inspired by seeing some of this, a hint or just a little snapshot of it anyway, and think, “Wow, I’d really like to find a way to tell that.” To explore that a little bit. And when I feel like I’m getting it, it’s like, “Yes! This is making sense to me.” Or this helps me understand what that feels like. I get excited about that. If I get stuck writing a lot, I’ll just go read other stuff. I like to read a lot, to hear another story being told.






What do you like to read?


I’ve been really into the Russians for a long time. I’m a little bit nerdy about that. I’ve been reading a lot of Dostoyevsky, Chekov, and Tolstoy. But I like to read almost everything. I tend to like older books. I get made fun of because I never buy new books. I go into the cheap version of the classics section because I know it’s going to be good. Who knows [if the new stuff] is going to be around in a few years? Just because Oprah likes it doesn’t mean I’m going to like it. I like being in Colorado to get out in nature, in the mountains, that kind of stuff helps me relax and get creative. There’s not really one overwhelming thing that inspires me.






What music do you listen to?


I listen to a lot of stuff. I listen to a lot of songwriters. Right now, I’ve been listening to the new Radiohead record, In Rainbows, which I like a lot. I’m excited to hear the new Wilco record. They’re one of my favorite bands. I think The Beach Boys is on the record player at home. I listen to a lot of The Beatles, too. In the studio, we’re trying to make a different sounding record. I’ve listened to a lot of Beck’s Sea Change, Bon Iver’s [For Emma, Forever Ago]. I like listening to stuff like that. I’m not trying to copy it, but I’m trying to make it more ambient, but solo singer/songwriter, so I’m listening to those records, too.






Tell me about your most recent release.


My most recent release was the Accidents EP. When Skin Grows Thin came out in May of 2008, we had these songs. It takes so long to put out a record, that most people thought, “I can’t believe you have this stuff ready.” We had these songs ready a year ago. It was like two years from the time that we started playing Further To Fall at shows to when the record came out. By the time it actually comes out, you’ve had months to write new songs. We kind of had these songs that summer. It’s called the Accidents EP because, well there’s a song called Accidents, but because it wasn’t very intentional. I didn’t want to lose the energy we had writing stuff, so I booked a day in the studio. I think there was one day of overdubs that I just came in for, but I think we did all the tracking in just one day. That was like fall of 2008, but we decided to wait until 2009 to put it out. It’s more collaborative, I feel like everybody had a part in writing stuff on it. To me, I hear that. It sounds like everybody’s invested in it and loving it. The last record was a lot of me writing all the parts and playing all the instruments, and it’s not as good.






How many instruments do you play?


I will play any instrument, but there’s only a couple that I can play well. I’ve learned how to fake a lot of them well enough to get by, but I don’t like to do that. I’ll play guitar and I’ll play piano or keyboards or whatever. These days, I can play a little bit of mandolin, I can play bass, and I can fake drums, but not well enough anymore to be on the record. There are a couple songs where I play everything on the record and I’m not proud of some of those parts, but no one notices. It’s okay. The EP was really cool. It was fun to have a little snapshot and it made the band feel invested in it.
Well, I think it’s great. I’ve listened to it quite a bit, actually.
Thank you. The EP I was kind of nervous about because I wanted it to be a little different.






It is different.


It’s got a different feel to it.






But it works.


Two weeks before it came out I had this kind of freak out moment. You listen to it so much when it’s yours that you lose perspective and you think, “Maybe it sucks. Maybe everyone is going to hate it and I don’t know what I’m doing.” It was really cool to have it come out and people who already liked my music were really into the EP.






Do you have a favorite song on the EP?


Every song on there, for me, really captured a really personal moment or feeling of something that had happened to me. So they all mean a lot to me. I think Sir Thomas More always feels emotional when we play it live. I like that one a lot.






I really enjoyed hearing that one live.


Thanks. It’s a little different without the Rhodes, but the Rhodes is really heavy so we don’t bring that to all the shows. I like that one because, especially in the year the EP came out, it also happened to be the year that I was getting ready to be married. It was also the year where several people close to both me and my wife got divorced. I think that song, to me, is a lot about processing different pieces of that and how to be a friend to someone who is doing something you don’t agree with. Or maybe they’re not even. It’s hard. I wrote it about the guy, Sir Thomas More, about how can you be someone’s friend and not necessarily justify what they’re doing. And kind of sympathize with, “Yeah I get what you’re doing, I just don’t agree with it. But I’m still here.” I think that is why people tend to resonate with it because I think everyone’s been there. When someone you really care about is doing something and all they really want you to say is, “Yes, it’s okay. It’s totally cool.” And you’re like, “No, I can’t really say it’s okay, I’ll still be here though. You can still talk to me about it.”






So you said you’ve got a bunch of new songs. Are you working on a new record?


Yes. There are new songs in the works and I’ve been working on two projects, one with the band, like the band is on the record and then one more that’s kind of solo-y. I don’t know when they’ll come out. We haven’t even started recording the one with the band yet, there’s no particular rush right now. And Jessica [Sonner, Dan’s wife and fellow musician] and I are going to start working on a Christmas album. So that’s the next project, the Christmas album, which will hopefully come out this year.

Sir Thomas More – Dan Craig






Hey Denver: go see Dan Craig and Jessica Sonner at The Oriental Theater on Sunday night. For more information, visit DCraigMusic.com and MySpace.