Daniel Donato has been ahead of the curve his entire life. Take your pick from his resume of achievements at the ripe old age of thirty. From Don Kelley to the Grateful Dead, his Cosmic Country ethos is one of one. Just like its precocious creator. There’s no question the “cosmic” side of the dichotomy is limitless. His latest release Horizons leaves no question the “country” side has no limits as well. If you think Cosmic Country starts at Outlaw Country, you’re off by many decades.
Donato’s country influence begins at Jimmie Rodgers and Marty Robbins if not earlier. He packs Horizons with the same tales of life, love, and lore that have been the foundation of country music since the beginning. Donato’s continued ability to transform those old themes into something new, once again keeps him ahead of the curve.
Not only is Horizons packed with a wide array of country themes, it’s packed in every way imaginable. The album has fifteen songs. With Chore clocking in at eleven minutes and Down Bedford at ten, that’s a ton of new music. The album is also packed with contributions from Brett Resnik on pedal steel, and longtime Donato friend Lillie Mae Rische on fiddle. Their noticable contributions sends the album into deeper horizons.
Just before the album release and his first headlining gig at The Ryman, Slide&Banjo’s Marty Halpern connected frequencies with Donato for a packed interview including the making of Horizons and his non-ending mission to spread Cosmic Country to the masses.
S&B- Hey Daniel. It’s good to talk to you.
Donato- Me too brother. I’ve been looking forward to this.
S&B- You have no idea. I’ve had Horizons for a while and been eager to talk to you about it. How are things going? I’m sure it’s been nuts for you?
Donato- It’s nothing out of the usual.
S&B- Sure thing. You’ve got an album release and are headlining at The Ryman for the first time. Just another week for you Daniel.
Donato- Oh yeah (laughs).
S&B- The album is great. I’ve listened many, many times along with your live versions of these songs. I’ve got a million questions so let’s get to it. What were your thoughts, mission and goal when you went into the studio for the album?
Donato- It was definitely to make a truthful record that leans in on tradition but is also relevant in the context of it coming out in 2025. It’s a task that requires a lot of forethought and sticking to the vision while you’re recording it. It feels like we’ve been making this record since we finished Reflector. Some of these songs we’ve been playing live for two or three years. It was a beautiful experience overall.
S&B- Forethought is good word. Horizons has been well thought out and produced. It has a clean/fresh feel to it. Like running through a sprinkler on a hot day. The time in the studio was well spent. The deepest background instruments and vocals are positioned perfectly. Do you have any thoughts on what drives the sound and feel of the album?
Donato- It is different. We’re on this journey and things are getting revealed to us. There’s this dichotomy of us working on a building brick by brick. It’s earthly and spiritual because I can hear the work. I can hear the hours. I can hear the editing and all the craft. The more it’s being revealed, more people will feel that. I can hear it in subtle ways. It makes sense because the sound is coming from the band and me. It feels like we’re on the same journey, but that journey has deepened.
S&B- With fifteen songs, everyone is getting their money’s worth. That’s a bodacious amount of music. Especially with the lengthy Chore and Down Bedford.
Donato- I love Quentin Tarantino and I love Clint Eastwood. Their movies are long. I love knowing that if I’m going to watch one of their movies, it’s imposed upon me I’m going to have to give them some time and attention. They always make it worth it. I like that. Especially on the album side of where listeners are today. Not everyone listens to vinyl. If you’re gonna sit down and listen to one of our albums, we’re going to acknowledge your time is valuable and we are going to take up more time than usual. I want to make it a journey and an experience. It takes a lot of songs to set that up. Cosmic Country is its own form of country music.
When country artists put out records these days, they have a ton of songs on them. That’s the standard. Tons of songs. Zach Bryan put out an album that had 32 songs. Gavin Adcock, who’s great put out a record that had 28 songs. Granted some of the songs are shorter. I like that with country music. People who listen to country music really like listening to songs. There’s a lot of songs on the record including some longer tracks. I want to speak to the country music listeners and one way to do that is introduce them to Cosmic Country. Those are really long musical journeys. I’m happy how it turned out.
S&B- You’ve added fifteen new songs on top of covers and even newer songs you’re starting to play live. This album adds years of material to fill your setlists. I don’t think anyone will complain about the mass influx of music. Especially the jam side of Cosmic Country that can’t get enough.
Donato- You can always add more but you can’t take away. If we put out an album that didn’t have enough songs, we’d have to put out another whole new record right after.
S&B- The addition of Brett Resnick on pedal steel and Lillie Mae Rische on fiddle jump out at the listener. It adds multiple levels and expands the studio version of these songs while still letting you do what you want to them live on stage.
Donato – You’re the first person to mention Brett and Lillie. I’ve known Lillie since I was fourteen and we played on Broadway together. She and her family would literally play at Layla’s Bluegrass Bar every day of the week. She’s been the standard for bluegrass fiddle. She has this quality that is so unique and singular. Brett is similar as a pedal steel player. He has traditional virtuosity that is high level technically. Really high level musicianship and technical, complex ideas. He can do that and the traditional Budweiser neon light honky-tonk thing too. I’ve said this before. With Cosmic Country we need a pedal steel player in our band full time. It’s not Brett. But that style. I want to be sensitive to how I socialize that idea to people. The records are a good way to do that. To let them know this is coming. We’re working on new songs that aren’t on this record. With Cosmic Country, it needs to exist in the past, present, and future all the time. To be what I think it can be. It needs to be omnipresent musically. I don’t know as a human if we can do that, but if you use music, it can go forever. I still listen to Jerry Garcia Band recordings from 1989. That way, they’ll never be gone. Maybe it will in a thousand years, but we’ve got at least the next hundred years.
S&B- You worked with Vance Powell again and recorded at Sputnik Sound in Nashville. Did you do anything technically different this time? The album is super clean. Starting with Sugar’s solo in the opener Blame the Train, the album sounds far beyond what you’d expect from a release this early in a musician’s career.
Donato- It’s the same piano and we used the same microphones. It’s something intentional. There’s an era of Nashville where there was a certain sound coming out of places like Owen Bradley’s Barn. Those records have their own sound. Different artists would record at that studio and there was a sound on those records that allowed a through line. When there’s a through line, there’s a large catalogue that can be tied together in a Tolkien or Steinbeck sense. There’s a similar spirit that you can make accessible through sound that lets you create your own universe. Almost like your own microverse. The same thing with the Capitol recordings of the early days of Buck Owen’s and Merle Haggard’s careers. They would record in the same room with the same microphones and the same producers. I just love that. Cosmic Country needs to have a signature studio sound to it. Vance alone can create that in his studio. There’s one place in this world that sounds like Sputnik Sound. That’s great. You have to actually go there. There are so many things outsourced these days. We’re losing the personal touch. Music is so much more sacred than anything material. I want to stay true to this is the one band that sounds like this because they record at this one studio with one guy. That’s increasingly rare. The Beatles had that. It couldn’t have happened any other way.
S&B- To that point, this album has what I would call reciprocal songs to Reflector. You have Chore which resembles Dance in the Desert. Hangman’s Reel is also similar to Sugar Leg Rag. There are a couple of others. I know one of your goals is to make the Comic Country sound instantly recognizable. This flows in that direction.
Donato- I look at Chris Stapelton who pretty much since Traveller created a through line where you can relate all his records to each other. There’s not a great departure. There’s something I like about that. If you like Traveller than you’re going to like the next record. And the record after that. He had to sacrifice a lot. But what he gained was a lot of trust from the people who listen to him. I’ve always wanted to do that. He’s always had a cohesive body of work. I’m glad you found that through line. I thought of the same with Chore and Dance in the Desert and I thought the same thing with Hangman’s Reel and Sugar Leg Reg.
S&B- As I mentioned, there are several other instances. You get away with it because of the wide range in the music you cover. You’re not trapping the audience in one sound.
Donato- People find all kinds of ways to reduce the infinite into something in handcuffs. They always have. As long as we’re reaching for something dynamic and true, it will never get boring. It would be us getting in the way. Not the music.
S&B- Talk to me about the band’s involvement in the album as well as what they’re bringing on stage every night as the Cosmic Country crowds continue to grow.
Donato- I’m so happy and excited and inspired and challenged by the guys constantly. The thing most inspiring is to see all of us grow individually and collectively. We aim our individual growth towards the collective one. That aim is exciting. I get to witness Sugar, Bronco and Mustang every night become better and more truthful musicians. It’s so inspiring to see them do that subjectively while we’re collectively doing it together. There’s a natural amount of familial or tribal like tension that comes from all the time we spend together. That adds into this level of emotion we can all access together. The emotion becomes the fuel. If any one of us is having a challenging moment. If it’s caused by something to do with us or nothing to do with us. It creates an emotion that we’re all receptive to. We’ve spent so much time together and are so focused. The four of our minds have created one mind. When we bring that emotion to the mind, heart and soul we all have as one, there’s more that’s revealed to us in the music. The music is like the ocean. It doesn’t matter if the water is placid or category five, it still is what it is. Just at different dynamic levels. I can hear how we have all grown more together after creating and listening back to Horizons. I’m so happy all four of us have a real relationship with each other.
Coming up in part two, Donato takes Slide&Banjo deeper into the horizons of his latest release. He explores the tales behind the album’s lyrics and their importance in his Cosmic journey. Resolute in creating a “through line” completely covering a wide cosmic expanse, Donato shares his visions for the continued journey ahead.
Daniel Donato – Horizons Retrace Records