While a pillar of Cosmic Country is its limitlessness, several foundations have become firmly rooted since its inception. The voyage for truth starts at traditional country music and rides a seamless through line to enthusiastically dancing in the desert. That makes Daniel Donato’s musical catalogue one of one. So are his hippie-country bandmates Mustang McGee, Sugarlegg, and Bronco Clark gliding back and forth across that musical through line over a hundred times on stage yearly.
Years into their journey and hundreds of thousands of miles from their origin have made the on-stage cohesion between the quartet as tight as ever. That sentiment is perfectly quantified in Donato’s latest release Ryman to Robert’s, a 28-song statement piece clearly illustrating the current state of Cosmic Country. Listening to Donato’s sold-out Ryman debut offers the full spectrum of songs and sound you will experience on a nightly journey. That sound is well defined and dialed in. At least until Donato adds a steel-pedal player which he has told Slide&Banjo he foresees happening one day.
Not only are Donato and Cosmic Country riding high musically, his dedication to getting eyes and ears on his journey is equally at a peak. Nightly sellouts are more frequent as are bigger venues and higher placement on the numerous festival sets he performs across the country.
In part two of our deep dive with Daniel Donato, he begins by discussing how the bigger crowds full of new faces are impacting the nightly performances. “It’s still a lot of people’s first time seeing us. We played at the Mishawaka Amphitheatre. On the rail are people I’ve seen tens of times. Some, a hundred plus times. There’s a quote I borrowed from a Bob Dylan press conference he did, I think in Rome around 2000. He says, ‘I play to the back of the room, and I sing to the back of the room.’ I’ve been doing that lately and what happens is the farther to the back of the room I look, I see people I haven’t seen before. That’s something that helps stabilize my ambition. There are songs we’ve played a hundred times that will still be somebody’s first time hearing it in a live music setting. That’s really nice. It’s really nice to know it’s a lot of people’s first show. That also means it’s my first show on some level.”
Even with a crowd dotted with first timers, Donato tells Slide&Banjo’s Marty Halpern, that does not create a shift in those rooted Cosmic Country foundations. “The narrative is similar to the last time we spoke. We don’t have to reinvent the wheel on this. I’m really grateful that in terms of our aim there doesn’t need to be any fundamental evolution. For example, my dad works in software. The nature of a project he’ll be working on in the first quarter of the year will be quite different than at the end of the year.”
Although it’s September, Donato still has around forty shows left on his 2026 schedule. Donato plays a makeup show in Memphis September 10th kicking off a practically nonstop run through the Midwest and East before wrapping the year with his biggest Denver run to date at Cervantes and the Mission Ballroom on November 6 and 7.
For Donato, playing in Memphis at a venue like Minglewood Hall is always a unique experience and a Cosmic way to kick off his last big run of 2026. “Memphis is crucial to American music, and I think that fact gets lost on a lot of people. When I was 14, and I discovered Don Kelley at Robert’s, the first song they played was Folsom Prison Blues. That song came to life in Memphis, Tennessee. Memphis is a strange town. Economically it hasn’t been as prosperous as Nashville. What’s so strange about that is musically, so much history has gone down there. To me, it’s such a unique, singular town to play in. Every time we play there it feels like Memphis. It feels like a Memphis show. I love that Mustang is from Memphis. Whenever we get to play there, it’s special because his family comes out. It’s really fun. I love it.”
Although Ryman to Robert’s was literally just released, the band has already hit the studio for the follow up to 2025’s Horizon. This time around Donato is shaking things up. The band spent several days recording in Nashville before their latest Ryman concerts. He offers the new process for the next album and the inspiration behind it. “For the next record, we’re going to make it in batches. I took a trip earlier this year to the Caribbean and I started diving into some Rolling Stones history. There was a record they made where they made it in chunks. Exile on Main Street. I really like that idea. We tour so much. When we get off the road, we’re in a nice place where our nervous system is wired and ready to go. Ready to play. The mind and soul. If we take that energy and put it in a studio environment and not on stage, it really sets us up to knock things out of the park.”
Donato adds, “Traditionally, we’ve been off the road for a month or two before we go and record. What I want to do is take chunks of time between tours and go and record two, three, or four songs at a time. We’re trying a new strategy, and I think it will be fruitful for us.”
Donato has stumbled into a new strategy on-stage with the capacity to unlock a new Cosmic Country galaxy. He recently played a handful of shows without a setlist. While this may seem like a simple change, Donato was blown away by the openness and awareness from not having a set destination or song to get to. He shares the origin of the change and the impact it could have on the future. “We really dive into our soundchecks. Our approach to soundcheck is changing all the time. During our last run, we did four days. Something I realized and our drummer Bronco realized was the way we improvise at soundcheck felt so much more truthful than the way we improvise during the show. I realized during the show we have a setlist. During soundcheck we never have a setlist. Unless we need to practice something.”
“What we tried on the last run was no setlist at all. Every day I’d write out a list of 3x the number of songs we would actually play. I would photographically socialize all those songs to my mind. By the time we got on stage, I had all these songs floating around in my conscience thought. At any moment, we could decide to go into a song that felt organic. When you’re improvising with no destination, you’re much more locked in on the conversation of the improv. When you have a setlist, sometimes the destination is primary. Improvisation is secondary. When you have no primary destination, the improvisation by de facto has to be primary. I found a cosmic loophole in the psyche of musicianship very recently.”
Whether he moves forward with a setlist or not, the significance of a simple few words is not lost on Donato. “I love when the fact of something does not equal the magnitude of the distance that it brings. The fact of having a setlist. Literally having a piece of paper with words on it next to you. You would think that’s such a small variable. When you remove that, the difference in performance and magnitude is unlimited.”
Always willing to look at life from multiple angles, Donato wraps up with his vision of his current role as Cosmic Country’s driving force. “I stand between the mirror with Cosmic Country. I’m not on either side. I can be, and I operate on stage where I’m just on the Cosmic Country side of the mirror. Where the music is going out and the energy coming in. Sometimes during a show, I won’t approach the music like someone in the band. I’ll approach the music like somebody who is in the audience. Somebody who is seeing a show. Because I’ve played so many shows, it gives me the ability to do that. If you can imagine the reality of what’s in between a mirror. It’s a strange thing. Whenever we look at a mirror, we’re on either side of it. There’s actually a space in between where the people on stage have been bestowed the opportunity to stand in. That’s cosmic, nice, and unifying.”
For all things Daniel Donato check out Danielbase- https://danielbase.com
September 10th Minglewood Hall Memphis tickets- https://www.ticketmaster.com/event/1B006367100A567B
November 6 & 7 Cervantes/Mission Ballroom Denver tickets- https://www.axs.com/events/1471224/daniel-donato-s-cosmic-country-tickets
Camp Cosmic 2027 tickets-
https://www.thecaverns.com/event/daniel-donato-s-cosmic-country-s-camp-cosmic-3