Read our interview with Daniel Seavey below!
Multi-platinum singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and producer, Daniel Seavey has treated us with the release of his solo debut album Second Wind. We caught up with the musician to unpack the body of work.
Having visited our shores late last year, Seavey will return to Australia this June for his debut headline tour. Kicking off at Rechabite in Perth on June 7, the run of shows will continue on to Adelaide's Entertainment Centre Theatre, Melbourne's Forum and Sydney's Enmore Theatre, before wrapping up in Brisbane at Eatons Hill hotel on June 15. With the singers Melbourne show already sold-out, get your tickets to all remaining shows here.
Obviously, you have been in the industry for a while actually. Actually the first time we met was briefly in 2018 or 2019 when I was shooting the ARIA's.
Oh my gosh! It was right before Covid, so probably 2019. Was your hair that beautiful then? Was it that long?
My hair was short then actually. I actually cut it the other day. I cut about that much off. It was a lot longer, and I feel like it's very short now and people keep telling me it's no. But like in my head I'm like, 'no, I have short hair.'
That's so funny [laughs]. Oh, it had to be so long.
As I said, you have been in the industry for quite some time. So how do you think your artistry has evolved from your days in Why Don't We into what you are presenting on your debut solo album, Second Wind?
I love that question. I think the obvious answer is when you're in a band, you're obviously splitting up sort of the inspiration and what you want it to sound like between five people. So it kind of generalises it into, I don't like saying generic, but it is a more generic sound. Still a great sound, like I love the music we made. But obviously, you're kind of generalising everything down to fitting five people. Now I get to make whatever the heck I want. Sometimes that's a good thing. Sometimes it's a bad thing, because some of the songs that I haven't released are just bizarre. But it is fun to chase my own creative tail a little bit, you know, that rocks.
What makes the songs that you haven't released bizarre? I need to know.
Oh my God. So the thing about me is I am still figuring out who I am. I think honestly on my new album, Second Wind, I think you can hear that every song is pretty different. I love that about it because I don't like the idea just yet of being like, 'this is the sound.' For me specifically, I produce a lot of my music myself and am quite the music nerd. I think very quickly when I hear a song and a genre, I kind of back up and I don't view it necessarily as much as a boxed up genre. I just hear it as the way they approached that song. For example, actually perfect example, my song Gateway Drug - I produced it 20 different ways before the version that you hear now. Some of them got really bizarre. One day I was on a big indie shoegaze kick and I tried to make it like this indie shoegaze version, and it just sounded terrible. Like it sounds cool conceptually, it sounded like ass in person. I do that a lot. I had like a hip-hop phase - even worse. I will never play that music for the world ever, so bad. But, you know, I've tried just about everything and had a lot of fun doing it. I'm very proud of the ones I actually released. Those ones are special
I back that. I think it's also a good idea and important early on in your career to establish that you are probably not gonna stick to one genre. That you are going to broaden your sonic palette.
Yeah, and I think so much of being in a boy band, and again, not in a bad way, is like you're chasing hits. There's a specific sound that you're chasing. I think this first album for me was me selfishly just being like, 'I just wanna make whatever the heck I wanna make today - whether it sounds like a hit or not.' I think I was more so just chasing, 'does it sound good to me?' And if it crossed that line, then I was proud of it. I like leaving it up to that on this album. And who knows, next album I might get like a little more hungry to chase hits or maybe it's the opposite. But I love the idea of just chasing my intuition on my own stuff and leaving it at that. That was just something I always selfishly wanted to do for myself being passionate about music. So it's been really fun for me.
For the people who have been following you your whole career, what do you think will surprise them the most when they press play on Second Wind?
I mean, the song Second Wind will probably surprise them. That's on the weirder side.What else will surprise them? I'm trying to think. This might be cheesy, but I think if you know me as a fan right now and you've been keeping up with how bizarre the last two years have been - it's been gnarly, the amount of just bad luck I have run into. So I feel like you would expect this album to be sad, and I think you'll be surprised that the majority of it is pretty positive music. That's cheesy, but honestly I do think it's surprising. Ironically, I do think this music is what kind of helped me through that scenario. I think writing it, just genuinely, was like an escape. Oh my God, that's so cheesy. But genuinely that is what it was for me. I felt like life was really trying to force me to grow up, and this album was me trying to just like remain a kid. I will attest to this album being a bit cheesy, but I kind of love that about it because genuinely I had enough real life going on that like, I love that this was just like this childlike energy.
I do think you can't really feel sad listening to this album.
Yay! That was a big goal.
It's quite a bright and breezy album. So listening to it, it feels good. However, there are still more personal notes on the album.
Thank you. Yeah, there's a couple songs where I felt like I had to get like a little life off my chest. Like If I Ever Get To Heaven, pretty obvious and self-explanatory. The Older You Get, there were moments where I was like, 'okay, I feel like I said exactly what I'm trying to say about my thoughts on this situation.' But those were the first songs I made, a lot of those more introspective and sad songs. At some point in the process, a couple months into it, I backed up and I was like, 'I'm not a sad person though. This is not like me fully.' Or even, 'I feel like this like this ten percent piece of me and I haven't shared the energetic side of me at all.' So a lot of the fun songs came right around the ninth inning, like the end of the album. But I'm really glad they all made it, just because I do think that's a better representation of me.
It's such a well thought our record. As I said, you can't feel sad listening to it - at least for me.
I want it to feel warm, and that's so perfect.
Yeah, like a nice summer day - not too hot, not too cold.
Yeah, I love that.
Looking at the themes explored across the album, could you unpack them for me and the importance to you with documenting them within your music?
That's interesting. It's funny, I think it's very new for me to write about real instances, if that makes sense? I think a lot of the band songs maybe had little details here and there that were real, but I think the idea of packaging a whole song about reality is just very new to me. So genuinely I think I'm still unpacking what these songs fully mean to me and fully are about. I think when I was making them, they felt a bit more like a journal entry of just like my current observations on life, you know? I do think if there was one thing I was very intentional about, for the most part, there's maybe one or two songs that went past this line. I do think I was trying to have an optimistic standpoint. An optimistic feeling, and an optimistic thought through just about every song. So some are easier to do that on. I think The Older You Get is a great example where when we first were writing it, that song kind of fell out of the sky and we wrote it in like ten minutes. Me, KIDDO and Michael [Pollack] and this producer BJ [Burton], who is so funny. I love that guy. It started as like a rant of just all the bad stuff going on in life and like how, because you know, the concept that we all brought up was getting older and what that feels like. Immediately when I think of getting older, a lot of just like bad life packs up on you. Then equally I was thinking just about how on the other side, there's just as much an equal amount of good that can balance out that scale. So again, that I think for me set the tone. Because that was one of the first songs I made on the album that set the tone for me trying to push to be optimistic in just about every song that I wrote. Because I think I'm an optimistic person. I really don't like to like sit in the negative thoughts and let them consume me. I don't like outputting negative music necessarily, unless I really felt like I had to face some reality head on. Which If I Ever Get To Heaven felt a lot more like. I think The Older You Get is a perfect example of literally half the song is talking about the hardship of life, and then the other half is talking about the counter of good things that maybe wouldn't have happened if the bad didn't, you know?
That's such a beautiful sentiment and approach to songwriting. When it came time to writing this album, did you find that you had quite a distinct creative process? Furthermore, what do you think are the advantages of producing your own music?
I love that question. I don't think I had, and still don't have, any formula to how I make a song. It's different every time. Probably more than your average person because I can play music by ear and I have one of those weird ears where I like hear music. My girl will be vacuuming, and the vacuum will be in like the key of F and I'll be like, 'oh my gosh, like that F just resonates so good.' Then I'll run to the studio and make a song because of the vacuum. That actually happened. Like, it's really weird. I'll be at the gym and a song will barely be coming through the speakers and I'll hear it and a note will come out, and it'll just catch me. Like the texture of the note and I'll run home and make a song and skip the gym that day. It's really random. Then sometimes a genuine thought will pop into my head of a lyric or something a little more like tangibly real. In terms of producing my own stuff, I do think it lets me kind of land on exactly what I want the song to sound like - the way I'm imagining it in my head. It's very easy to get there when I can just put it down the way I am hearing it. I'm not very schooled in production. I've just gone off my ear and I actually love how unconventional I approach songs sometimes. Sometimes I'll go in with a producer - this actually happens a lot - I'll go in with someone that I really respect, but they will totally not understand what I'm going for. I'll tell them what I want and they'll be like, 'I don't think that's gonna pan out the way you think it is,' and I'm like, 'I hear it in my head just fine.' So I'll go home and I'll make it, and I'll bring it back the next day and play it and they will be like, 'oh, it's pretty good,' and I'll be like, 'yeah' [laughs]. So that rocks, you know, like getting exactly what you want. I think a lot of artists can relate to like, the day you're in a session with a producer and they just don't get the vision and you're like, 'oh my God, I'm wasting my whole day.' I don't have that problem as much now, which is nice [laughs].
I love that, must be a gratifying feeling going back the next day and showing them you were able to make it the way you wanted it to. Now to finish off, in super exciting news, you're going to be back in Australia. You were only just here as well.
Yes sir. Oh, I can't wait.
You're coming back for a massive headline tour of your own. What is in store for all the audiences that are going to attend these shows? Additionally, how important is performing to you - not only in terms of showcasing your art, but making that connection with your audience in person?
A big portion of my show is literally based off the connection of me and the audience. I don't like to stay on stage very much [laughs]. I like to get right down in the barricade for a big portion of the show, and just be there with the fans. Being in it as long as I have, a lot of the fans that are there are - it's cheesy - but they are family. A lot of these people I really, really love. I do get super excited to just see them again, and really be there with them. I'm a big nerd on the music side, doing the whole like playing my own instruments. That's been really fun for me to finally get to do live. It's been a dream of mine for a while. I always had this outrageous vision of kind of doing what Ed Sheeran does with this looper, but like with all the instruments I play. So I'm really excited to do that. I just got this whole new loop set-up and it's like the Lamborghini of looper set ups. I'm like freaking out about it. It's so nerdy, but I love it and it's just going to give me freedom to really do stuff on the fly on stage that's not planned. I'm a sucker for that sort of like spontaneous stuff. So there'll be a lot of spontaneity in my show. That's a great word to describe my show [laugh].
Well I can't wait to see it. Not too far away, about four months I believe.
Yeah, it's coming up. It's coming up.
Second Wind is out now!
DANIEL SEAVEY AUSTRALIAN TOUR​
Presented by TEG LIVE​
With special guests Jack Gray and Kylekelly
 Tickets
Saturday 7 June - Rechabite, Perth WA NEW VENUE​
Tuesday 10 June - Adelaide Entertainment Centre Theatre, Adelaide SA​
Thursday 12 June - Forum, Melbourne VIC SOLD OUT​
Friday 13 June - Enmore Theatre, Sydney NSW​
Sunday 15 June - Eatons Hill Hotel, Brisbane QLD