Cause you know, we also when you go on a forty city tour, you also have forty sound checks where you can iterate and rehearse and stuff, and that's how we treat sound checks.
I often will be like, Hey, I know this is what we decided, but I'd love to try this other way.
Hello and welcome to the Keyboard Chronicles, a podcast for keyboard players.
I'm your host, David Holloway, and I'm excited as always to be here with you.
I'm really pleased to introduce Mr.
Danny Silverston.
Danny is part of the amazing outfit called Couch.
If you're a fan of bands, and these guys sound different to these, but just talking about broad genres, you know, Wolfpeck, Snarky Puppy, Lawrence, just really
Nicely integrated, beautiful sounds with a brass section, great keyboards, both analog and digital, then couch are definitely someone to check out.
We talked to Danny about his career to date, his career prior to Couch and with Couch.
he has some great insights on the challenges of translating what they do on record to the live environment.
Yeah, lots to enjoy here.
So yeah, I'll let you jump in and enjoy the interview and I'll see you after the show.
Danny, it's an absolute pleasure and honor to have you on the show, sir.
How are you this fine day?
I'm doing great, David.
It's an honor to be here.
I'm I'm excited to chat.
No, we're very excited to chat with you.
So, um, I thought we'd kick off, Dave, just talking a little bit about your musical upbringing because I think I'd like you've had quite an interesting musical upbringing.
Tell us about the early years and what got you into music in the first place.
Yeah, sure.
So I, you know, like many other little kids, started playing classical piano when I was maybe in kindergarten or first grade just because that's what my mom said I was gonna do
and that's what my sister did, and so that's what I did.
I think around maybe fifth grade or so, I started to become a little more interested in pop music and started to become more interested in like using my ears in addition to just
reading whatever my piano teacher gave me.
And I think once I hit middle school and early high school, that's when I got a lot more into jazz and it sort of took up a lot more of my time once jazz became a thing for me.
And there was a period of time in high school when I was taking classical and jazz lessons for about a year or two.
But ultimately I decided that jazz was for me.
And so that's kind of what I ran with for high school at least.
As you know, most teenagers aren't looking towards jazz.
Yeah, it's a good question.
I think, you know, in middle school was I played trumpet also.
I don't play anymore.
I don't have the, you know, breath support for that.
But I was in the, you know, like symphonic band and that was all good and stuff.
But there was also a jazz band after school, which was just our band teacher put together a group and it was nothing crazy.
It was just like, you know, playing basic stuff and just dipping our toe into jazz.
But I remember like actually
digging it and thinking like, this is really fun and kind of exercises a different muscle than the other stuff that I really enjoy.
And that prompted me to, there were other people kind of in my class who I knew who were into jazz at that point, like had ensembles outside of school they were going into.
And so I joined one of those that was just this group that met I think once a week.
And yeah, I was going to start playing piano with this little jazz group.
And I remember after my first rehearsal with this group,
I literally cried.
I was like, I can't do this.
Like they were just they dropped so many terms and language that I just did not understand.
Even something like a two five.
Like everyone knew what a two five was and I had never heard that before.
But then kind of the learning curve commenced and uh you know, now I'm where I am now.
Um but I think that I think, yeah, middle school, just like seeing that there was this thing called improvisation and and harmony, I think I found more interesting.
And so yeah, maybe that was it.
And and that's great.
And obviously the education around the playing the piano went well.
So what were the things that you had good teachers?
What was it that really, you know, kept your passion going for the instrument?
That's good question.
I definitely had great teachers who, you know, I never felt I think early on I felt like practicing was a chore.
And I think practicing not to say that it's a chore, but it always is work.
And I think it absolutely is work and there's no way around that.
But I think I had teachers that kind of never made me feel too like, you know, you just hear about these like super intense classical piano teachers that want their students
practicing for like, you know,
five hours a day and that that wasn't me and that wasn't my experience.
and I think my teachers kind of just wanted to foster my like musicality and interest without kind of being overbearing.
I also think just like listening and just finding music that I began to really love also made me more interested in the instrument.
And I'm sure we'll talk more about that.
But but I think kinda once I unlocked this thing I could do, which is I could learn from listening to music that I like.
And when I heard something I liked, I could learn that and like
develop my vocabulary that way.
I think piano and jazz piano and just music kind of took on a different like dimension for me.
Yeah, no, absolutely.
And so I'm assuming Danny was sort of late teens sometime.
you spent a lot of time at a camp, um Crane Lake camp.
And then this is obviously before Couch took off.
So, you know, w as a song leader or leading music in sort of a community focused environment, how did that sort of help you in your development as a musician and as as a
performer too, I'd probably argue.
Wow, you did your research.
That's true.
That I went to camp, Jewish summer camp for eleven years.
Um I was a counselor for a few years.
Uh the skills absolutely translate.
I think one thing that people take for granted about like just playing concerts and and stuff is that yes, you need to rehearse some music and you need to make sure that you're
dialed in musically, but a big piece of it is just making sure that maybe the the biggest piece of it is making sure that an audience member feels
engaged from the moment they step in to the moment they leave.
And it's about these like talking points between songs or it's about, you know, when do you choose to introduce the band or when do you choose to kind of put your slower songs in
the set.
Um and just you know, making people people connected to you throughout the whole thing.
Besides like just I enjoyed the music.
I actually feel connected to what's going on.
I think being a Jewish song leader and actually Zach, who's our guitar player and manager, also was a song leader at his camp, the
reason we met is because we were song leaders together at our synagogue that we went to growing up.
Um, you know, he understands this too, which is that being a Jewish songleader for, you know, anywhere from like a group of kindergartners to a congregation of, you know, adults
is challenging and that, you know, you you need to kind of grab the attention of these people that could have very, very limited attention spans and make them feel like, okay,
it's worth my time to like be in this space and be singing or whatever it is that we're doing.
That's really hard.
I think like song leading in high school, I wasn't great at it at the beginning.
Just like I could play songs fine on my guitar and I could sing okay.
But the the act of like putting on kind of a variety of show of sorts of just like I'm gonna be the C for this thirty minutes that I'm in here with you eight kindergartners, and
there's never gonna be a dull moment.
We're gonna sing and the songs will be great, but also you're gonna feel like engaged and part of it the whole time.
Um, I think that's a b a big thing.
and Jewish songleading.
And at camp it was I wasn't ever songleading kindergartners, but I was leading services along with some other songleaders who happened to be very formidable musicians, which was
really fun.
And we would kinda like spice up a lot of the arrangements to these songs.
And it was fun.
I got to we had like a keyboard, but I also would play guitar and I'd play this djembe drum that we had.
So I got a lot better at hand percussion.
That's one thing I I got better at with being a Jewish songleader.
you know, I've even
I don't think I have with couch, but with my last band I was in college, I would track congas and stuff like that on the record 'cause I just was good enough at that type of
thing.
But all I was saying was that, you know, for at at camp we were leading services for like the entire camp, which like includes kids from ages ten to eighteen basically.
And that's a different thing entirely, but
But also like, you know, the the feeling you get when like everyone's singing and like super engaged and having a great time.
Exactly right.
No, and it sounds like an amazing training ground.
And I mean you've mentioned there yourself.
So talk talk about sort of leaving high school and the early years before couch.
You've just mentioned you're in a previous band.
Tell us about that era and and what sort of you learnt from those years.
Yeah.
yeah, totally.
So I graduated from high school thinking that I didn't want to pursue pursue music, or at least I didn't think that was the right choice for me.
Whatever that means to pursue music.
I think that's even kind of a reductive way of putting it.
But I chose to go to liberal arts school because I also had these other interests.
I studied math and I still do love math.
And I also was when I was looking at schools, I was specifically interested in schools with a good jazz program because I thought like
Well, I wanna, you know, study whatever I do, math, physics, whatever it is.
I also wanna keep playing jazz.
Although it wasn't like a I want to become a professional jazz musician.
I think part of that comes down to like in high school, in the jazz programs, I don't know, like becoming a professional jazz musician doesn't feel like the most attainable
thing in the world when even if you're good, but like if you're not at that like elite level, if you're not like the Joey Alexanders of the world, it feels like wow.
you know, you can be so good and still just scraping by playing at these clubs wherever you're playing.
But anyway, went to liberal arts school and I just so happened to in the like the first week, like first or second week of college, meet this group of folks and we started a band
called Orange Guava Passion.
Our stuff is still out in Spotify.
You can totally listen to it.
That was being in Orange Gava Passion and like being in kind of a, you know, music director role and and an arranger type role.
Um
was totally formative for me, just like learning how to play this style of music, which is like pop music, but with horns with elements of R and V and soul and stuff.
And Orange Robin Passion was a great band.
We had some really, really excellent musicians who still are playing music and doing it professionally in some capacity.
and some of even like, you know, including all the couch gigs, still like some of my favorite musical memories are these like house parties we'd play that just
were shoulder to shoulder and just like super sweaty and electric, basically.
And I look back very fondly on Orange God fashion in those years.
And we we made music, you know, like we made an EP and then we released two singles after that.
And the band sort of dissolved once we graduated.
And I think people had just other projects they were working on and stuff.
Um but I definitely think I I'm I'm not close the musician I am today without having that band and that in that experience.
Yeah.
Absolutely.
Sounds like it.
And so I mean, for you, Danny, what was the transition from that to what you're doing now?
It I wouldn't say it was little awkward, but it was kind of like there was a a period of time when I kinda had a foot in both camps and that was definitely challenging.
Like couch most most of the guys in couch are a year above me.
and so I was still in college at the time that couch was starting to like pick up and actually like play gigs and stuff like that.
Um and I was still committed to my other band, um at Brown.
and so yeah, there were days when I would
be in Providence, that's where I went to school at at Brown.
And I'd drive up to Boston, which is about an hour, to go to rehearsal.
And as soon as the rehearsal ended, I had another rehearsal scheduled for OGP that I would race back down to to go to that.
and you know, I just did it for the love of the game.
But I think at even at that point I didn't know what couch was gonna be.
And so, you know, I knew that I love my bandmates and couch and I really like the music.
Um
But I don't think at that time I felt the same ownership over the product with Couch that I do now.
I think since then, and that was like, you know, twenty twenty one, twenty twenty two ish.
Um since then with couch, I've gotten a lot more involved with writing, arranging, um, production, just more aspects of the musical product that is couch.
And at the time I was more like, Yeah, yeah, I'm gonna come up.
But I also still have this other band to worry about.
So
and so y you raise a good point there, Danny, about not even knowing what couch was really yourself in those early days.
So for the sake of those unaware of the band, tell us what couch actually is.
Couch is a band of seven individuals that met mostly in high school, went to different high schools.
And at this point, Couch is an internationally touring band.
We play certain kind of pop music that has horns and has elements of RB and soul and kind of live instruments.
I mean our show is very live.
There's not really tracks at all.
And we've really just grown our live following.
Our biggest show ever was in Boston this past
fall which was at a venue called Roadrunner for over thirty five hundred people or for thirty five hundred people.
And we just played our second biggest show biggest headline show in London for around two thousand people, which was really, really amazing.
Uh and we just wrapped up this forty city big talk tour.
That was our debut album that came out in the fall.
So yeah, we're a band and we're growing and we want to keep growing and playing more gigs and, you know, making music.
Yeah, no, absolutely.
And so tell us about um I know you've sort of covered that you had your foot in both camps, but what led to you actually joining CADS?
What was the approach there?
And did you have to audition or because you were known with Orange Gravel, you didn't need to?
What what was the situation there?
So I've actually been a part of Couch since high school, and Couch kind of was Zach, who've already mentioned, who I knew from the Temple.
His kind of group collection of musicians he knew from the greater Boston area.
And it was a random collection.
It was me that he knew from Temple.
It was, you know, other guys that he met through his girlfriend at the Times band or school or whatever.
You know, Tema he met at a Lawrence concert and I went to high school with Tema.
Eric Tarlin, our sax player.
knew Jeff from the Allstate jazz band and Jeff knew Zach from this band that they were in at the time.
Whatever, a bunch of different connections.
And so early on, Zach was like, Danny, do you wanna record music for this song I'm making for this project?
And I knew it was couch, but it was I guess the vibe at that at that point was less like I'm making I'm
like having this band called Couch and we were gonna start by making the song.
It was more like, I'm working on a song, you wanna help me with this.
And I was like, Yeah, totally.
And so, you know, I remember going over to his house and doing these like four to eight hour recording sessions just in his basement on my Nord at the time.
And yeah, so I was kind of a part of Couch for all of college.
Um, even though I just we didn't do that much.
And so I think I was one of the
more I was passively a member, I I s I suppose you could say.
And just like Zach and Tema were writing over FaceTime and stuff like that.
And I was just kind of, yeah, on keys whenever they would need a keys player, but that didn't happen necessarily until things got more serious.
I think in in once COVID happened, that was also kind of a big step for me because I went on a on like a little COVID quarantine retreat with a few of the people.
And that's where we, the four of us, which was me, Zach, Tema and Eric
Um, Zach and Guitar, Tema on Vocals, Eric on Saks.
that's where we wrote Blackberry Lane because that's a song of ours.
And Blackberry Lane is the address of this house that we were staying at, which is Zach's grandparents' house.
Um, I think at that point I felt, okay, now I feel like I have kind of more of a stake in this like musical product.
Um, and I've I've recorded at that point on all the songs that had came out to that point, which was like,
The Nana song was our first single.
Then we released I don't remember the order.
We released a cover of Conjunction Junction, which is pretty insane.
And then Easy to Love and Fall Into Place.
I don't remember the order.
But I wasn't really that involved in writing those songs.
I recorded keys, organ, clove on all those, but not so much the writing.
You know, great.
And I mean, I I think it's amusing that you said that w you know, one of the the meetings between people in the band was at a Lawrence concert.
Because I mean couch couches is very distinctive sound from Lawrence and vice versa.
They're very different bands, but there's also some similarities as far as makeup, brass section, stu stuff like that.
But what was going back to that COVID um retreat or even prior to that, how did you decide what the sound was going to be?
And I understand it's not a sound, but just
What y you all just agreed from the start on what roughly this this project was going to sound like?
Part of the reason that we bonded at the beginning is that we had these similar tastes in music.
It's, you know, like me and Zach bonded over Snarky Puppy in Wolfpeck in high school and that was those were big for us.
And then Zach was the first guy to introduce us to this band, Lawrence.
I mean, you gotta credit Zach for kind of being a fan of Lawrence when they were kind of more on the ground floor, like from very early on.
and so I think Lawrence was, you know, we know those guys and they're a great band, very, very talented, all of them.
I think early on we drew a lot of inspiration from their music.
I think, like you said, I think our paths have diverged a little bit in terms of the sound that we cr that that we make.
But I think yeah, and you know, I w we we get asked this a lot, like in interviews or VIP sessions, whichever that happens before the shows, that's irrelevant.
But we get asked this a lot of like how do you choose your sound or how do you form your sound?
And and I I really think it's we don't go to it.
It sort of more comes to you.
And it's like we all
have the musical tastes and sensibilities that we have, which are a product of the music that we listen to and we like and that that's kind of seeped into our bones.
And that'll inform, you know, me when I say, actually, I want that section to go like this with this group or have these chords.
Less like, I want it to sound like this product.
I want our music to sound like this.
And more like, no, it feels feels right to me for it to sound this way.
And I kind of think we were always following our hearts in that way and making that kind of music.
It's just that our tastes have totally evolved.
So in COVID,
at the Black Bear Lane retreat, for instance, um, you know, definitely Lawrence is an influence.
The the song Blackberry Lane has more of like a laid back kind of feel.
It goes like And I think like D'Angelo is an influence for us still.
That definitely seeps in.
Stevie Wonder, there's like a key change up by a minor third.
Lots of things.
But I think that that's what it's about is just, you know, we have artists that we
really look up to that have influenced us and that we've kind of learned their vocabulary and and that just seeps into the music.
Yeah.
No, it absolutely does.
And obviously I'm interested now about your actual role within the band.
So you're one of those amazing keyboard players that I know I'm jealous even as a weekend warrior keyboard player where you never have to worry about playing a brass a brass patch
on a keyboard as a general rule, I'm imagining, with a great brass section.
So just tell us about how you approach playing keyboards because you have a great mix of sort of some great e electric pianos and then you've got some great synth sounds.
How you approach
Sort of creating your own sonic real estate within the band when it is such a big band.
Yeah, I think the the approach is I kind of have several tools at my disposal that I feel like I know how to use and deploy.
I mean, the first is, like you said, like e piano or acoustic piano or something like that, as like a bass layer.
And I think a lot of most of our music at the beginning had this core layer of electric piano, like a Rhodes or a Whirly, even though it was just a sim on my nord.
But there's that and that has a sound and a particular purpose.
There's the organ and playing organ is
is I think an area where I've evolved, particularly like in the last year or two, after receiving some feedback from a guy named Kevin Gastongwe, who maybe you're familiar with.
I'm surprised.
He is an absolute monster.
I think he's one of the best like keys players, session players, gigs, keys players out there.
And I got to know him because we opened for Corey Wong for a bunch of dates in the US and in Europe.
And
Basically at the time I would I was treating organ more like a patch and I was kind of like playing a chord on organ and then hitting the sustained pedal on my left foot and
then just leaving it there.
Um thinking, okay, great, I played organ and now we have that texture in the song and it's good to go.
And Kevin actually brings a real, you know, B three to the gigs.
And his biggest piece of feedback for me, just listening to our show night after night, was like, you gotta get a volume pedal.
For the organ and you gotta hit the Leslie because it's not just this patch, it's this like breathing kind of living thing.
And I was like, damn, that makes total sense.
And so since then, yeah, I've gotten the volume pedal, I've gotten another little switch for hitting the Leslie on and off.
I'm not still nowhere near to where Kevin is, and it doesn't really sound like an or I mean it sounds closer to a real organ player, but still it's not quite there.
But all that's to say I have that texture to play with, and I think the organ.
often can occupy the higher register in couch songs or it can just give it like more of a I don't know, like a warm, like John Mayri, like gravity type sound.
That's kind of another place where I'll deploy the organ.
And then you have synths.
Um and I think since I've gotten still have a long way to go and I'm still totally intimidated by like everything that's out there.
But I've learned a lot more about synthesis in the past year or two after getting one of these my
Roland Juno 106.
Yeah.
and just starting basic, you know, just like ADSR and chorus and the envelope and stuff.
And so the the synth sounds have started to make our way into the music a little more like since the early days, just as the music kind of takes on more of like a synth pop type of
vibe.
And I think I've gotten a lot better at crafting these synth sounds, whether it's kind of like a warm
kind of pad that's gonna live underneath a piano layer, or whether it's more like a bouncy like square wave that's gonna be like a chord note layer, or if it's a leaf patch that's
gonna be like super saw.
Or if it's what else can you do?
Whatever, whatever it is.
I think if you like look at the couch set and and look at like the new tunes on the new album and how those work, there's a lot more sense in those.
And
Yeah, I think to answer your question just generally about like it's such a big band, how do you kind of carve out your space?
I think when we record the music, it's it's very keys heavy and and super like keys driven and there are always so many layers and it's usually the challenge for me is less about
like how can I make myself heard and more about like how can I effectively like translate all eight of these keys layers into my two hands and my two keyboards.
without tracks and make it sound as full as possible, like of an arrangement.
And so if you come to a live show, one thing you'll see a lot of me doing is playing a pad or an organ or whatever it is on one of my keyboards and then hitting the sustain pedal.
And so that pad will just live there for the entirety of the four or eight bars or something.
And then I'll play something different with both of my hands on the bottom keyboard.
There's one s one song in particular on the new album that we play called Static and Noise.
That's the most hairy
keyboard like choreography that I have to do in the set because there were basically a bunch of layers that we cared about.
There was this one kind of driving piano layer where it's a piano with a like phaser effect on it.
Um and it kind of has this like that type of vibe.
There's an organ, just like kind of an organ, maybe like a fourth or a fifth in the high register that's kind of just like a like a whistle, like a like that type of thing.
And then there are these synth stabs on
Uh on the four on the uh of fours before every like new chord hits.
And that's three different patches on two keyboards.
And so what I've done is basically the bottom keyboard has that piano, that driving piano like layered patch that has the phaser and whatever.
The top keyboard and the Nord obviously lets you do the do stuff like this.
I split into one of them is this
Like kind of screaming synth saw patch with some LFO.
So it kind of has this little wobble to it.
And then the upper half is just organ.
The problem still is like I want to use both of my hands for playing that keys driving layer.
And so what I end up doing is and and and so I need to sustain the layers in the top, right?
Like I want to sustain the organ.
I'll sustain it my left foot.
I don't want the synth stabs to sustain, because those sound like and then it they're just off.
So what I've done is I've basically turned off the sustain pedal for the synth.
which is like the first half of the top keyboard, but left the sustain pedal on for the organ, which is on the upper half.
And then what I'll do is I'll just hit the organ, hit the sustain pedal, and then play the bottom keyboard for the piano like fader patch.
And then whenever I need to hit the synth patch, I just kind of hit it and the sustain pedal doesn't affect it because it doesn't have the sustain function on.
Um and with doing all three of those things, I can maybe get like
forty percent to the way it sounds on the record.
Like it's still just an uphill battle, but I think that's the best that I've come up with so far for like making it feel as good or close to as good as as the record.
And amazing insights.
That's really well put.
Thank you.
That's yeah, our listeners, viewers will love that.
And so let's talk about probably briefly your rig there, Danny.
So what is it that you do take out on tour?
I'm assuming you back line on a larger tour, but just what are the core parts of your setup?
Yeah, we actually don't really rent s a lot of back line, at least yet for me.
It's I have two Nords.
Right now they it's a Nord Stage EX, which is like the OG Nord, which it's an old keyboard and it's just, you know, I bought it a while back from a guy used and I haven't replaced
it yet.
'Cause, you these Nords are expensive.
And while I consider myself a, you know, a good and accomplished keys player, I don't know
how soon it'll be until I have the Nord sponsorship where they're just giving me the keyboards for free.
Um, but I did recently replace for a while I was using the Nord Electro 2 on the top with like semi-weighted action.
And I really like that keyboard.
And that was like the actually the first keyboard I ever bought.
I mean I used it for all of my gigs in college, but it started to kind of fail on me.
Things were breaking that seemed not super repairable.
So I replaced that.
with the Nord Stage 4 um compact, which is also semi-weighted action, like it's not fully weighted keys, but it's got all the new new stuff that the Nord Stage 4 has.
And so I'll bring those two keyboards.
I'll put the I have the stage EX, a fully weighted one on the bottom, and then the stage four on the top.
And I think the rationale is like it's as if I had a piano, like a grand piano, where I put a synth on top of it because
I play the piano or e piano patches on my keyboard that has weighty keys because I prefer the feel of that.
Um where else whereas I'll play synth or organ or cloud or whatever it is on the top keyboard that has light keys.
And then I bring um we ha we've gone through so many of these like apex stands or like I don't know the y you know the ones, like the kind of triangle ones that the the I don't
know if I'm so attached to those honestly, because they just they just break and
You know, we can get for cheap because our s our front house engineer production manager works for like a music gear distribution company.
And so he his cost is often like way better than retail.
But I bring that stand for now.
I mean, and the nice thing about it is that it kind of folds up, I guess, and I can put it in a but I feel like that's table sticks.
Your stand's gotta fold up.
But in addition to that, I also bring a bunch of pedals.
I have two stand pedals, one for each keyboard.
I have a volume pedal and a little just like foot switch.
And like I s mentioned earlier, the volume pedals for mainly for organ to connect to the top keyboard and the foot switch is mainly for Leslie.
But I'll use the volume pedal as an expression pedal for other kind of synth patches and and other things.
But yeah, and I have I basically for this past tour I just had a playlist of all the songs on both my keyboards and I'll just, you know, switch to the next tune and it'll have all
my presets there for me.
Yeah, there's some times where or often in the couch that we'll like directly transition from one song into another and so that can get a little dicey or I'll have to kinda like,
you know, find the knob and in the right time like switch over.
But yeah, that's that's basically the rip.
And I'm assuming at this stage that things like uh computer based MIDI control, as far as particularly as you said, those quick changes that is probably overkill given how organic
and live the sound is, you actually are better off having that direct control.
Yeah, totally.
I I I think it's something I've thought about, like, you know, going all through a laptop and just like using a MIDI controller and or and yeah, or doing something like you're
saying of like having MIDI switch the songs for me or whatever.
But I think as a band, it's like, you know, we now use Able Set, which is so we can sync up the it's like an Ableton session that allows us to sync up the lights to time code.
And so we've kind of done had that
advancement, but I think we're all still hesitant to go the kind of overly like laptop logic session route.
I think we still like the vibe of here's my instrument, this is my hardware, I'm playing the instrument.
Like what you see is what you get, you know?
And absolutely I can spend time programming ahead of the gig and do as much as I need to do.
But I think probably it would be overkill, like you said.
But that's the thing is I still like, you know, being a keys player, a gig and keys player is there's just so much you can do and
You know, you have these keys players who show up with the organ and the Prophet and the Nord and the Juno.
And like that does sound nice, but also we're trying to do this at scale and you know, there's every ch bag you check costs money and stuff.
And I thought about bringing the the Juno one six on tour.
I think I just got nervous about it with analog gear.
Like already just being sitting in my room, it's like broken once and I've had to repair that and
Just get nervous, I'll bring it on the road.
Plus like I just I can get close to what I want it to sound like just if I spend some time programming the Nord synth synth engine.
So yeah, that's what
Exactly right.
And I mean we've talked a a couple of bits about the brass section.
So I mean I know on tracks like I think it was called Slow Burn, the piano and the trumpet you you know play off each other beautifully.
C how do you arrange keyboard parts to complement rather than compete with those amazing brass guys?
Yeah.
That's an interesting question because usually what ends up happening, and I think our horn players have a bit of a chip on their shoulder about this, as they should, is the
horn players are the final layer that gets added after everything else is already arranged.
I think in the case of slow burn, that's actually one of the cases where at least for the for the bridge, which the bridge is kind of like more of a like a laid back.
D'Angelo type of vibe and the horns have this line that goes like that was I had that idea before I had an idea for like the melody even.
and so that was an example of a horn part that like kind of is core to that arrangement.
Um but I think in terms of how I can play keys parts that don't stomp on the horns or that complement them, I think a lot depends on like what register I'm in.
You know, it's like I think
while I'm playing a lot of different stuff, mm, a lot of my playing for over the course of the whole song Lux Slowburn is kind of in lives inside of this register.
That's maybe like I don't know exactly where it is, but nothing is ever like it's it's usually kind of like warm lower to mids and chords and the horns live on top of that.
I mean sometimes I'll kind of harmonize the horns, um like deliberately, but I'm very rarely like playing
a line or like a little flourish that is kind of i where a trumpet would play.
It's funny, it's like I don't even it's not anything I would think to do now.
I just like feel like when I would do that it just would sound like what's happening or or or what's going on.
I think what's e more challenging is figuring out a keyboard part that complements guitar and trying to figure out a keys and guitar part that sound good together and that aren't
redundant, but that actually like y you know, just like
drive the section forward effectively and and yeah, yeah, yeah.
There's lots to talk about there.
No, that's absolutely agreeing.
And I mean, as as writers across the seven of you, I mean, you're all credited with writing and producing, you know, on on the album.
So as you as a keyboard player, what's the creative workflow from your perspective when you guys are coming together?
Are you bringing in different ideas, working them up, jamming?
Like what is the approach?
I and I imagine it varies by the song, but yeah, love some insight into that.
Yeah, it does vary by the song, but often it is like just 'cause we're talking about Slowburn.
Slowburn started as an idea like a I had on my Juno right here.
And I ha kinda had this I I had this these chores and I had the melody and I had this like kind of harmonic rhythm and and vibe, but I didn't have any lyrics.
And Tema is our singer, is kind of the source of most to all lyrical content.
we'll often help her write the lyrics, but they're all like her stories and and maybe, you know.
She might have this poem she's been writing or these things she's been mu musing on and this content.
And so with that song, I sent it over to her.
I said, What do you think of this?
She said, I like it.
She came over um and we started writing the chorus of that song.
And I had basically a melody, but we kind of tweaked it together and she, you know, looked through her massive notebook of little ideas and things she's been musing on.
And she said, I think that it would be cool to write about this, like having a crush in high school and missing that feeling.
And I Okay, cool.
And let's
We ran with that.
Um, and then the song gets brought to the full band where, you know, it's anyone in the band can say anything they want about it and can take a turn trying to like mess with it
or whatever.
Um I think that's the thing that that's true basically across all the songs in the album is that basically everyone signed off on every single song by way of just having a group
arrangement session with everyone there and people can kind of take turns.
People kind of take turns MDing and if it's kind of your idea and you have ownership over it, like Slowburn was for me, for instance, you know, maybe you have the final call on
certain arrangement decisions, but there's a lot, a lot of time spent just, you know, taking turns saying, I wanna try it this way, I wanna try it this way.
What if we did
guitar playing this way or whatever you got the melody being like this.
And I think we all just there are a bunch of people on couch that have that skill set where they can music direct and they can try to execute a musical vision of theirs and
that we want to honor that for everyone.
So yeah, it made the album super collaborative.
I think there are some other songs that there are a few songs on the album that, you know, two people or one person wrote basically the whole thing.
And then it was basically just like, this is the song.
Great.
Let's play it.
Let's not do too much to it.
But most of the songs
Kind of had this phase of like maybe two to three people working on it in a smaller group, bring it to the full band.
It goes through this, this kind of round of full band feedback and iteration and stuff.
And then yeah, once we recorded it, which we actually, this is the first time we record in like a proper studio that had nice gear and stuff, we make even more kind of decisions and
and there's more creativity that happens there just with how the parts get recorded.
It's like, you know.
You can affect a song a lot just by being in the room, like being in the engineering room while drums are getting recorded, for instance.
And I was there a lot.
And so a lot of my kind of tastes and sensibilities with regards to drums are on the album just 'cause I was like there for a lot of those sessions.
Um Yeah, and that's that's how songs get made these days generally.
Which which sounds great on the surface, but I mean that's an incredibly challenging process.
I mean, having seven people and I'm I'm not for a minute envisaging that you all agree on everything all the time.
That's just not how bands work.
I mean, obviously there needs to be debates and and contention and whatever.
So how do you work through that as seven adults without it getting too contentious or too unsettling?
It's a great question and it's absolutely challenging.
And I think it's it I think it slows us down.
Like, you know, you you think that, you have seven people in the band, you can efficiently allocate all your, you know, human capital so you can do parallelize and do so many things
so much faster.
And the answer is no, actually.
Like, because we're seven people, it takes way, way longer to like get a song to the point where everyone feels good about it.
There are absolutely some arguments that
just I remember having with people over the course of writing this album.
And sometimes, you know, people sometimes we just put things to a vote and say, okay, is this let me think of an example.
Like, are the chords going to be like this or like this?
Let's vote and see what happens.
And there's also this notion in couch of of RCC, RCC, which means relinquish creative control.
So if I RCC, that means I am creative
kind of not part of this particular decision musically or creatively.
And it also sort of means that I don't get to like have criticisms for it after the fact.
Like, you know, if there's a particular rehearsal or writing session that I'm invited to, but I don't want to go to, I just have to RCC and say, hey, whatever happens, happens.
And I think RCCing, I think some people in the band are better at RCCing than others.
I think a lot of people just
want to touch everything and just not in a bad way.
They just like have that hunger and they just want they don't want to be a fly on the law.
They want to like, you know, be able to like craft this entire product to be like as good as they feel like it should be.
But I think I think I kind of found a lot of peace with just like for these several songs, this is kind of my brain child or this is like has a lot of me in it.
But for these other songs, you know, I'm fine.
Taking more of the backseat and letting someone else just kinda execute their vision.
It's different from mine.
If if I were in charge, it would sound totally different, but that's fine.
And I think if the general population was listening to an album that was just Danny, they probably wouldn't like it as much as a couch albums.
Yeah, I just have a lot of trust for all those people on couch and and I like that I can kind of feel good about letting them write and produce a song that I might never touch and
it's still gonna be a good song.
So
Yeah.
I love it.
I love the RCC's a a pressure relief valve.
That's that's amazing.
And I mean, I do need to ask, because I think we're all human, are there times where you've actually been incredibly directly involved in the creation of song, maybe not
gotten the actual parts that you would have ideally liked?
Does that tend to linger with you?
I know if it was me and I was playing live six months later and I'm I'm playing a section of a song and go, No, I still think it should be this way, does that tend to happen to you
or you just let it go?
That's funny.
It you know, on this on this last record, I I feel like I I feel like I tended to get my way most of the time.
I feel like y usually like things ended up kind of the way I wanted them to, but and the cases where I didn't, I'm trying to think of examples.
Yeah, I think totally i I don't let go of that.
I think I every time we play it, I feel like I wish it were this other way.
And yeah, I I might not take that to the grave.
I might I might actually after
Cause you know, we also when you go on a forty city tour, you also have forty sound checks where you can iterate and rehearse and stuff and that's how we treat sound checks.
I often will be like, Hey, I know this is what we decided, but I'd love to try it this other way.
Maybe we end up pivoting and we play differently fr on, you know, in the live stream than we do on the record.
Yeah, actually come to think of it, there are several things that I wish were different about the record.
And yeah, I think when I do hear it, like
Whether it's listening back to the record or it's the live rings or whatever, I'm probably like, dang, like I wish that were different than it than it
You're only human, Daddy.
You're only human.
Yeah.
I think everyone in the band probably h feels that exact same way, honestly.
No, absolutely.
No, I think I think that's very healthy, um, again, normal behaviour.
Um, and you mentioned way back when you're talking about initially, you know, growing up and practicing, and practicing is a chore, but it's hard work and so on.
What is the practicing you do both in the lead up to the tour and I'm assuming when you're on tour, maybe not, but I mean, are you doing warm ups or you just the sort of person
who'll just, you know, turn up and play?
What's sort of your approach to that discipline?
Yeah, I'm not really doing warm ups as much anymore.
Maybe I should be.
I think I think more of the practicing is just about like first of all, like the full band rehearsals.
That's you can practice as much as you want on your own, but like it's it's hard to get a sense for how it's gonna feel, especially when you're like coordinating all these
different patches and stuff between two keyboards and like it's not so easy for me to like set up my two keyboards with like at my own home or something and
And so I guess I don't have the luxury of just like grab my guitar or bass and shed.
But I think like more of the practicing was like thinking about these arrangements and like the keyboard arrangements of these songs and like kind of messing around with stuff
like that.
Um even if it's like on my genome, just like, for you know, verse two of this song, what would sound the best?
Let me kind of mess around with that.
And th there were some parts that definitely required some
Just reps.
Um, there are some like just like there are a few parts of the set that are more physically ch like demanding as a keys player.
I think I got those reps in just with the sheer number of fold band reps that we did.
And yeah, but I think I I say this to a lot of people for the most part, like the the couch set is not that technically challenging from like a keys perspective.
It's a lot more about just like the memorization of the arrangement and all the different kind of keyboard choreography they call it that you have to do across a song with like
switching sounds and stuff.
That's
really the challenge.
Like if we're hiring you as a key sub, that's the thing that you have to deliver on, not so much like being able to play like crazy synth lines and stuff.
So yeah, I think I I also should practice way more than I do um for things like that.
Um it's hard because, you know, there's lots of other stuff I've uh interest in whatever.
I think more recently like the practicing is has been like taking just trying to l transcribe more honestly, just like taking artists that I like.
Their solos, and I'm like, wow, I'd just like here's an example, like Anatoly Muster.
Have you heard of him?
Not.
Okay.
He's he's an accordion player primarily and a producer, but he's absolutely brilliant.
He's I think he's London based, but he's a Swiss guy.
And his I mean, his original music I think is so, so cool.
And also when he dig solos, like he has this very unique sensibility.
Um, and he kind of like the accordion, I think, allows him to kind of play these more angular lines that.
feel a little pianistic but also feel very kind of I mean angular I feel like is the best word for them.
and I just absolutely am in love with his playing.
And so I've been trying to transcribe a bunch of his solos and often it's like not super pianistic like to play the kind of thing that he's playing.
But like shedding something like that is something that I might do.
Yeah.
No, that makes sense.
And you just mentioned memorisation.
I mean, is everything still in your head at this stage or are you having other means or starting to document stuff when maybe your memory starts to not be as good?
No, everything is still in my head.
I mean, we have some basically with couch we'll only make charts when we need to have a sub and we won't make them really before then because there's not a need.
I mean, sometimes people reach out to us being like, Can you give us a charge for this?
And we'll be like, We they don't even exist.
Like, just, you know, you can try to learn learn it by year, I guess.
So yeah, it's it's in our heads mostly and and it is sometimes a challenge when like
You know, the our set night tonight was pretty was very, very similar just for this past tour, but we also do like a VIP session before the main gig where we take requests and
we'll play whatever they want us to.
And sometimes that's kind of fun and a little bit like, whoa, like when they might ask for us to play a song that we literally haven't played as a full band in like years.
But I think we've just I feel like I've gotten so many reps in and I just know the music that viscerally that I will be able to play it for a long, long time.
And also like
The yes, it's memorization, but it's also it's also intuition, right?
Like I know how this is supposed to feel.
I know in my bones that this is going to the four or it's going to the flat six or whatever.
So I can do that and have conviction that that's what it's gonna be, even though I might not have remembered that that's like the way it goes, you know.
Do you do you tend to find I mean, this tends to be more I I suppose amongst those amateur players, but I know the the more I think about a part when it's coming up, the more likely
I am to not get it right versus trusting intuition and muscle memory.
Do you still find that at the level you're playing at?
Yeah, I think so.
I think that's definitely true.
It's sometimes hard.
Like when you play a set like forty times in a row where it's often the same, like it's so easy to just like drift into autopilot mode and like what do you think about in those
moments?
Like maybe your mind just wanders elsewhere.
I mean, one thing Kevin told me is like, yeah, in those moments I just try to focus on time.
Like time is an area where you can always improve.
Definitely me is an area where I can always improve.
And so I'll often focus on that.
Something that I've that I've realized like after the show we played in London, it was just it was a big show, like we b way bigger than we expected.
Like we sold out the first venue pretty far in advance.
We upgraded the venue and that also sold well.
And so there were just a lot of people there.
And the other you know, the whole Europe tour was awesome, but the venues were closer to like five to eight hundred, and then London out of nowhere was just like two thousand
people.
So we were definitely a little bit nervous, and it was last night of the tour.
And I found and we all found that, you know, when
You're nervous, and when the adrenaline starts pumping, the set just like the songs just feel so much slower.
And I was like, what the heck?
Like this song feels so slow.
It's like, and there's one part in the set where I mean, people who've seen us live know what I'm talking about, but we have this song called On On the Wire that for the live
arrangement, there's this additional kind of section we tack onto the end that was the idea that.
that like that section was born out of was one of mine and it actually existed before On the Wire was even a song.
And it was something we were kind of jamming on in one of the early, early writing retreats for this album.
But it's basically like a very, very fast insyncopated like keys part where I'm just playing these chords.
It's like And it's very easy to cramp up and you know you need to kind of stay loose.
But for that London show and and and
You know, the vibe with that section is like we basically want to go as fast as I can physically go.
And like I kind of set that ceiling as like I don't think I can go much faster consistently than this.
And so we're like, all right, that's the tempo is I don't remember what the tempo is, but it was whatever it was.
At that London show, I was like, I feel like I could go like so much faster.
I feel like I'm slowing myself down.
Like like it doesn't usually feel like that.
Usually it feels like I'm like racing against the clique, but it felt like wow, this is so slow at the London show.
No, adrenaline is an amazing thing.
Uh it certainly affects our perception of time.
So we're on to our last two questions, Danny.
is there a memorable time something's gone spectacularly wrong on stage for you?
Yeah, I feel like I've had plenty of those.
Um there was you know, for what it's worth, I think my key setup is fairly dialed in.
So it's it's not like like kind of electrical problems that maybe other band members have with like connections don't really happen to me.
One time I can think of is there was a show where I um we we all have these apps called mixing station on our phones which allow us to like
set or monitor mix.
And I honestly like rarely touch it night to night.
Like I feel like it might have had my mix dialed and the room might make it sound a bit different.
And maybe I'll have to dial back drums or or boost them.
But for the most part, I don't touch it.
And sometimes, or most of the time when I go on stage, I don't even bring my phone like just I won't need to touch that mix.
But sometimes when I'm feeling a little bit nervous and just like like something could go wrong or maybe I want to boost myself or something during the show, I'll just bring it on
and I'll have mixing station open.
And this is one of those shows
Where was it?
Was it um it was on the US tour?
I honestly don't remember which one it was.
It's they're all blunt together.
But basically, at the last second I decided, okay, great.
Okay, you know what?
I'm a little nervous.
Let me just bring out mixing station.
I'll get my phone out.
And I guess what I did was I'd got mixing station open and the UI on mixing station is just like a bunch of faders.
And I must have accidentally clicked the mute button for my keys, like my keys one, like the main layer that I was gonna be playing at the top of the set.
But I didn't know that I did that.
And so then we play the first note of the set and it's like this whole there's this whole like intro.
And then we all come in on these like big chords and I was like, nothing's happening.
Of course, everyone else can hear what I'm playing, but I can't because it's just muted in my monitor mix.
And because I'm being dumb, like my mind jumps to like Chris, like, what's going on?
Chris is our front of house guy, like what's happening?
And I was like plugging in the connections, unplugging them and stuff.
And then I started to do this thing that was like, you know, when you're
Testing to see if you have noise, like you just go like this and you know playing like the tune.
And afterwards, like Zach or some of the other couch guys were clowning me, like, Danny, like even if that was happening, why wouldn't you just play the tune to check it?
Why did you have to like do this?
And I was like, I don't know.
I wasn't thinking.
I was like, Let me get my keys on.
So yeah, that was kind of a a bummer.
No, that is that is gold.
No, that is gold.
And I I would do exactly the same thing too.
I'd be just testing the sound, not playing the actual song.
Totally, yeah.
Yeah, absolutely.
And then last but definitely not least is the dreaded desert island discs question.
So five albums that have had a big impact on your life that if you had to go to a desert island, what would you take?
Yeah, the dreaded death rather question.
These are in no particular order.
They're just making they're just gonna come.
I probably have to bring songs from the queue of life, best of you wonder.
I'm sure a lot of people bring that one, but I think that album like really got me into this kind of music, honestly.
I'll bring I Am by Earthwind and Fire.
That's probably my favorite Earthwind and Fire record, one of my favorite albums ever.
In terms of I mean, harmony and stuff is great, and also just the grooves and s like every song on that album bangs.
Um and
Totally influenced my like live sense sensibility interranging.
In terms of the last three, I'd bring two star and the dream police by McGee.
That's more modern.
That's like from twenty twenty four or twenty twenty three.
Um, one of my favorite albums ever.
Um I'd bring I'm suffering from recency bias here, but
At least right now, the way I feel is I'd bring this album by a guy named Daryl Johns, it's just the self-titled album, Daryl Johns.
Shout out to Daryl Johns.
He's incredibly underrated.
He like plays bass for MacDamarco.
That's like maybe how people might know him.
But he makes this him and Chris Fishman, who's a keys player and a drummer also, made this record.
Um it's so hard to describe this kind of music.
Like kind of sounds like it sounds like eighties sitcom music.
That also has like elements of jazz fusion in it.
And, you know, like Daryl Johns, I think calls it champion pop.
But it's it basically feels like it feels very nostalgic and also very fresh and and it just kind of scratches this itch in my brain.
I can't explain why.
But it's it's so freaking good.
So I I'd probably bring that.
And then for my final one, probably D'Angelo.
I go back and forth between brown sugar and voodoo.
I think right now I'm feeling more brown sugar.
Actually I just got operated on for my ACL and they wheeled me into the operating room and said, We have Spotify, you wanna listen to music.
Of course it doesn't matter because they hit me with the general anesthetic a second after that.
So I can't listen to any of it.
But I Yeah, you wanna throw on brown sugar by D'Angelo?
And that's what they did.
And we joked, like me and my friends were joking like that.
As soon as I knocked, they're probably like, Yeah, all right, let's just switch it to something we want to hear.
She told me like after the fact at my post op visit that, hey, like we actually really dug that album like we hadn't heard before.
And I like, yeah, like you should check out D'Angelo.
Um but yeah, I think those are my five for now.
No, great picks, thank you.
Yeah, look, I had the same assumption that as soon as you're under, they would have turned it over.
So that's yeah, to them actually listen, that's amazing.
No, Danny, thank you.
They're amazing picks.
And look, it's been really great speaking with you.
Obviously, you're uh at the start of what will hopefully be a very long rocket ride with increasing momentum.
And I certainly love the album and excited for what well, what is coming next for Couch?
Probably that's worth a little bit of a final check out.
What's, you know, the plan for the next year or so?
Yeah, the plan for next year is to write more music.
We as of now don't have plans to go on another big headline tour.
I think we're gonna take our foot off the gas in that regard and try to write more music.
We have a few festivals this summer we're going to.
Um, but nothing like no long tours.
I mean, we'll see what offers come in, but for the most part, I think it's gonna be writing music, thinking about that next headline tour, the next album.
Um, so stay tuned for that.
And
We might be playing near you over the course of summer, so just check check that out.
Yes, no, definitely.
I I would love to see you down here.
It'd be a pleasure to come and check out your amazing works.
And I can't thank you aga again enough, Danny.
It's been amazing speaking with you.
Yeah, thanks a lot, David.
This is a lot of fun.
I'm so glad we got to do this.
And there we have it.
I hope you enjoyed that chat with Danny.
I know I did.
And I'm hopefully going to see Couch land down under at some stage in the future.
They certainly deserve to be heard down here.
So fingers crossed.
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