Blues maestro Dan Patlansky has just released a new album, Dear Silence Thieves. He answers a few questions.
Good day, Dan. How are things?
They are good, thank you.
Photo: Pierre van der Walt
Congrats on the release of Dear Silence Thieves. This is, if I’m counting correctly, your sixth album. How did your approach with Dear Silence Thieves differ from that with your previous albums? What did you try that you haven’t tried before?
Seventh … Although the entire album is still guitar driven, we really concentrated on the songs. The song was king throughout the album – because of this I think is the album with the strongest songs I've ever done.
Considering that your previous two albums were released in 2012 and 2013, you’ve become really prolific in terms of releasing recorded music (we all know you’ve been really prolific at gigging for a long time). What brought about this shift or desire to release albums regularly, and what impact does it have on one’s career, compared with, say, releasing an album every five years or so?
We've released an album a year for the past three years. I'm constantly writing, but it's just easier to constantly tour and fill venues when you have new songs and a new product.
It’s funny, I’m listening to the album for the third time now and thinking: this is more a rock album than it is a blues album – but then, the beauty of both these genres lies in their fluidity, and you’ve never been scared of bending genres. What’s your feeling about the album in this regard, and about genres in general, as you’re widely known as a blues guitarist?
Dear Silence Thieves is a modern blues rock album. There are some classic rock and funk elements (as these are some major influences of mine) – I feel these genres complement each other greatly and we used these elements based on the song. But this album is still very firmly grounded in the blues.
Speaking of which … I’ve seen you play clubs as small as Bohemia in Stellenbosch and Cool Runnings in Bloem, and then conversely huge stages like the Oppikoppi main stage last year. As blues is your trade – by which many would conjure up images of smoky, whiskey-stained bars – which do you prefer, small bars or big stages? What are the up- and downsides of either?
I like playing both, as they offer different experiences. Upsides: small – you get a chance to really interact with the audience in an intimate manner; on big stages you really feed off the energy of the crowd. Downsides: small – it then gets easy for the audience to overshadow the ambience of the music; big: because you are physically so far removed from the audience, if you lose your connection it's difficult to find again.
Quite a few bands believe one of the reasons the South African rock scene is rather small is the lack of big, proper venues (festivals excluded). How do you feel about this? And, having toured overseas quite a bit, how does the local scene compare? What are its strong and weak points?
I don't think it has anything to do with the venues, but rather with commercial radio. In South Africa commercial radio plays only one brand of music, arranged, recorded and produced in a certain manner. This means South Africa's listening public is exposed to only about 1% of the music out there. So when it comes to supporting artists they are mostly at a loss.
Back to the album: there’s a lot of really strong lyrical work going on in the ten songs. It seems like a lot of blues acts are fine to go along with “My baby left me” etc etc, as there seems to be a perception that that is what people come to hear at a blues gig. What is your view of this? How does your songwriting process work in terms of putting it all together? What comes first?
There is nothing wrong with the cliché blues lyrics, as they have a certain charm to them – I do a lot of songs with those kinds of lyrics. With this album, however, I decided to take a modern blues approach and write about some of my personal experiences with the odd clichéd line. When writing I always write the music first to establish the vibe and then the lyrics.
You’ve played a gazillion gigs across the country and out of the country. What memories do you hold dear of the journey so far? Any not-so-pleasant memories, or places you won’t be visiting again soon?
Pleasant: These were al watershed moments in my career: 2005 – playing the Maple Leaf in New Orleans; 2006 – playing at the Cape Town International Blues Festival and the opening for Bruce Springsteen this year.
Bad: Disorganised festivals, dealing with unprofessional promoters and incompetent venue owners and sound engineers.
What does the near and far future hold for Dan Patlansky?
We'll be touring and promoting Dear Silence Thieves locally and abroad – we will be touring in Europe again towards the end of the year, headlining a festival in Denmark.
What is the meaning of life?
If you walk a duck with clown – I'm afraid of toast.
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