Interview With Dan Aid – Big Hearts Club & Beyond

Posted on August 17, 2020
by Aimee

I have chatted with Denver musician Dan Aid many times over the past few years… about his former band Wiredogs… about a more singer-songwriter style solo project… and of course as a friend when we could go see him perform in those bands or Authority Zero. Just like all of us, COVID changed Dan’s plans in recent months. But he has been able to take some good things out of it, like collaborating with Slow Caves‘ member Jakob Mueller on Big Hearts Club. They released their first single “Dear Nick” this week, and I was happy to talk with my pal again about what he’s been up to as well as where he’s headed.

Interview With Dan Aid

Aimee:

So, I know you have a new project, Big Hearts Club, tell me about that.

Dan:

Yeah. So, Big Hearts Club, it started as something that James Alex from Beach Slang and I would just say to each other. Beach Slang came through Larimer Lounge about five years ago and I met James and we’ve just stayed in contact. Over the next several years, we’d send each other little emails and little snips of things we’re working on and thoughts of the day sort of stuff. And it was always just those conversations. He’s one of my favorite songwriters because he’s such a poet and a punk.

So, when he’d come through town, they stayed with me and my girlfriend at the time. They slept on our floor one tour, then the Authority Zero, we ran into them over in Belgium and I’ve just always found reasons to run into each other. We ran into each other in Berlin, we had this random 45 minute window that aligned perfectly in our days between our respective shows at different places in the city, to meet up at the Ramones Museum.

So anyway, “Big Hearts Club” just became this thing that we’d say to one another. “Oh, they’re a member of the Big Hearts Club.” Meaning they seem like they are a good person, or are doing good things.

And I always also had this idea of what if this was a band? And what would that look like? About a year and a half ago, it was about the timeframe in between Authority Zero tours and in between the Slow Caves tours. I hit Jakob Mueller [from Slow Caves] up and just and I asked if he might want to do a writing session and we sort of texted over the last few years about maybe doing something like that, but I’ve never been able to make it happen. Schedules are hard.

And anyway, we finally did it. We met up in Fort Collins and spent a whole day writing together. And it was this really wonderful experience. I think Jakob and myself like to move at a really similar pace when we write and sort of latched onto the idea and the sound of what we were creating together really naturally. And so we just kept doing that. I would drive up from Denver, we’d start the day at 11am and we would go get a bagel and catch up about our lives. And then we would go back to his folks’ place. He’s got a little recording set up in the basement that’s he has used forever. And we just started writing. One of us would hop on drums or guitar bass and we just start jamming on ideas until we found an idea we liked. And then we would go from there, and usually by like a 11pm or midnight, we’d have a fully fledged song. We were always recording the ideas.

Which felt good too because we actually have something down. I would always crash up there cause I’d be so tired and I’d sleep in the basement on this little couch they had. Then I would just put my earbuds in and hit play on the little message file that Jakob would text me and I’d just play it over and over and over until I fell asleep. In a couple of months, we had 15 or 20 songs.

So, then I went back on tour and then he went back on tour. Our lives got busy again, so naturally, the project sort of slowed with so much happening. I was out in LA, a bunch of auditioning for things and shooting a couple of TV shows.

But I was always listening to the demos when I was out in LA, walking around. I kept thinking – who is the human that we would want to produce this project?

During those writing sessions, he and his family went to see Johnny Marr at the Gothic and they had an extra ticket and they asked if I could go. I didn’t know Johnny’s stuff, I knew of The Smiths but I didn’t know Johnny’s solo stuff at all. I was absolutely blown away by the songs and by him as a performer and as a guitarist and as a front person, but also just as a human on that stage.

That led to the next few months of me just really diving into his music and his autobiography. I would drive around listening to Johnny read his own story. That had a big impact on me. And so anyway, because Johnny and that style of music was sort of coming into our world at that became the focal point of a lot of conversations and inspiration musically. So, when it came time to think about, well, whom would we want to produce? I was like, well, what if we got Johnny to do it? I started peeking around online and seeing if I could find his management’s contact and phone. I got some leads that led me to other leads that led me to contacting people. And they told me to contact other people and other people. And I ended up getting some demos over to his manager and she was really nice. She wrote me back and said, she’d pass them along to Johnny. And so…

Aimee:

Oh, wow…

Dan:

I didn’t hear anything back. (Laughs.) But what that led me to think about was well, who’s producing Johnny’s stuff?

Aimee:

Exactly. That’s what my next question was.

Dan:

And then I got his name, James Doviak. And I was like, who is this guy? He’s the guy that we’d seen live, he plays guitar and keys for Johnny in his band. And I found his email and I shot him a message. And I think the same day he wrote me back this really lovely long email. We went back and forth for a while and we started brainstorming about what our working together might look like. Then we came up with this plan.

He was going to be over in LA working with some other artists and in between tours with Johnny. And so we were like, well, let’s meet up in LA for a week and get in the studio and do something. So we had this whole thing laid out, so we’d gone back and forth for a couple months and figured out this plan. And we’re sort of waiting on his tour schedule to solidify so that he could let us know his availability and the our tour were scheduled to solidify. So we could let him know our availability and then… COVID hits.

Aimee:

Right. Ugh. I was waiting for that.

Dan:

And again, the project slows. And I’m checking in with James, we’re still chatting a little bit and I’m checking in with Jakob, but, and I just felt like the project was kind of dying. And I really didn’t want it to just because I really loved it a lot. So James has this idea, well, what if I just mixed your demo? Because we’d recorded the pieces separately. So we had these tracks in different ways that we could send them. And I was really nervous cause we had not tried to record anything well, we just recorded it in a basement. But anyways, so we sent him all those and he sent us back this initial first mix of the song, “Dear Nick.”

And Jakob and I listened to it and we both just loved it. His ear on it, took it further in the direction of where our ears were already taking our project. And I just remember feeling so relieved. Cause I think that’s maybe one of the hardest things to find in a producer is someone who understands the feeling of your vision internally, the way you do.

Aimee:

Amazing.

Dan:

So that’s the long, long version of the story of “Dear Nick.”

Aimee:

Well, first of all, that’s an incredible story. And I love how you took lemons and made lemonade out of it. I also love the song by the way, I don’t think I’ve told you that yet, my bad. But what is the song about? Who’s Nick?

Dan:

Well, I think titles are really hard in general. I struggle with them and I know Jakob, I think also struggles with them. So, for the actual title, we were just talking about The Strokes that night. “Dear Nick” was just sort of an off the cuff reference at midnight or 12:30 in the morning or whatever, when we were wrapping up the session to just be like, “oh, it’s just a letter to Nick [Valensi, guitar player for the The Strokes] – or something like that… (Laughs.)

But mainly the thing for all these songs is that Jakob and I have been writing for Big Hearts Club in a totally different process from any project I’ve ever done before. In that we write all the lyrics and all the vocal melodies together. When we’re done writing the music, we always took a coffee break and we’d go upstairs and, and we sit down and take a pen and a piece of paper. And we just started talking about what we’ve been talking about the whole day. We try to remember the conversation, the little moments we’ve been having.

And that day we’ve been talking a lot about friendship situations both of us had in the past, like how in the past six months we’ve both gone through experiences with our best friends where we were now not really on speaking terms with each other. And I think that was sort of forefront in our minds, not only in general, but in this process of trying to form new connection with a new musical partner and… to sort of test the waters as far as, if this say, are we safe space for each other to build friendship, to build music, to do this again? Cause we both, I think just been really, really hurt and we were, I think in the process of grieving those relationships.

And so, I think that’s where the lyrical came content came from this idea of, of saying goodbye to something when it no longer when it’s become, toxic in a way for everyone involved and sure. And that difficulty that idea of the difficulty of being yourself in those moments and staying true to yourself and walking away from the solid platform that deep relationship has provided, but trusting that on the other side of it, there’s something else.

Aimee:

I know the song was released August 11th. Is there a plan for more songs behind that? Are you just trying to get things done, with COVID life and everything like that or what’s the-

Dan:

I think, well, yes, there’s a plan and that we have all this material and we actually have started writing with Greg Ziemba, who’s the drummer for Wheelchair Sports Camp and Rubedo and just another really lovely, really large hearted, really amazing musician. And I would love for us to be able to go into a studio with James and do that initial plan that we had. It’s just a matter of when, and, and yeah, I guess if that’s not a possibility, maybe, if, everyone has the time. Maybe there’s a possibility of doing another one of these basement demo ideas if James wants to take that on, but we haven’t discussed that yet. But the idea I guess, was sort of to make this single, to get it out into the world, to show people what we’re doing, to see if there’s interest for the project and then to see, if we could take that momentum and that interest and turn it into the next steps for everybody.

Aimee:

Sounds great. So what is it what’s going on with Authority Zero? Are you still in the band?

Dan:

So, with a Authority Zero, the last year, I had a meeting or a couple of meetings with the guys, and we decided I would take a year off from touring with the band to pursue these acting opportunities that were coming into my world. Because the year before that, we’d all been trying to manage both of those worlds happening at the same time, which was just … It was an incredible amount of stress for me and for the guys. So, yeah, it just made sense to take a year.

Brandon Landelius, who is the guitar player that I had replaced in the band, had some openings in his schedule where he was going to be able to tour this whole next year with Authority Zero. Then, of course everything shut down.

Aimee:

Right. So, it’s all just on pause?

Dan:

Yeah.

Aimee:

Right. Well, talk a little bit about the acting career. I thought the things you have done were amazing. Congrats on that.

Dan:

Yeah. So now two years ago, I think, I started auditioning for some TV shows and feature films. I got cast two years ago and this show, SMILF, that was on Showtime and ended up having a recurring role in that. I had a really wonderful experience with that and those folks over there and then kept auditioning for things. Then this last year, got picked up by Good Girls for season three on NBC. Ended up doing just one episode for them, and it was great.

I got cast in a movie for this series called Into the Dark that Hulu was doing that Blumhouse Productions was putting out. They did BlacKkKlansman, Insidious and a bunch of horror films. So, I was in LA shooting that, and then production shut down. I was on my way flying back to Denver, and I got a call from my manager that Good Girls was writing me back as a recurring role.

Aimee:

Wow.

Dan:

I was like, “Yes! This is amazing.” Then less than 24 hours later, maybe 12 hours later, I got an email from Good Girls that they were shutting down production and letting all of their contracts go. So yes. That was like –

Aimee:

Fuck you, COVID, is all I have to say!

Dan:

Ha, exactly.

Aimee:

Well hopefully, it’ll continue when things get a little more settled. Have you really even enjoying it? Do you really like the process of it?

Dan:

Yeah, it’s been really wonderful. I think just some of the relationships I’ve been able to build and some of the people who have been able to really go to bat for me and in particular, Kerry Washington, directed me in my second episode of SMILF.

Aimee:

Are you kidding? No way.

Dan:

Yeah. She has been incredibly generous with me. I’ve also gotten into doing some screenwriting. I wrote a couple of screenplays this last year, and I sent it over to her and she had some folks at her production company read it and they really liked it. They weren’t looking at doing anything in that genre at the time, but it was just really nice that she was able to put me in another room with some more people and invite me that space a little bit more.

Aimee:

Absolutely.

Dan:

Then Frankie Shaw and her husband, Zach, who wrote and directed, and she created SMILF, have also been really generous. He read my first screenplay and gave me some really lovely feedback on that. Yeah, so it’s been really interesting. I just found a lot of people in LA and in Hollywood, really willing to be generous with me with their time and their feedback, which I don’t think is normal necessarily. So I felt really fortunate.

Aimee:

… I guess that’s the big hearts club. It goes around, it comes back around to the big hearts club.

Dan:

Yeah. It very much feels that way.

❤️

Be sure to follow Dan on Instagram.

Promo photos by Madeline Berky.