Lady Danville interview

To celebrate the 10th anniversary of Dashboard Confessional's legendary first album Swiss Army Romance, the band embarked on a special West Coast tour.  The pioneers of emo chose three-piece acoustic pop folk outfit Lady Danville to help support them.  The Los Angeles trio is currently making waves in the music industry, having completed a successful tour with Ben Folds and delighted fans with multiple performances at CMJ.  I tracked the band down at their show at the Troubadour in LA and drummer Matthew Frankel sat down to talk to me about creating music, graduating college, and climbing the ladder of success.

We convene in the surprisingly clean confines of Lady Danville's tour van, which the band has named Brenda.  Normally they tote just three people in there on tour, but this time they brought along a merch guy for the first time.  "It's been great, he offered to do it for free this first trip," Frankel beams.  "We're going to pay him but it's nice to have an extra driver.  Plus he's only nineteen so he's really just green and ready to go.  But he's been around the block, worked in the industry for years now."

Lady Danville has had a blast opening for Dashboard Confessional.  “It’s so cool,” Frankel gushes.  “First of all, Chris [Carrabba] is the nicest guy ever.”  I couldn’t agree more, as I interviewed him last year and he was one of the most pleasant people I’ve ever encountered. “I totally believe that,” Frankel says.  “There’s something so cool about him.  He’ll just come and plop himself down in our green room and we’ll just chat.  That’s not always the case with the headliner.  Needless to say, he’s an amazing performer.  Getting up there every night, he does not even need to sing into the microphone- his fans know every single word, they spit out everything.  Every single night he exudes so much energy and the audience just gives it back to him times ten.  It’s pretty amazing.”

The tour has been a huge success.  “I think every show has been sold out so far,” Frankel relays.  The fans may come out for Dashboard, but they can’t help falling in love with Lady Danville.  “The response has been amazing,” he says excitedly.  “Chris' audience is great for us and the demographic is great.  Also they are people that are open to 'heart-on-your-sleeve' music, even though I wouldn’t say our music is necessarily that blatant, but you know, we emote a little.  It’s been great.  People have been coming up after and wanting autographs and pictures and all that stuff so we just try to keep our energy up after each show to greet people.”

The tour kicked off to a sold out crowd at the Summit Music Hall in Denver.  I regret to admit that I could not attend and Frankel assures me that I missed a phenomenal evening.  “It was great, it was so good,” Frankel shares.  “Denver’s amazing.  We’ve played there a few times before at a couple colleges.”

Lady Danville came to be when the three musicians were attending college at UCLA.  “I studied theater/film/television, Dan was political science, and Michael was sociology,” Frankel explains. “And, yes, we all graduated.  We were in an a cappella group there- I was the beat boxer.  I was auditioning  members and Dan and Michael auditioned together.  They didn’t know each other at the time.  They both grew up in Danville and didn’t know each other, then when they came to the a cappella group Michael said to Dan, ‘Are you Dan from Danville?’ and Dan said, ‘Are you Mikey G from Danville?’, because they both had a reputation on campus.  So yeah, we all met in the a cappella group and I joined on when we graduated from college.”

For Lady Danville, writing songs is a fluid, natural process.  “There’s definitely no formula and it’s changing, probably for the better now,” Frankel describes.  “Since the group started, every song has been written by every person.  Somebody comes in with a melody line, or a grouping of lyrics, or a concept.  Sometimes it’s more developed than others, for example “Better Side” was pretty developed when it was brought to the table.  Other songs are much more collaborative in the room, but every single song everybody has input in and writes.  It’s just whatever happens, happens.  We often look at our repertoire and say, ‘What do we want, what do we need?’ because we want to make sure that we have a diverse set, but at the same time stay true to what’s going on in our actual lives.”

Lady Danville draws most of their inspiration for songs from everyday life.  “Every single song that we have pulls from probably at least two of our lives,” Frankel tells me.  “Somebody will be going through something and we’ll talk it out because we’re friends.  Then it will spawn an idea and then usually one of us has gone through the exact same thing.  For "Tired Magician", Michael and I were both going through really s***** times when we were first writing the song, and Dan could relate to it because one year prior, he had gone through something extremely similar.  We connect on a very psychological level.”

Though their songs are often about life and love and personal experiences, I’m convinced there has to be something strange that inspired one of Lady Danville’s tunes.  “The instrument the ukulele is probably the weirdest thing,” Frankel laughs.  “It was bought as somewhat of a writing tool for Michael because it’s easy to play and it’s goofy fun.  But it became so annoying on tour when we would be traveling in the van and he would be playing- sometimes driving and playing.  We’d be like, ‘Dude, you need to relax and NOT do that.’  The uke is not necessarily a surprising inspiration for a song, but considering that it was annoying as hell and then we wrote one of our most loved live songs on it in the car when we were driving one day is kind of a unique story.  It’s called ‘I Want You Back.’  It’s a fun, very relatable song, but humorous.”

Lady Danville has already had the opportunity to play with some veteran bands like Jack’s Mannequin, Ben Folds, and, well, Dashboard Confessional.  Have they gotten any good advice from these popular artists?  “Chris [Carrabba] has given us the most advice, but it’s not in a pretentious or condescending way at all,” Frankel reveals.  “We’re really young and wanting to soak up all we can about the industry so if something casually comes up they’ll offer advice.  But everyone we’ve toured with hasn’t said, ‘The one lesson you should learn is __.’  The general thing that they say is to write and record they best records you can.  It’s all about the writing, it’s all about the music because at the end of the day, when you’ve dealt with all the business, it really comes back to the music.”

As they come up in the ranks, Lady Danville finds themselves getting more press, gaining more fans, and achieving more industry recognition.  But they are not letting it get to their heads.  “It’s been more recent than anything,” Frankel says deep in thought.  “The Ben Folds thing and this tour have been the real kick starter for us.  Touring is just so important for young acts, especially now that labels aren’t giving as much support.  It’s been happening because of touring that we’ve been getting the recognition.”  The band takes touring seriously, and one of their main jobs while on the road is to connect with fans.  “We want to meet them as much as they want to meet us,” Frankel says honestly.  “We will sign autographs and take pictures for upwards of thirty or forty minutes sometimes and that is amazing.  It’s just so cool that people are very accepting of the music.  We become friends with a lot of our fans because they are so supportive.  We tell them to contact us on Facebook, add as us friends personally.  We want to get to know them personally because we wouldn’t get to do any of this if people weren’t supporting us.”

Lady Danville fans are popping up in droves all over the country, but if Frankel had his choice, there are a couple of special people that he would want to be the band’s biggest fan.  “The Beatles and Rufus Wainwright,” he unveils.  “Rufus would be the fifth member.  That’s kind of a mixture of things.  They might make fun of him in a British accent.”