Danielle Eva Schwob Interview
Doug Burke:
Danielle Eva Schwob is the auteur behind the musical creation, Delanila. She is a cross genre composer in concert music, film scores, and avant garde pop music. An amazingly talented multi-instrumentalist composer, songwriter and singer, her new album Overloaded explores the effect of overwhelming technology on our lives. The album is an atmospheric lost in space dystopia, making the listener feel overwhelmed by technology, isolated and estranged. Her songs speak to the living humanity of a generation dealing with forces beyond their control, through her unique amalgamation of diverse musical talents. Produced by three time Grammy winner, David Bottrill, producer of Tool Muse and Peter Gabriel, and backed by some of the finest session musician friends of Danielle Overloaded. ,it's overloaded with creativity and talent.
Danielle Eva Schwob:
It's been a while since I went outside
Cause the TV is on and my eyes are wide
I'm beginning to feel that this false world is real
And I should stay inside I's been awhile since I said a word
All these hours on my own, feeling restless and spurned
But I'm never alone I've got friends in the shows
And they're not going anywhere
Doug Burke:
I'm here with Danielle Schwob, otherwise known as Delanila, to talk about her new album. Danielle, do you prefer to be called Danielle or by your. Performance name
Danielle Eva Schwob:
No, Danielle is great. It's actually, it's a project really [00:03:00] rather than an alter ego. So I'm still going by Danielle.
Doug Burke:
You know, normally I would talk about songs often in sort of chronology of your releases, but in this case. You've just released a song that is so timely called,"It's Been A While Since I Went Outside" and in this pandemic environment that we all have been living in, I think everyone feels that sentiment. So could we start by talking about that new release?
Danielle Eva Schwob:
Sure. Well, this one, I actually wrote, uh, probably the better part of two years ago actually. I kind of went through a phase in my life, career, all of the above where I was really spending a lot of time just working from home on my own. As you know, so many creative people do, especially composers are lives are basically spent in solitary confinement with a computer screen, sort of sitting, sitting and banging our heads against the walls, trying to come up with musical ideas. So, um, I was working a lot. I was super busy, but I, that basically meant that I was spending all of my time in my apartment. And, uh, the weird thing about being a creative person in 2020 is like, you can stay at home and you can be working in isolation, but you're also connected to the rest of the world through screens, through social media, through that, or even TV. I guess I just found that kind of dissonance jarring, and I wrote the song in reaction to that, I guess. It was about feeling isolated. You know, wanting to maybe be more connected to people than I was at the time. So, uh, it was really nothing to do with the pandemic.
Doug Burke:
Interesting, but you're releasing it in this moment and the video is really sort of dystopian and alienating. And you know, you filmed the streets of New York during this pandemic?
Danielle Eva Schwob:
I did, yeah. I mean, I really just felt that I, like, I've been in New York for a very long time, and being out and about walking around down here, I found it really just very sobering and very sad and surreal. See what life was like down here. You know, there've been a lot of photographers who've been taking pictures, or maybe some other filmmakers even, but there's something about adding music to something like that that really gives it a lot more emotional depth, I guess. So I didn't want to just show people what they were seeing. I wanted to try and find a way to make them, make them feel it. And weirdly, I just happened to have this song that kind of sums up what we're all going through now. So I really don't know what to make of the, of the, I don't know, I don't know what you want to call it, the coincidence or just the strange timing of it all. But, uh, somehow I've wound up with this piece of music that's very reflective of the times he isn't, even though it wasn't written to be.
Doug Burke:
So you have an amazing background cause you're, you have your feet in two universes, you and I consider you to be a triple threat in this respect that you make videos and you are a composer and an arranger of.stage, theater, film scores, and you write songs that are in another realm, and this is your song world that we're talking about here, but you bring these other elements of your background to that. And on this song, "It's Been A While Since I Went Outside" tell me about the other instrumentation, the arrangement that you put together here.
Danielle Eva Schwob:
Sure. So a lot of it, it started off life as really just an electronic demo that I put together in my apartment. And then over time I added a lot of other instruments to it. So there's a decent number of analog keyboards in addition to the programming. And then, you know, real guitars tracked in a studio, not ones that were done direct in an apartment or anything like that. Nice big set of drums and a bass, and then I added a string section to it, which [00:07:00] to me is the thing that really brings the track to life. Um, it's kind of how I always envisioned it would be, even though it took a little bit of time for it to get there.
Doug Burke:
Your music has inherently so many layers to it, between the electronics that you use and the live instrumentation and, and it, it just creates this fusion, this unique sound that is captivating to me.
Danielle Eva Schwob:
Thank you. Well, that was, that was always the goal. Um, I sort of set up wanting to make a pop record that was reflective of my background as a composer, I guess. Um, I mean, even just thinking about my own interests as a songwriter and my own background and the kinds of artists that made me want to get into music on the songwriting front, it was always people who, who made music that was grounded in good songwriting, but also really adventurous in terms of arrangements and production and thought and ambition really. So, at the end of the day, I still feel very much that they're pop songs, but they're pop songs with a [00:08:00] larger arc and hopefully depth to them and bigger scale. I guess it's what I've been hoping to, hoping to do.
Doug Burke:
I find there's an oxymoron to the fact that you use so much electronic instrumentation, and I yet that causes you to feel isolated and alienated throughout this album. And frankly, I thought, and in this song, you know, there's a line there that in the first verse, "I'm beginning to feel that this false world is real."
Danielle Eva Schwob:
Yes.
Doug Burke:
What's that about?
Danielle Eva Schwob:
That's about watching TV. I guess, actually just to backtrack for a second, the song was also written, so part of it was started when I was, part of it was inspired by this, uh, this time when I was working from home a lot. But another part of it was also was inspired by a time when I was sick for an extended period and I actually had mono, so I was kind of out on my couch for about six months at one point. You know, after a while you, there's not much you can do. You just sit around and you're watching TV and people don't want to come and see you when you have mono because they don't want mono. And so, uh. You wind up just feeling like the characters in these TV shows are your friends and cause who knows when the last time that you saw your actual friends was, and the entertainment starts to feel more real than reality because it's your entire universe. And weirdly, I expect that's what a lot of people are going through right now. If they're not able to work from home for whatever reason, it's just a lot of time seeking passive entertainment, staring at screens. I guess.
Doug Burke:
And in the break you say, I'm in overload. I'm in overload, which is the title of the album, but also the title, another song on the album. Do you feel overloaded? There's this a personal, I mean, it sounds like a very personal song.
Danielle Eva Schwob:
Yeah, at the time. I mean, I don't think I feel like that anymore if I'm being completely honest or if I do, it's just, I think I've just got so used to being overloaded with work and life that it doesn't even feel overwhelming anymore. Yeah, I did at the time. I mean I think that the way that we, I was going to say live, but it could be lived at this point cause we have no idea what the world is going to look like when we come out the other side of this pandemic. But the way we have lived and certainly in New York everything is so fast paced, it's always "We should be doing more. We should be more successful. Why aren't we doing enough? Why aren't we this? Why aren't we that?" And you know, you're, you're on phones all the time and there's this constant influx of information and the news cycle is so fast. And just the way, the way we consume information now is. It's kind of just thrust in our faces that are relentless pace. And so that's, that's what all of that was about. So both my personal situation, I suppose, but also hopefully reflective of the world at large.
Doug Burke:
Interesting. I think you're the first artist that I've interviewed that I actually have to put the videos onto the website rather than just the Spotify because it's hard to comprehend the song, I think without the video, those pictures of New York and the empty park benches and
Danielle Eva Schwob:
Isn't it something? It's been pretty sobering being down here, I got to say. I've lived in New York for such a long time, and New York is basically synonymous with hustle and bustle and people and you know, stuff that you don't even necessarily want to be confronting every day in the streets. Um. And to see it empty is just, it just, it just doesn't compute. It's incredibly surreal and both peaceful and kind of sad and tense at the same time. It's just a lot being down here. Then I just felt like I had to I [00:12:00] felt like I had to capture it for that reason. That's a moment.
Doug Burke:
You know, if you, if it weren't for the pandemic, you'd have to spend a fortune to clear the streets, and pull permits, to create these shots. You know, it's, it's a, it's kind of this bittersweet thing that it's actual documentary of life today in New York.
Danielle Eva Schwob:
That was what was so, not to make it sound like I think my work is the best thing on the planet or anything, but I find it sad still watching that video back and seeing all of these clips strung together. And also, I mean, something else to remember is that that's what I put into the video. There were probably now another 50 60 odd shots of streets that I have sitting on my hard drive. This isn't everything that I filmed. It's just what felt like it made sense in the edit. So Soho is very, very quiet. It doesn't become less strange. The more you're down here, it just still feels very weird.
Doug Burke:
Yeah. Let's hope it gets filled with people soon enough that are healthy.
Sure. I'd like to sort of as a sequel to that song, "Turning On The TV," since you were watching a lot of TV, I guess writing this album,
Danielle Eva Schwob:
They're all kind of about the same things, most of the songs.
Doug Burke:
So tell me what this song is about.
Danielle Eva Schwob:
If you can believe it. My song turning on the TV is about watching television. Yeah. It was, I guess it was actually inspired by the same time in life that the other one was a time when I was at home a lot, watching a lot of screens and kind of missing actual humans. It's probably the "poppiest" song on the record, I would say. Uh, but it also has the string arrangement on it that I'm most proud of. Along with "It's Been A While Since I Went Outside," I think. Yeah, [00:15:00] no, the, the arrangements come out, come out in a way that I'm very happy with there. And I also though, that's got some of my favorite guitar work that I've done on it too. So the, all the solos are me and, uh, there's a cool rhythm part in the verses that I, I've always kind of enjoyed. It feels a bit Radiohead, like when I play it.
Doug Burke:
I love that. I was gonna. I wanted to ask you in this interview if that's your own guitar work or do you bring in session people because it's.
Danielle Eva Schwob:
It's both.
Doug Burke:
It's a fascinating mix of electronica and guitar, so sort of old school and new school, and when you layer on strings, it's like, Oh man, this is a mashup. Like I have never heard.
Danielle Eva Schwob:
The kitchen sink of instruments. Um, yeah, the guitars, some of them are mine, some of them are an a wonderful guitar player. Adam McGarty that I worked with on this project. I mean, we could go through and I can tell you which parts are which, if you want, but "Turning On The TV" is, I think mostly me., actually. Adam's got a couple of sort of noodley fill kind of things in the verses and then it's playing some rhythm elsewhere. But most of the lead lines, actually all the lead lines, aside from the one I just mentioned, are me.
Doug Burke:
There's a handful of lines in the song that I love, like "I hope nobody calls. I won't be waiting for their uninspiring plans." Well, what does that mean? I mean, what it's kind of good. I hope nobody calls. I won't be waiting for?
Danielle Eva Schwob:
I don't know. Sometimes people ask you to do things and you just don't really feel like it. And you'd rather stay at home
Doug Burke:
- and watch TV.
Danielle Eva Schwob:
I guess so.
Doug Burke:
Another one is "I think I found God or something close enough in syndication and plastic parts." What's that about?
Danielle Eva Schwob:
That's my favorite lyric on the record. I'm glad you [00:17:00] singled that one out. It's about. I don't know. I almost don't even want to say what it's about because I feel like I can mean a lot of things. What I will say is that it was inspired by this image I found of a kid sitting in front of a glowing television that had this really kind of a etherreal halo-like look to it. It sort of had this feeling of being like a glowing beacon in the dark, and I guess the lyric came from that, but I think it, I think it means other things as well. At least it does to me.
Doug Burke:
I really liked that. Your chorus doesn't rhyme. I don't know why.
Danielle Eva Schwob:
Yeah, I guess it doesn't, does it?
Doug Burke:
But you end the song with, "I need change. I want to be saved. I'm feeling insane all alone." I mean, so many of the songs in here are about isolation and being disconnected and alienated and what are you trying to say?
Danielle Eva Schwob:
I don't know if I want to say what I, what I'm trying to say. It was a moment in time for me, I guess, and I think that I'm not alone in feeling like the way that we live so. I think as a, as I may have said earlier, connected yet disconnected by these screens that we speak to each other through. Phones or even this zoom call that we're on, we're not actually connecting in person, were sort of interacting with each as avatars. And so we are all isolated in, in a lot of ways. And I think, you know, having these plastic screens that stand in between us, it's not the same as interacting in person. And I think that the way that the world is heading, is you know great in some ways, I think I mean ironic, but thank God for social media and the internet and computer screens and these other technologies that we use to connect to each other. Thank God they exist. Because I couldn't imagine going through a pandemic like this without them. But I do think that they kind of, the way that we live now comes at a [00:19:00] cost, and I think that it does have emotional ramifications for people. So yes, it is about isolation and it is partly inspired by a time in my life when I felt like that. My hope is that it also ties into a larger conversations, I guess.
Doug Burke:
In the video, you appear to be trapped in a television like a cage, and you kind of never get out is like does.
Danielle Eva Schwob:
Yes. Oh, you mean the little animated, the animated thing? I think it's just an animated cover. I haven't put a video out for that one yet, but I know the one you're talking about the pink one with the enemy cover.
Doug Burke:
Okay. It was pretty, it was less, um, drama in that. It was more like watching an Andy Warhol movie, like "Empire" of just sort of the same picture with the sec. And your music does remind me of like John Cage and, and, and, and especially when you combine it with the video and, and I know you grew up on a wide range of music, but it has this New York. Or at least this album has this New York feel of the Andy Warhol and the Velvet Underground, and, and I'm reminded of Nine Inch Nails and Morrissey and all those other,
Danielle Eva Schwob:
we just ran down a, you ran down a list of some of my favorites, so thank you.
Doug Burke:
But am I okay? Regina Specter, you know these, these people who write. Yeah. Even the whole grunge movement of Kurt Cobain and Pearl Jam, you know, people who write these songs about being alienated, and so in the sense you're really writing about the zeitgeist of your generation in a different way. For me.
Danielle Eva Schwob:
Thank you. That's a really lovely compliment.
Doug Burke:
I don't know if that's what you're after.
Danielle Eva Schwob:
I mean, I think, uh, I think setting out to make something that can speak for a generation is a dangerous game. As a creative person, I think all you can do is, I hope that there's some kind of universality in the specificity of what you're writing, if that makes sense. You write about your own, your own experiences on your own [00:21:00] perspective in detail and hope that I hope that other people see their lives in that. I guess.
Doug Burke:
Yeah. I often talk in this podcast about the invisible language, the combination of words and sounds, and you actually layer in video with your talents, how a good song hits an emotion. And just because the emotion is alienating or isolating, it can still be a great song, and I think you do that on your work. "Time Slips Away" does talk about this alienation in very specific ways. Getting isolated in the loneliest places.
Danielle Eva Schwob:
That one is specifically about computers, I guess and social media more than anything else, just to differentiate it from the other screen. The other screens that show up in the record in various places. Yeah. That one was about, yeah, I guess there was a time when, I'm not going to say that I was addicted to social media because I definitely wasn't, but social media is addictive and there was a time where I felt like I was spending more time on it than I should be, and that made me feel pretty bad, both because you know, these, these electronic interactions that we have with one another are really not, not a replacement for in person ones. And so I think that does make you, or it can make you feel a little removed from life, I guess, and from other people. So I was spending more time on Facebook and Instagram and all of that than I wanted to. And I guess these platforms are so strange in so many ways, but there's a line in there about like watching friends fade into the strangest lives, which was basically a reference to, well, not so much a reference. So we keep in touch with people for far, far, far longer than previous generations did because we are kind of eternally connected to each other's avatars. So I know what, you know, Joe Schmoe from high school is doing however many years later on his like chicken farm in wherever he is. Even though we haven't spoken to each other in years. We don't have any, any real way that we'd run into one another. So that was what that line is about. So we continue to stay in touch with people who probably in previous times would have faded from our lives a lot faster, but we have this kind of voyeuristic window into what they're doing, which is a unnatural and strange. And then you also just the fact that like social media is basically people posting highlight reels of their own existence and kind of trying to one up each other in many ways, which doesn't make people feel great. So it was about all of that. And then also really just written during the time that I was talking about before where I was spending a lot of time by myself in a room trying to become a better composer. Artists in general, like to talk about the 10,000 hours that they have to put in. So I guess a lot of this record was kind of inspired by that time. The time I was putting in my 10,000 hours or however many I've logged thus far. The time that you're spending trying to become a good artist, to be a better guitar player, a better producer, a better arranger, composer, whatever. You're not leading sort of a standard existence. It's not a nine to five. It's really, it's quite monastic in a lot of ways. And so yeah, you're on your own trying to become a better writer. Meanwhile, you're connected to Joe Schmoe and his chicken farm and it's weird. There you are in your room by yourself connected to any everyone that you've ever known through a screen. And that has an effect on people's psyche, I guess. And so that song is what it's about. And the reason that the lyric "Time slips away" repeats at the top of every verse, is because I wanted to convey a sense of like repetition and monotony and this feeling of like hitting your head against the wall and it all being a little disorienting. And how long have you really been in here and how long are you going to be in here? And all of a sudden, I keep thinking about the pandemic again, because we're all probably asking ourselves the same questions at the moment. And that's originally where the song came from.
Doug Burke:
So your chorus in this also has internal rhymes with no couplet rhymes, and I really love that about this. And in particular,"I'm so tired, uninspired, lost in my hologram world." And then you use your echo voice, I call it. Many of the songs have this sort of. You put it in parantheticals in your lyrics, but you're in this echo voice. I call this doppelganger voice. This, I don't know if it's a conscience in your head. I guess it's different in every song when you use it, and I don't know if you were talking about like you repeat the line, "My hologram world."
Danielle Eva Schwob:
Yeah. I think I've always thought of that and that particular song is. It's like the voice of the person lost inside the computer, I guess, which sounds completely insane now that I say it aloud, but that's how I thought of it.
Doug Burke:
Is it like you're conscious in your head or is it like a evil twin or is it this like, like it's like you're talking to yourself cause you're going crazy cause time's slipping away.
Danielle Eva Schwob:
Yeah. I've never given it that much thought. It was kind of just the creepy, the creepy voice. It's some kind of inner voice or conscience or something. But. It was processed because I wanted it to sound kind of digital and like a voice that was lost in the internet, I guess.
Doug Burke:
Hmm. Maybe we should all have that voice talking to us sometimes before we hit send after, uh, too much to drink on a text message or something.
Danielle Eva Schwob:
But it might be hard to sleep late at night if that was, if that was in your head all the time.
He's always talking, nothing to say
Mindless, wasting my time
And ordinarily I'd stay in my own lane
But somehow I can't escape his name
Like a ringmaster, holding court
Surrounded by his knaves
I see him hanging on his puppet strings and I
I can't believe the way he holds the stage
Doug Burke:
"The philosopher," I must say, I love this video and I love the song, and it's actually one of my favorite songs on the album, and it's one of the only poppy songs or. but it's got your sort of darkness, you kno
Danielle Eva Schwob:
I'm actually a very sunny person, but for some reason my, the stuff I make is not. Also,iIt's very funny. Perhaps sunny is too strong a word, but I think I'm a lot less kind of doom and gloom than I might come off in the, and the record. It's also very funny to me that people keep saying that that one is pop. Um, I guess because it's fast, but when I made that, I thought it was the weirdest song on the record, and I thought, I thought like, here's this strange thing. And the fact that people put it in the pop box is just, it continues to be surprising to me.
Doug Burke:
The drum line on it reminded me of Neon Trees and, and that's where cut there. Maybe that was the connection I was making in my head.
Danielle Eva Schwob:
You're not the only one. I'm, I'm just, uh. It's so funny when you, you finished something and then it, you think of it one way and then other people see it as something completely different. I mean, anything that you make in any genre is like that. Uh, but that, that song in particular has been very funny.
Doug Burke:
No. You've said in other interviews that this is about internet trolls.
Danielle Eva Schwob:
Yes. A little bit. Yeah.
Doug Burke:
But it's not just about that. When I listened to it and read that, I kind of got that, but I, I thought it was, you know. Maybe that's where it was inspired from, but it's something bigger than that I think. What is it about,
Danielle Eva Schwob:
Oh, but now I'm clear. I'm curious what you think it's about. This is more interesting to me.
Doug Burke:
This is not about me. It's about you, Danielle.
Danielle Eva Schwob:
I know. W will you tell me afterwards if I, if I tell you, maybe you'll tell me.
Doug Burke:
You don't have to tell me what this song's about.
Danielle Eva Schwob:
It's about feeling jealous of people on the internet. I guess I'll, perhaps I'll. I'll leave it at that. Social media does have this kind of like keeping up with the Joneses aspect to it, and you know, early on I'm actually like, I'm pretty happy with it, how everything is going for me now at the moment. But there was a time when I was younger and maybe. You know, someone else's career advanced faster than mine, and then I caught up and then they did or whatever, and then someone else, artists compare themselves to each other. And even if you're not a sort of a fundamentally competitive person, everyone wants to do well and social media does, by virtue of the fact that people only show their kind of best of highlight real moments, it does make people feel jealous of one another, I think. And so I wasn't immune to that. And I guess that's where that that comes from. It's about jealousy, but it also. It's extreme. Whoever that person is in the song is maybe me. Maybe not. Yeah. It also, it also is partly inspired by trolls and partly inspired by Dostoevsky.
Doug Burke:
Dostoevesky?
Danielle Eva Schwob:
Yeah. I mean, not Dostoevsky in general, but the main character in Notes From Underground. The underground man who, uh, you know, sits alone in his apartment, casting judgment on other people's lives and feels he's better than everyone else. And there's just something about that book. It's one of my favorites, and it always has. It's always just struck me as being very contemporary, especially with the internet the way it is now. You know, it's basically a black hole of people behind their computer screens trying to tear other people down. So
Doug Burke:
Yeah, imagine if that character had the internet to tap into,.
Danielle Eva Schwob:
Oh God, I should be glad he doesn't. And also that he's a character.
Doug Burke:
I love this line, "Yet still, I spend this restless eve square-eyed until my fingers bleed" and I, I tried to imagine what a square-eyed person looks like.
Danielle Eva Schwob:
This will be some kind of Salvador Dali-esque creation, I guess.
Doug Burke:
Well, actually one of your pictures, you have like funny eyes that don't look like your natural eyes on one of your promotional pictures, but I was imagining that as you stare at the computer, your eyes turn from being round to the shape of the screen and they square just cause like it infects you.
Danielle Eva Schwob:
Yeah. Spending too much time watching screens, leaves you feeling a bit square-eyed. Like you've been watching screens a lot.
Doug Burke:
I love the guitar ending. The explosion. That's you, I assume.
Danielle Eva Schwob:
Uh, actually I think I am playing all of the synth. Well, not all of the synth. I'm playing a lot of the synth on that. I think that ending solo is actually Adam. Yeah. All of the big monstrous profit sounds. That's me. The stuff that sounds like utterly demonic.
Doug Burke:
So tell me where you do your recording? these been recorded in different places or,
Danielle Eva Schwob:
Yeah, this was kind of assembled piecemeal, so they were demoed initially in my home studio in New York. So actually where I'm talking to you from right now. I then worked on them a little bit more with a producer and programmer, a friend in London. And he worked out of Abbey Road at the time. So we did some work there. And then he and his business partner moved to Tile Yard Studios. So we did some programming work there, which was still very much just kind of demoing things out and figuring out what these songs were. And then I came back to New York and tracked all of these with a band and with the string ensemble. So my producer or co-producer, David, lives in Toronto. And so he came down for that. And I also did some demoing in Toronto with him at one point too. It was the chronology of all of this sort of eludes me, honestly. Yeah. So we tracked everything in New York at a couple of studios. One was bunker and the other one was Atomic Sound. So we did all the guitars there, uh, basses, the drums, really anything and the strings, obviously really anything that just needed to be done in a studio. I think some keyboards there to, uh, my keyboards were all done at home cause you can just record those direct. You really don't need to be in a studio to do them. And then I did all the vocals in Toronto. Actually, with the exception of "Philosopher," which was done in my apartment when David was in New York. Yeah. Everything was done in his studio in Toronto. And then we mixed the record up there for a while, and then I came back to New York, and actually I think I went to LA as well. So, and then we did some remote mix sessions because David has a magical way of broadcasting what he's working on. He'd mix in Toronto and I would monitor from New York or LA or wherever I was, and we finished the record that way. So talking about working remotely through a technology and screens and all that. Yeah, it was assembled piecemeal over several years, and a lot of people played on it, but I also played a lot myself, too.
Doug Burke:
Amazing. You've been at some of the most amazing studios, legendary sound studios, both in New York and in London and Toronto. If you're getting any inspiration from that or do they all seem like the same after a while?
Danielle Eva Schwob:
Anytime you're in a studio is a good a good time. Cause you know, for all I've been in a lot of them, I'm not in them every day. And especially with the way the music industry has evolved, so much stuff now is made in home studios that whenever you're in a real, a real space with a proper live room, that's kind of a treat. So yeah, I've been in some great ones. I don't, I no longer walk into the door of a studio and. Ha my jaw doesn't fall on the floor or anything, but I have, I still have a reverence for it and an appreciation, and just at any time I get to be in a recording studio, I'm happy. They're kind of sacred spaces in a lot of ways.
Doug Burke:
Now, this is on your own label, which is called?
Danielle Eva Schwob:
Zig Zig
Doug Burke:
And you are kind of, is it fair to say, a leader of the New York up and coming music scene? And I think more humble than that. I'll say it for you, but tell me about some of the other stuff you do to support up and coming musicians, both in the sort of classical world and in the pop alternative indie world.
Danielle Eva Schwob:
Sure. Well, currently I'm not doing a whole lot because I'm very quite busy with this project, and then other commissions and some film scoring jobs that I'm doin., But I guess I really got my start, I ran an ensemble called a , Szygy which was kind of a concert series, and that's actually where Zigzig came from. It was sort of some of those letters, like thrown into a blender and mixed around. And yeah, I got my start because after I got out of college, I had no idea how on earth I was going to forge a career in music. And so I put together an ensemble of players and then they played some of my music. They played other composers [00:38:00] music, and then that grew into booking sort of multi act bills. And these were not necessarily like, they were kind of crazy and eclectic. So you'd have like. A solo harp player, and then you'd have some guys soldering together and musical instruments on an overhead projector who were actually amazing, and then someone playing theremin, and then you'd have a string quartet and then like a chamber orchestra piece. Not necessarily all on the same show, but just a, the point of it was always to be eclectic. And I started that because I obviously wanted a platform for my own work and a means to meet other musicians. But, it was also really about supporting emerging voices at the time, I guess. And it's something I want to do more of when I have more free time, but it's being part of a creative community and supporting it, and, you know, being in conversation both in terms of your work and then literally just like having a lot of conversations with other artists was always really important to me. So yeah, I had that group that ran for quite a long time. I still sometimes do productions with it, so maybe one or two a year. So I did a ballet. Why don't even know what to call it, sort of a ballet slash interdisciplinary theater installation/extravaganza that was kind of wild and had choreography and somehow we got Google to pay for it, which was, that's a whole other conversation in itself. But that one had some emergent composers on it too. And yeah, I mean, I guess even though it's not something I'm sort of consciously working towards at the moment, it has been something that's been important to me throughout my career. I just like, I like curating and finding, finding voices and hopefully sharing them with the world.
Doug Burke:
Well, we thank you for that. We thank you for your contributions to the artistic community and uh,
Danielle Eva Schwob:
thank you.
Doug Burke:
And the fact that you have your feet in so many different worlds. Are any of those people from that universe on this album helping out and on this album, on the string sections or other things.
Danielle Eva Schwob:
Yeah. Everyone I know who's playing strings, a couple of them I met for the first time on the session, but the vast majority of them are people that I know from my concert work. So there's Andy Lynn, who's a wonderful viola player who has been playing. I have this harp, flute and viola trio that, it's funny actually, like I wrote this piece in college and for whatever reason, it's the piece of mine that gets performed the most. So, you know, I guess, I guess I could've quit then cause I suppose I peaked, but, um,
Doug Burke:
Is that the "Mehr Licht?"
Danielle Eva Schwob:
No. And it's called "Breathing Underwater." I have another album that I've made that'll be coming out sometime after this, which is a chamber music. He's playing on that. So also Jenny Choy, who's a, just a beautiful, beautiful violinist who I've worked with on a few occasions now. I think we met doing a recording session for this BMI workshop I was part of, and then I've written to solo violin piece for her. She's, which she recorded, which is also, and shot a video for. She's done a string quartet that I've written. I got an account there. Honestly, everyone I know, there's a cellist Peter Sachen who I played in a pit with at one point because I was kind of paying bills by doing a lot of musical theater work because I'm that rare guitarist who can read music as well. So I kind of fell into that right after I got out of school, so I met him there. I met some of the other string players on other recording sessions. I don't know. It's the same way musicians meet each other anywhere. You just, you just sort of collect people along the way from doing these projects and then over time you build like really deep collaborative relationships.
Doug Burke:
I'd like to thank you, Danielle, for joining us today on Back Story Song. This was really a unique and special time for me, and I hope our listeners. We're grateful for your musical gifts and good luck with the release of Overloaded. And thank you to my editor, Wyatt Schmidt. In addition to editing my podcast, he is a DJ and producer focusing on progressive electronic dance music. You can find him on all social media platforms at @DJ Wyatt Schmidt and his latest music can be found on Spotify.
