I was able to sit down and catch up with Dan Miraldi. His latest release is titled Alphabet City 2AM, the album seems to live in the light but thrive in the dark. The record oozes indie rock bravado while leaving enough room to let the intelligence of the emotional lyrics truly affect the listener. The new full length album Alphabet City 2AM is out now.
You have released a wide array of music through the years. What is your musical
background? At what age did you first learn an instrument?
I was one of those people who sang before they ever talked, so I have been singing all of my life. I took some piano lessons early on, but I was bad at practicing. I began composing melodies in my head around age 13, but I kept it to myself. At 17, I began telling people I was composing melodies and started my first band. I would sing the melody lines to the guitar player and he’d figure out what the underlying chords were. Then, I bought my first guitar when I was 18 and I was able to write on my own and at a much faster rate.
Do you ever collaborate with any other groups or is it solely Dan Miraldi?
From 2010 to 2014, I performed as Dan Miraldi & the Albino Winos. We did a bunch of DIY van tours and they’re the ones you hear on my records from that era. We’ll do reunion shows every now and then. From 2009 to 2011, I was the keyboard player for a band called the Silver Liners.
When I play out now, I’ll either do solo acoustic or I have lineup of guys who’ll help me pull off the full-band stuff. However, the band that is the main progenitor of my solo career is the Cherry Flavored Elevator. It was my college band. It had numerous different lineups and didn’t really play outside of Ohio. There are a bunch of low quality recordings of us. I just didn’t know how to produce and arrange my songs back then. We made one proper album that’s floating around. Then, as sort of a pet project last fall, I returned to those low quality recordings and rerecorded some of the songs in my apartment. I thought the songs were good, but the original recordings were sloppy. I didn’t know what how to articulate what was in my head back then. I put out an album last February as the Cherry Flavored Elevator featuring those rerecording. It’s called The Lost Teenage Songbook of Dan Miraldi, because I wrote most of the material when I was 19. It was cool to collaborate with my younger self. I made sure the rerecordings weren’t too polished. They’re still a little sloppy, but in a fun way. I like to think I kept the essential grit of the music intact.
What are you thoughts on the modern music industry? Do you like the prospect of
playlists being the hot ticket in music discovery?
I appreciate the democratization of the industry to some extent. I like being able to release music globally without a label. At the same time, everyone can, so the competition and “noise” of so many people trying to do the same thing is exhausting. I like the idea of playlists. One song on the right playlist and boom – big things can happen. However, I also feel like a gambling addict who is always hoping this next playlist placement is
going to be the change in luck that I need to go to the next level. As an indie artist, at the moment, I feel like there are not as many gatekeepers for playlists as there are for radio. But again, everyone now is trying to get on a playlist. Nothing is easy. It’s a vicious cycle.
What was the first CD you ever purchased with your own money?
I bought the Beatles Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band when I was eight. I had good taste as a third grader. The Beatles still are my favorite band in case you couldn’t tell from listening to the new album.
You just released an album called Alphabet City 2am. Tell us about it.
I’d describe it as an album about modern dating in New York City. I moved to New York from Cleveland in 2014. I was newly single and had to start over. Once I got to New York, I started making new friends and going out. I also got on dating apps. Life became an adventure and I wrote a bunch of songs. The ten included here were written between the fall of 2015 and 2016. I feel like these ones belong together as a full-length album, because they’re thematically tied together. I started recording the album in the summer of 2016 and got half of it done. Then, Trump became president. I saw all the protesting and rising presence of neo-Nazis and racists. I felt like it was more urgent for me to make a political album against the alt right. If you’re fighting fascism, you need the right tunes. So I made the EP Love Under Fire and released that last fall. After that EP came out, I listened to the finished tracks of the NYC dating songs from 2016 and some of the demos from that period. I didn’t want Alphabet City 2 AM to be an unfinished album or even released as an EP. I needed to finish the album. I wasn’t going to let Trump and the neo-Nazis be the reason I didn’t complete this joyful collection of songs. So I went down to DC and holed up in my friend Kyle Downes’ studio and knocked out the rest of the album. I am glad I did.
