#daniel markham

Burnout | Daniel Markham

Burnout | Daniel MarkhamAre you ready to rock? If so check out this 2020 release from alt-country singer Daniel MarkhamBurnout | Daniel Markham Does it pay to be a burnout? Would you do it all again? Is it something to be proud of? Is anybody home? Are you sleeping in the future? I hope you’re having funBurnout Review at https://downthelinezine.com/reviews/

Daniel Markham is a typesetter by day, rock musician by night. Ever since he made his way to Denton from Lubbock, he has made quite a name for himself with his solo work, creative projects, and collaborative spirit. Today his third solo album, Disintegrator, is available online and on vinyl. I spoke to him about how the little Daniel Markham from a small West Texas town became the musician we hear today.

When does your new album come out?

May 6th. I knew it was either going to be May 6th or 13th, but I thought the thirteenth was probably bad luck.I mean I like that kind of thing, I just didn’t want to jinx it, I worked hard to do this, I don’t want any weird mojo.

How many albums have you put out?

This is my third Daniel Markham record. It’s technically my sixth full-length I guess, that I produced and put out for sale. I have some other projects on Bandcamp that I think count too because I wrote and recorded all that stuff.

Where are you from originally?

I’m kind of from Lubbock. I lived there for twelve years. I’m from West Texas, for sure. Went to school there at Texas Tech. Graduated in 2003, and started writing songs immediately and started playing shows with my band.

What got you into playing music?

I’ve always just loved music, it’s like the one thing that I had. I grew up in a little town called Rotan, which is like fifteen hundred people. It’s like in the middle of nowhere, music was the only thing that I liked because I sucked at all the sports, except for golf and baseball. But music was the one thing that was exciting to me. I was like the one person in town that really tried to find bands and stuff. It made me feel special, music always made me feel special. My grandpa bought me a guitar when I was 12, and then I just started learning how to play guitar. I didn’t write songs until I was 23 though, like full-fledged songs.

What was your first band?

My first band, we were called Waiting to Derail. Which is a Whiskeytown song. (Ryan Adams had a band called Whiskeytown before he was solo.) I was just very stuck in my wannabe alt country phase. I think a lot of people start out that way. I’ve wanted to play metal, and I still do, it’s just so hard to find people to play metal, you know?

How would you describe your style of music now?

I don’t know, just like rock music. Rock music, it’s not really, but it’s not anything else either. I play the guitar and I sing, and I play loud and I use a distortion pedal, so I would call it rock. I would say that it apes a lot of 90s alternative stuff. I don’t know. It’s just, you know, melodic rock. I mean, that’s really all it is. I’m not reinventing the wheel or anything. Just kind of finding myself in this whole post-alternative world where I don’t know what the alternative is and I don’t know what it’s an alternative to. In the 90’s it was very clear, you had your butt rock, which was like Poison, which is cool. I like all that stuff too, I like all the rock bands with the big hair, hairspray. But then, alternative music was like bands that were kind of drawing from punk and 80s post-punk and I don’t know, I could go on forever about this really. That’s kind of what I grew up loving, is that style. Nirvana and Alice in Chains, the whole Seattle thing in the 90s was huge for me and I’m still stuck in that whole – I mean, I’m still living in 1992.

What brought you to Denton?

I was in Lubbock and I was just kind of at the end of my rope there, just kind of running out of things. I wanted to move and be somewhere where I felt like I could start over fresh, and like redefine who I was and what I wanted to do with my music. I knew I wanted to do music. I had a friend, Charlie Shafter, he was living here and he had a band going. I was friends with all those guys, and my dad was working in Decatur and then driving back to Rotan on weekends and my mom and dad were figuring out a way to move out here that whole time. I was visiting him, and I went out to Dan’s one night. The first night I was hanging out with my dad and Charlie was there and my friend Grady, who is now in my band, was like, “So you thinking about moving here or something?” And I was like, I mean I haven’t really technically said that to anyone, but he was like, “You should do it!” I was like, “Ok”. And then Charlie Shafter the same night, was like, “Dude, are you moving here? Grady said you were moving here!” I didn’t say I was moving here. But he was like, “If you do, you can play bass in my band and you can have that as work for now until you find something else.” I thought, alright, maybe there’s something to this whole thing. And so, like two weeks later I was putting it all together and moving to Denton. I had a pretty good life in Lubbock, it’s like you know everybody. You live in a small place; you know everybody and just feel like you kind of hit a wall. I was just bored. I love Lubbock, and I don’t have anything negative to say, I love it. But it was just time to move on and do something else. So Denton seemed like a cool place. On August 1st it will be six years since I moved. It’s pretty wild.

What led you to starting your own solo project?

I was in a band and they were my friends, and I moved here by myself and I lived in an apartment on Austin street by myself, and I just wanted to write songs by myself. You know, I can just call it my thing and I don’t ever have to break up. I don’t ever have to explain anything, I can play solo shows, I can play rock shows if I ever have a band; which I do, and I do. Yeah, it was like the best thing I ever did for myself. Just call it my name. Call it what it is. And I mean, I write all the songs, but when we record everybody has their input and say and it’s very much a democratic process. I pay everybody that same amount I get paid on shows, you know. We split everything, but everything’s like registered and published under my name, which is cool. I get all that money. All those giant checks.

How did you find your bandmates?

I knew them already, Grady and Ryan were in RTB2. I met Grady a couple of times in Lubbock just passing through, and he stayed at my house. Anytime he was going to be coming through Lubbock he’d call me and he’d stay with us, we were just buds. Played a show with RTB2 and I thought they were so badass. Actually played a show with Tony Ferraro’s band in Austin at SXSW one year, and I remember meeting him briefly and loving his music. I really liked him, and hoped I’d get to see that guy again. I was at the Greenhouse and the waiter walks up, and I was just like, “Dude, it’s you! You’re Tony!” And so we were all friends first before I gave a CD to Grady of all the demos that I’d worked on in my little apartment over there on Austin street. He just wanted to record them together, just him and me. They all just kind of said “We’re going to play with you,” and I said “Ok, great.”

What was the inspiration for your latest album?

A lot of dreams, a lot of nighttime, a lot of like, just kind of fantasy what if, and jealousy, fear, love. You know, emotions. Just night time, kind of dreams, tornadoes. I was having a lot of tornado dreams, I wrote a song about a tornado dream that I had. I don’t know, it’s mostly just all about dreams that I had. It’s not specific relationship stuff or anything like that. Everyone’s always trying to be like, “it’s obviously about breaking up with somebody,” you know. No, it’s not, it’s about a tornado dream.

What would you say makes this album different from your others?

We recorded it on kind of a bigger scale. At the Echo Lab, and also at Ramble Creek in Austin. We got most of it done in one weekend and I just went down a couple times to Ramble Creek to finish it off. You know, just working with more people, and more know-how and better studio and better songs. I think it’s the best thing that I’ve done. I mean everybody says that, and everybody says that too. But I’m just proud of it, man. It all kind of just came together pretty quickly and all the songs came together pretty quickly.

How did the music video for Disintegrator come together?

My friend Judd Meyers did a video for the song Favorite Band, which is on my album Ruin my Life. I had contacted him last time about doing a video, and I don’t think he was very inspired by the music that I’d made. Then I sent in this one and was like, what do you think about this? Let’s do something. And he loved the song, and he just was going with ideas and he just sent me like a game plan, and my friend Rambo got involved. She had a lot of ideas, and they just kind of tag teamed it, and I laid on the floor for a couple of hours and sang and that was it. I got a bunch of dry ice sprayed in my mouth, it was kind of cool. He wanted to do something that was kind of like David Lynch, I think it kind of looks like Eraserhead a little bit, just the black and white and the dreamy designs. It doesn’t make a lot of sense. There’s a story there, but it’s not. You’re never going to figure it out, you know. My brother was like, “I like your video, I don’t get it, but I like it.”

How was your recent tour?

It was wonderful, man. It was like the best tour I’ve ever been on, really. Just had some really great shows, and it’s the first time I’ve ever played my own music in New York, which was cool. We did two nights in a row and then both the shows were great. Got a lot of people out somehow, I don’t know how. Just word of mouth, you know. A few friends and they brought friends, and then strangers shows up. I don’t know. It was really, really great, man.

And you’ve got another tour in the works?

Yeah, we’re booking a full band thing right now. So it’ll be fun, it’s always fun to tour with my band. We’ve had really good shows and really bad shows on the road, but whatever. Everybody else has too. I’m excited about it. I like my job at the Denton Record Chronicle, but at the same time it’s like I should just do this all of the time.

What else do you have coming up for Daniel Markham band?

We’re releasing Disintegrator. We’re doing a few release shows, first one is May 6th in Fort Worth. June 4th at 3 Links in Dallas, then June 10th at Harvest House with my friends Rattlesnake Milk, who are awesome. They’re all like friends of mine from Lubbock and Austin. It’s gonna be really fun, I think. But, just kind of focusing on this record for a little while. I haven’t even started writing songs for another one, which is crazy; usually I have like a whole record finished by the time I get a new one out. I kind of told myself to chill out. I’m really proud of it. Yeah, the thing that Claire and me did was just great. That happened after Disintegrator was finished. And we’re going to probably do something else soon; she’s doing a million things. It’s cool, to be able to make music the way I want to do it, you know. I’m not patrolled by anyone, you know. I pay for all my own stuff, whatever.

Is there anything else you want people to know about you?

I’ve got a website. I’ve got stuff for sale. I’m always playing. I really like living in Denton.

Snapshot: The Right Stuff

by: Thomas D. Mooney Editor-in-Chief Brandon Adams, Daniel Markham, and Daniel Fluitt writes porch light songs. You drive around town and their glow breaks through the darkness at different locations. They can be faint–you have to really search to find them. Some, the memories rush in. You’re over-saturated with the senses. A dose of nostalgia hits you in the nose and you’re suddenly feeling your…

New Music: Daniel Markham & Claire Morales

by: Thomas D. Mooney Editor-in-Chief It’s been three months since Daniel Markham’s last collaboration album with Tony Ferraro, Smoke Paint, was released in early June. Now, along with fellow Denton singer-songwriter, Claire Morales, they’ll be releasing the 10-track Halloween-centric Harmony in Hell, on, you guessed it, Halloween (Saturday, Oct 31). For Morales, Harmony in Hell too is the second…

Breakfast with Thomas: The Lubbock Anthem in the Modern Era

Hub City Moans by: Thomas D. Mooney Editor-in-Chief “It’s still the Flatland Boogie But where did the Wolfman go?” –Terry Allen, “Flatland Boogie Last Friday, singer-songwriter Paul Cauthen was performing at The Blue Light. The former co-frontman of the short-lived, but rather influential Americana band Sons of Fathers’ set consisted primarily of new songs written over the past year with just a…

by: Thomas D. Mooney Editor-in-Chief

A few Saturdays back, local television program 24 Frames had their first live music taping/show at The Blue Light with Lubbock artists Slow Relics, Kenneth O’Meara, and Denton by Lubbock transplant Daniel Markham. Despite only being able to catch Markham and company perform (We were also at Sturgill Simpson that night. More on that later), we did capture a few moments from the night.

In many ways, the night’s three performing artists highlight and sum up three facets of Lubbock music quite well: One, an up-and-coming and evolving indie rock band in Slow Relics, a respected singer-songwriter with resounding depth and weight in Kenneth O’Meara, and the ever constant and ever-changing Daniel Markham. All three could be described as having die-hard fans of their work while continuing to have an unknown persona. 

Each individually has certain ties to the Panhandle, yet they also transcend the “West Texas Sound” description and category all together. Specifically with Markham, there are moments you’re convinced he’s the most influenced by his environment. Yet, with a simple turn of a song, you know he’s no limited by such boundaries.

Below, check out both our photographs from lead photographer/photo editor Susan Marinello and the 24 Frames episode featuring live performances by Slow Relics, Kenneth O’Meara, and Daniel Markham.   

Daniel Markham at The Blue Light on April 04, 2015. Photo by Susan Marinello/New Slang.

Daniel Markham at The Blue Light on April 04, 2015. Photo by Susan Marinello/New Slang.

Daniel Markham at The Blue Light on April 04, 2015. Photo by Susan Marinello/New Slang.

Daniel Markham at The Blue Light on April 04, 2015. Photo by Susan Marinello/New Slang.

Daniel Markham at The Blue Light on April 04, 2015. Photo by Susan Marinello/New Slang.

Tony Ferraro at The Blue Light on April 04, 2015. Photo by Susan Marinello/New Slang.

Daniel Markham at The Blue Light on April 04, 2015. Photo by Susan Marinello/New Slang.

Grady Sandlin at The Blue Light on April 04, 2015. Photo by Susan Marinello/New Slang.

Daniel Markham at The Blue Light on April 04, 2015. Photo by Susan Marinello/New Slang.

Daniel Markham at The Blue Light on April 04, 2015. Photo by Susan Marinello/New Slang.

Daniel Markham at The Blue Light on April 04, 2015. Photo by Susan Marinello/New Slang.

Daniel Markham at The Blue Light on April 04, 2015. Photo by Susan Marinello/New Slang.

Daniel Markham at The Blue Light on April 04, 2015. Photo by Susan Marinello/New Slang.

Daniel Markham at The Blue Light on April 04, 2015. Photo by Susan Marinello/New Slang.