RealSoundsOK: Danny Medakovic Q&A

Your name:

Danny Medakovic.

Where are you from?

I live in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. A great, gritty town with an industrial history that is now going through an artist-driven revival. A great music town too!

Who else is in your band?

The CD includes some of Hamilton’s finest musicians including Mike Trebilcock, Marshall Bureau, Mary Simon, Carrie Ashworth, Ben Bowen, Jay Burr, Sal Rosselli, Troy Dowding, Matt Coleman, Jeff Ball, and Chris Altmann.

How would you describe yourselves?

A roots singer/songwriter who loves to marry a good story with a catchy tune. I also try to keep things positive and include an underlying sense of humour, hope, and optimism, even within the saddest song.

Who are your main influences musically?

I draw on the classic singer-songwriters of the 60s and 70s but am also influenced by contemporary alt-country artists like Lucinda Williams and The Jayhawks. Really though, I love lots of music and can find inspiration anywhere, in many forms including Soul, Pop, and African and Latin musical forms.

What do you hope to achieve in music?

I’d like to become recognized as a great writer. That would be really nice, I think. In the meantime, I’ll continue to try and write and record good music and get out and play some festivals to make myself better known. If a really well-known artist were to record some of my songs, well that would be a real treat.

What has been the highlight of your career so far, and why?Writing, producing and engineering this CD “Jolley Cut” feels like a highlight right now. I’m proud of this record and but like most artists, am already thinking about the next project!

And what’s the moment you want to forget?

Having both my main hard drive and my backup drive both crash after being 90% done recording and mixing a new album about 6 years ago. I finally managed to recover some of those files and one of the songs (Ode to Bob) was finished up with new vocals and the addition of violin and cello and included on my Jolley Cut CD.

If you had to pick just one of your songs to represent your music, what would it be and why?

That’s a tough one because you try to do different things with different songs. As far as songs that I’ve already recorded, I think the title track from Jolley Cut represents my approach of combining story-telling, melancholy and humour and wrapping it up in a good piece of music.

Where can we listen to it?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hk9eekbO5cI