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Turning Inward - Chicago Singer/Songwriter Dan Coyle

By Blake Hannon

When you listen to the recent work of Chicago-based singer/songwriter Dan Coyle, you get the feeling he’s got a knack for spotting the silver lining in whatever gray cloud life puts over his head.

“The world can be going to hell in a handbasket but that doesn’t mean that I myself have to go to hell in a handbasket,” the 28-year-old says. “You can be in this life hurricane and you can still feel like you have this refuge inside yourself.”

But Coyle didn’t develop this sunny songwriting outlook overnight.

Growing up in a rural blue-collar town outside Buffalo, N.Y., didn’t offer Coyle many outlets for creative release. It took attending college at Niagara University in Niagara Falls, N.Y., a guitar donated from his ex-girlfriend’s grandmother and The Beatles’ discography to inspire him to pursue music at age 20.

While the Fab Four provided an adequate starting point, it was the poetic lyrics, finger-picked acoustics and gentle singing of Simon & Garfunkel that really connected with Coyle and brought out his similar-sounding early style.

But he took desperate measures to make sure what he wrote was genuinely his own, denying himself from listening to almost any music back in 2006 while he wrote songs.

“I wanted to ensure that it was not polluted by any influences I was hearing,” he says. “Once I settled into doing my music my way, it really took off.”

Even when Coyle began going his own way, he went through his phases. The heavier social commentary and what Coyle refers to as a more “spectator” form in the songwriting on early releases like 2007’s “Briar St. Acoustic Sessions” later yielded to more inward reflections. Coyle’s gentle tenor laid over acoustic folk with pop inflections parallels the likes of Jason Mraz or Joshua Radin on his latest album “Random Thoughts and Incomplete Sentences” and recent demos.

Coyle is stopping by St. Joseph on his current tour to perform at 8 p.m. July 5 at Cafe Acoustic, and bar manager Christina Meadows says she likes what Coyle is bringing to the table.

“We just liked the music and thought it would fit for this venue,” she says. “I like the smooth style of his music and I can already picture him on our stage.”

While Coyle has intentions of tackling various topics both uplifting and heartbreaking through his lyrics, he ultimately hopes listeners connect to his positive outlook.

“I think the world kind of tries to burden us down with certain things,” he says. “I have this very light and playful feeling inside of me. That’s just how I feel, and I want to let that out.”

Dan Coyle - Somethings Changed - A Candid Interview

Dan Coyle is a nationally touring musician…, something changed inside of me as I watched Dan’s candid video, and then listened to his honest and sincere responses to my questions – his passion and inspiring story blew me away.

Dan was born and raised in a blue collar household near Buffalo New York. He felt from an early age that he was suppose to be on a path, he just didn’t know what it was.  Dan often felt like an outsider in his own town, their were terrific people there, he said, he just didn’t feel like he fit.  Sometimes Dan escaped this world,  with written words in one form or another. It was his way of expressing himself, while still keeping it to himself, and would later use this talent to write his songs. Dan was the first person in his family to go to College, and it was there that he quickly found the theater community, and where he picked up his first guitar. He found his voice, as he taught himself to play, listening to the Beatles, while creating his own unique and authentic sound. It came easy to him – he had found the path that he needed to take.

After graduation in 2004 he moved to Chicago, and in 2006, after a lot of hard work, the doors started swinging open for him. He had two studio cds and toured across the country, but as the opportunities popped up, Dan told me, so did the fear.  He heard all the voices of people telling him, all the reasons why things wouldn’t work.  Trying to please everyone, and not pleasing himself. It became a really hard time in his life, so he took time off to figure things out, to get himself settled down and thinking clearly.  That experience he felt made him more introspective, and I believe was the final piece that gives him the truth to his voice, and his depth today.

When asked about living his dream Dan modestly said, that he would say that he is one of the riches people he knows, not financially, but he definitely feels like he is living no one else’s dream.  He says that he truly believes that the only thing you can do for me is to make yourself happy, and the only thing I can do for you is to make myself happy.  Dan said that it may sounds selfish, but it’s really the most selfless act. We need to take the time and effort to make ourselves happy because that radiates out to people. When he does something now, he’s doing it for the right reasons, not blindly or mindlessly – it’s purposeful, and inspired.

I then asked, what would he tell someone that’s at a crossroad in life teetering between the safe choices, meaning the path that everyone tells you to take, and the path that feels right to you?  Dan laughed and said that he seemed to attract a lot of people who are at the crossroads of life, and then went on to say, if your at a crossroad then that means your standing still, but time isn’t.  So first you need to determine your world view.  Is your world friendly or hostile? You need to get this right.  With a friendly world view you’re going to radiate that feeling out-word, and people become coconspirators, and they help you in some way. Even if they are less than friendly, they are still helping you in someway. You get a refection of how your feeling inside. In a friendly world, you will also help others.

Most of us know very few things, and we don’t know what the future will bring. Everyone nods there head, like they understand, but very few people act like that, and live like that from day to day. Instead they take the dream that they have, and demean it. They focus on everything that could go wrong if they were to try it, when they don’t have any reason to know that things will go wrong. Very few people give equal time and energy to the thought of “what if everything were to go flawlessly” or “everything will work out just as it should” – how about that idea! How about following your dream, and following it, because it is your dream!

What I always keep going back to is,  the only thing I can do for you is to make myself happy, and only thing you can do for me is to make yourself happy. If your not doing that, you are holding humanity back. I firmly believe that, and the only way we are going to evolve in a meaningful way,  is for people to start listening to what it is that they truly want to do, because anyone who has that “knowing” and they don’t follow it – it’s wrong – to themselves, to their abilities, to everyone around them, and to humanity as a whole. They are holding back – like they have a fire that could burn at a 1000 degrees, but they don’t know what will happen, so they only live at about half. It’s the most hideous thing people can do. There are so many people who don’t know what they want to do and they search and they struggle to know. So if you are a person who knows, it’s up to you to own it, to pursue that dream. Because you don’t know how it will affect the world.  You need to fulfill it, and realize that your doubts and fears are your traitors. Find a prison cell to put them in, or find a way to get rid of those things that you’re afraid of, because someday we will look back at these things that we didn’t do.  I’m a firm believer that our fears of today will become out regrets of tomorrow. Stay in the presence of what you want to do, you will radiate enough positive energy that things will start to happen. If you won’t do it for yourself, do it for the rest of us, because you need to fulfill your purpose. I think humanity has been held back enough by people who have felt a purpose or calling and turned their head the other way for whatever reason – you have to listen to your heart, you need to pursue your dream. I have a lot riding on convincing you of this, we all have a lot riding on convincing you of this.  Its the only way that this world will move on in a better way.

We have to remember that before anything was invented or achieved no one thought that it could be done. The airplane wasn’t invented by a group of people sitting around saying how it was impossible to fly. They said -how, is it possible. For whatever strange reason, they were compelled to find a way to fly people in the air from point A, to point B, safely. Think about what everyone must of said about that dream. Everyone must of thought that they were insane, but they had to say, I’m going to find a way to make it happen. For some strange reason they were compelled to figure that out. Thank God that they did! Your dreams are the same, even if you don’t think they affect someone else, or people, on a global scale – they do, its a domino effect… every thing you do, every kind word, or every time you inspire or make someone happy, it keeps going.  You don’t know who it inspired, and who they are going to inspire, that passes it on to someone else, every time you make someone happy you don’t know where that energy is going. Thats what I would tell someone at the crossroads…

By Molly Heintzelman

Chicago-based singer-songwriter Dan Coyle has been cranking out neo-folkpop tunes reminiscent of Cat Stevens, Paul Simon and Jason Mraz since 2004. Now he’s taking his one-man show to Connecticut for a live performance at The Space on Tuesday, Apr. 6. Quad News got a chance to catch up with Coyle before the show to discuss the future of folk, spontaneous songwriting and the art of connecting with a live crowd.

Quad News: How would you categorize your music?

Dan Coyle: Well, we push the idea that my music is kind of the next generation of singer-songwriter folk music. I would still consider it to be folk music because it has the feel of simplicity and repetition. And it can be very easy to identify with and sing along to. I guess the idea of the future of folk music is moving it in the direction of being able to blend or mix with a little bit more of a contemporary pop-py feel to it.

QN: If I listened to you on Pandora, what else would come up? What other artists would you compare yourself to?

DC: It depends [on] what album or what song you’re listening to. I had a guy pick up a song that was on my first album, “Briar Street: The Acoustic Session,” which was actually the first song of mine that was ever played on the radio back in 2007 (“Slow Train Comin’”). He said that I reminded him a lot of John Denver, and I can understand what he’s saying off of listening to that song because it’s a slower song. It has a very smooth, soothing melody kind of like a lot of John Denver. Recently, the latest album, “Random Thoughts and Incomplete Sentences,” a lot of times my vocals are compared to Cat Stevens. I get a lot of comparisons to Jason Mraz, having that kind of catchy acoustic, mellow vibe. I’ve also gotten Jack Johnson a lot, but I don’t listen to a lot of Jack Johnson, so I can’t really say.

QN: What does the song writing process entail for you?

DC: Usually for the most part, most the songs are written in 10 minutes, 15 minutes. To me, what usually happens is I will just be sitting around tooling around on the guitar, not playing anything in particular. Then the minute I hear something that I like, I’ll play it over and over and over again. And all that I usually do is just start singing to it. Not humming notes or melodies, but actual words, That’s usually how it happens.

I don’t sit down and think about the words a lot and I always hope that means that they are more meaningful because they come very naturally. It’s not that I’m writing them down on a piece of paper then ruminating over them for some period of t time. It’s more that it just kind of happens that once and in those ten or fifteen minutes go by and then it’s like okay here’s a song and I can listen back to it and see what it sounds like and then after that it may change slightly, but nothing will change very dramatically from what was written in those ten or fifteen minutes.

QN: What kind of music did you listen to in college?

DC: [When I was] in college, it’s bizarre, I had never really listened to The Beatles. But once I’d started I guess [I listened to] them for a solid four years, from about [age] 17 to 21. And that’s actually the reason I started to play guitar. I just wanted to play Beatles songs. Then I transitioned into listening to a lot of Simon and Garfunkel. I would say those are the staples.

QN: What’s your favorite song you’ve ever written?

DC: Oh, ah that’s a good question. [laughs] I guess some songs that I never get tired of playing are “Slow Train Comin.” I like to play that a lot and in the right setting people like to hear that song a lot. I like a lot of the songs off the last album. I like “Listen Closely Now.” For whatever reason, that goes over really well at live shows. People really seem to like that song.

But there are actually a few new songs that I’ve written as well. I really like both of those songs “God I Miss You” and “Something’s Changed.” I think that they’re a little bit different. And when I play “Something’s Changed” live, I use my voice to belt out a little bit more than usual. A lot of my vocals tend to be soft and smooth and highly melodic.

QN: “Random Thoughts and Incomplete Sentences” was your last album to come out, and that was last summer. When should we be expecting something new?

DC: There’s going to be a new release this year. And it would be a lot sooner, but I’m trying to [do] this one with a full band. I wanted to release it as a double disc--one disc is acoustic and the other disc is the same album, but with a full band.

QN: I noticed that you’re multi-instrumental. Do you play anything besides guitar and piano?

DC: [laugh] Yeah I struggle through the piano. That’s one of my great hopes-to over time get significantly better at the piano… If you sing over it and the song is good enough, I could probably get away with it. But I play a little African drum. I have a djembe that I’m looking at right now. Here, if I play it you might be able to hear it [several drum noises come through the phone]. So that’s the djembe.

There are songs that you’ll see that I just put on my website a few days ago. In late 2009 I felt like doing something different so I did this little project called Bliss in Motion Project and the songs are extremely different. They’re kind of a mix. They’re electronic, funk, pop, spoken word, and they fall within those genres. I put six of them up on my website the other day. All the instruments and all the vocals you hear, I did. And it was the longest process [laughs] I’ve ever done. I have no idea what I’m going to do with them; it was just a way to do something different.

QN: Where do you see yourself in five years?

DC: Five years? I get this question a lot and I never really know exactly what to say. Most everything that I have planned on happening has never gone the way that I planned anyways, so I try not to be too invested in my plans because if something goes a different direction I want to be able to just go with it. But, ideally in five years, I would love to be selling out large shows all across the country. I love being on the road and I love just staying on the road. I would be happy for some time just living on the road.

QN: What should we expect when you play at The Space (on Apr. 6)?

DC: People that see my show for the first time say that I’m a pretty genuine, down-to-earth person and just kind of put it all out there [on stage]. I would make an effort to say hi and meet and to talk a little bit with every person that comes. A huge part of it is making a real life, true, honest connection with those people and being able to see their faces and get a feel for their personalities and learn a little bit about them. Those aspects of it are irreplaceable. I’d love to be able to influence someone’s life in the way that it’s able to bring them a little bit more hope or calm or peace, or let them see the world as not so hostile. I don’t think that’s an impossible task to complete. I know it sounds a lot bigger than it is, but any task that we accomplish, we accomplish by one little step at a time.