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DA: Well, the majority of the new album which is called “My Getaway”, the majority of it is original
material, but we sprinkled in a few songs. We have a very good friend who's a great songwriter, his
name is Ryan Taylor, and he's been in some bands that over the years, back in the M&A days that
we used to split shows with. He's had songs in Academy Award-nominated movies and on TV shows
and things like that, so he's a great songwriter, but he's a close friend and he's sent me a lot of good
stuff over the years and we've kind of continued that partnership, so there's three songs on the
record that Ryan wrote, and we did cover one of Lee McBee's tunes which is ‘My Getaway’, which is
the title track, but the rest of it is original material on the new record. We did a live EP a couple of
years ago which was mostly cover stuff, some of the favourite kind of cover tunes that we play in
our live set, but with the new record we wanted to focus on mostly original material or songs that
had been gifted to us by songwriter friends.
BiTS: Tell me something about the track on the album called ‘Swingling’, which I think is absolutely
fabulous. Where did that come from?
DA: [Laughing] well ‘Swingling’ is a tune that happened because I had a free afternoon and I was
sitting at home and just sat down and had a beer and started playing harmonica just to pass the
time and that melody just sort of came into my
mind and I started working with it and showed it to
the guys at a sound check of a show not long after,
and it pretty quickly came together into that kind
of mellow swing instrumental. We thought about
putting words to it, but we really just liked how it
worked as an instrumental, and I think that's a
sound I like. It's kind of those mellow sort of swing
tunes. I feel like it can put you in a good mindset
and we felt like it was kind of a good counterpoint
to a lot of the rest of the record and sort of a cool
mellow way to send people out at the end of the
album. But the name of the song [chuckles] we had
kind of a hard time coming up with it and I was telling the story of how the song came together on
stage at a show in New York City, and I noted that I had been sitting and drinking a Yuengling beer
when I was coming up with the song and a friend of ours who was in the crowd said just call it
‘Swingling’. That's perfect, alright. A friend of ours named Jim Kanavy who's a huge fan. One of the
biggest supporters of the band we have here in the States. I said hey, Jim, you win, you got it, so
that's how the name came about.
BiTS: That's an absolutely terrific story. I love that. Tell me, is there anything special about the
harp that you use on that? It sounds very low register to me.
DA: Yeah, so I actually play two different harmonicas on that song. The hook, the head, the melody
I'm playing on a Hohner 364, which is a 12-hole diatonic harmonica that is like a low octave C harp.
I'm playing in second position in the key of G, but it's an octave lower than a regular C harp, and so
it sits more kind of in the tonal range like a chromatic, but it is a diatonic harmonica, so it does
have a big rich fat tone. And then for my second solo, I switch to third position which I'm playing
on a low F harmonica but also in the key of G, but that's also a low-keyed harp that has kind of a
deeper register to it. I felt like those harps kind of fit that vibe of song pretty well.