INTERVIEW WITH
DANIEL OUELLETTE
DANIEL OUELLETTE
Daniel Ouellette – a musician, performer, and songwriter with an eclectic multilingual mélange of music
Daniel Ouellette: Greetings! I’m Daniel Ouellette, and thank you for having me here for this smashing interview.
Daniel Ouellette: I loved listening to music as a child, as many of us do. The TV shows that were pre-MTV were very exciting to me: Solid Gold, American Bandstand, Soul Train…so many… Donna Summer, ABBA, and Blondie were the mainstream artists who caught my ear and eye at the time… though all of the shows mentioned did take the time to break out less mainstream artists.
Daniel Ouellette: It is just me and whoever I may ask to work with me. Elizabeth Lorrey, Don Zientara, Ted Paduck and Peter Linnane have been the engineers and masterers of my projects over the past 10 years and they have been great. I wrote some songs and did work with Jenny Rae Mettee and Jason Mendelson from the DMV area recently, but the artistic decisions have been all mine for the past few years.
Daniel Ouellette: Hmm… There are several routes that I take for the creative process. For example, on the last project that I have released, I wrote the lyrics first, then the rhythm patterns on the drum machine, I recorded the beats and sang the melody and then brought in the synth parts. As inspiration for songs… that can come from eavesdropping, a film or novel, a dream or nightmare, and sometimes I will build a song around a quote of something odd or fun that I hear someone I know says. It can be rather surreally comical and sometimes it is a bit too far-fetched to understand. I like listeners to come up with their meanings even if it is something I may not have had in mind.
Daniel Ouellette: Oh wow! those are quite from a different time! “I Hate Everyone” was inspired by Paul Dano’s character Dwayne from the film “Little Miss Sunshine”. He refused to talk and said that he hated everyone and when his uncle asked him “even your family”… he underlined the word, everyone! As for “Helicopter Stop Ruining My Life”… I was working in NYC with my sister and our mates had come to visit us and there was a helicopter buzzing around and we could not hear anything and thus my brother-in-law said “Helicopter stop ruining my life!” Heh That is where the title came from, the meaning of the song is one about how we have so much in the modern, western world and yet find plenty of time to always be unhappy. That is how those songs came to be.
Daniel Ouellette: Interestings because I do not think I know any of their songs. Hmm… Grace Jones, Cyndi Lauper, Alaska + Dinanarama (los pegamoides, Eurythmics/Annie Lennox, Siouxsie, Laurie Anderson, Kate Bush, Yoko Ono, B52s, The Human League, Peter Gabriel, Sade, Duran Duran, The Thompson Twins, Bjork, Tina Turner, Bananarama, Bjork/The Sugarcubes, The Pointer Sisters, Celine Dion, Isabel Pantoja, Whitney Houston, Marlene Dietrich, Eartha Kitt, Miguel Bose, Culture Club… that is the off the top of my head list. I guess I tend to gravitate toward solo artists. There is no one genre I find that I love more than another, I love the surprise of an eclectic mix tape. I think most of my favourites have a running thread, a sense of flair, theatre, and performance but with actual songwriting abilities.
Daniel Ouellette: Sometimes I feel like I belong to no place and every place… much like many of the artists I love… New Wave, Post-Punk, Alternative Pop???
Daniel Ouellette: Monsters from movies, gardens, Kaiju films, paintings, other artists I admire, be they artists that I know personally or ones that I enjoy who are more well known. I am quite inspired by the oddness of life and the compassion of people. Statues are nice too. I love a good shrine… the Buddha or the Virgin Mary.
Daniel Ouellette: It really is a sense of our concerts because the shows I have done tend to be interactive and thus the incorporate video, puppetry, and audience participation… We sing we dance, we jingle bells, and put on false moustaches together.
Daniel Ouellette: There was this song by Sparks and Franz Ferdinand “Collaborations Don’t Work” Perhaps that is a good answer? I cannot think of anyone at the moment. Everyone is doing what they do so well, why would they need me to break their porcelain vase?
Daniel Ouellette: Making an album if I feel, doing concerts wherever I like, weeding the garden whence it’s time, watching a monster movie on VHS… I am in a very artistic mode of letting whatever happens, happens. I would like to be doing concerts in place that I have never been to before.
Daniel Ouellette: Right now, just some thoughts about shows. I had to change some life events because I had heart surgery and thus, there was not a tour for this latest release. I hope to do something around Halloween.
Daniel Ouellette: Please check out the new release and the music that I made for the songs. I did all of the editing and storyboard all by myself. There is even a oddity of a video of me putting myself into a painting of a house that I had painted.
Daniel Ouellette: Thank you to everyone who listens, comes to performances, and buys the songs… To the DJs who play the music… and to Mrs Garrett for always being there.
Daniel Ouellette: See Below
We all look forward to more great music from you very soon.
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