By Rich Monetti***As a young rock ‘n roller in Somers, New York, singer-songwriter-guitarist Dan Zlotnick wore a pony tail but insists that the locks didn’t make him cool. He also dismisses the myth that musicians in high school get all the girls. He side stepped the perceived benefits anyway with several long term girlfriends. Now, three years into his professional career, Zlotnick still puts aside the fringe benefits of the lifestyle, and the personal choice informs the subject of his latest single, “Room to Spare.”
“Room to Spare’ was written in the tone of a voice mail to his future wife and has a simple message. “I don’t know what it’s going to be like,” Zlotnick says. “I don’t know how much space we are going to have. But we will figure it out because we love each other.”
His appearance at Rockwood Music Hall on January 3 also deals with limited space—with the venue itself. Zlotnick loves the how the logistics have been figured out in making the most of the super “intimate stage.” “It forces the audience to be right in front of you and grabs their attention,” he notes.
Zlotnick’s arrival to this point as a professional musician wasn’t quite direct, though. Zlotnick played baseball on scholarship at Marist College in Poughkeepsie, NY for three years and kept the music to sporadic coffee house appearances. But the change in scenery from high school did alter how he saw himself as a musician. “That’s when I started looking at songwriting instead of just being a lead guitarist,” he says. Then came a transfer to the University of Tampa, where Zlotnick went out front with his music. He started playing on the street for tips and enough money to buy a speaker system. “I started playing gigs in restaurants and brunch spots,” he adds.
Still, baseball was his thing and several years of minor league baseball followed college. Dreams of the major league eventually faded, despite it being difficult to give up. But his time on the mound did have a crossover effect for the music career that followed. “There’s an acceptance of the spotlight that you need to have as a pitcher,” he says. “You have to figure that out so you can settle down to do your thing.”
With these life lessons and many miles on the road behind him, Zlotnick returned to Somers and set his sights on music (while who coaching baseball on an individual basis). He did so by melding the divergent rock n’ roll influence of his parents. Taking from the hard rock influence of this father and the folksy, soft rock preferences of his mother, Zlotnick created his sound, with an acoustic twang providing the middle ground. But his songwriting mindset is wider. “It’s kind of a hunter/gatherer approach,” says Zlotnick—who’s constantly looking for phrases and jotting down notes, while keeping attuned to the different chord progressions and riffs he’s playing. “I’m almost playing a matching game,” he says. Eventually words and music come together.
The title track from his 2017 album, Bumpers, was a coalescing of music and lyric in the hope he could cushion the pain of woman he saw crying in traffic. With no means to actually do so, Zlotnick took the opportunity to reach out in song:
Bumper to bumper, moving so damn slow
Girl pulls up in a beat up Ford, tears pouring down like rain
Don’t know what has her but I wish I could wish away the pain
Remind her that she’s not alone, We all hurt the same
Traffic clears up and she’s gone off through another lane
His intention did not fall on deaf ears, though. Paste magazine called the tune “…earnest and raw, featuring Zlotnick’s jubilant-sounding guitar plucking juxtaposed with his deep, twangy vocals.”
But the trick to making music, according to Zlotnick, is not to get too hung up on exacting the sound in studio. “You want to get it right without getting it perfect—because a lot of music we hear today is perfect,” he explains. He tries to strike a balance between letting some of the mistakes go and getting rid of those that make you cringe.
The same equalization applies to leveraging his future. “Once you’re at that next level, there’s another level above that. So again it’s finding that balance between what I really want to be doing, and what’s the lifestyle it affords me to live,” he says.
Either way, music is a must, and if he’s not playing, the feeling is unsettling enough to send him in search of some mates. “It’s just one of those things where it just has to be my life,” he concludes. “I don’t really know how or why, but I’m cool with it.”
For more info : https://www.danzlotnick.com
Leave a Reply