Interview with Dan Hill
Conducted on Friday, March 5th 2010

www.danhill.com/

By: Alex Young

Canadian singer and professional songwriter Dan Hill is a musician that is not always quickly recognized by name, but undeniably recognized for his music. Since 1975, Hill has won a Grammy and five Juno awards, and has sold over 100 million albums. Since the late 90’s, he has immersed himself as a songwriter for other artists, penning hits for international artists including 98 Degrees, Britney Spears, Reba McEntire and the Backstreet Boys. He has now emerged with his first original album entitled Intimate, an album that emotionally coincides with the release of his autobiographical book that was published by HarperCollins in 2009, entitled “My Father’s Son”.

FAZER Magazine recently caught up with Dan Hill and listened as he took some time to explain what it was like to be an international songwriter, the creation his book, and making his first album in fifteen years.

Alex: What was your mission while you were trying to record this album “Intimate”? What was your basic idea for the conception of the album? When did it go from an idea into songs and then songs into an album?

Dan: Well a lot of the songs were written over the twelve to fifteen year period of me writing songs for other artists. So you know at least have the album contains songs that were covered by groups like 98 Degrees, Backsteet Boys, Reba McEntire, Michael W. Smith. In that case it was just a great time in my life when I was just writing for other singers and groups. I really, really loved that because it gave me a chance to kind of move out of my pop singer bubble so to speak and interact with some of the most interesting people I’ve ever met. Then what happened is suddenly I had this big collection of songs, where it would be really interesting if I did sort of a songwriters record. I did my own version of the songs other people have recorded then splice them together with some new songs that no one’s heard. Then I just decided it would be a great storytelling album and every song would be like a story because I sensed that when I wrote my book (“My Father’s Son”) and various articles that essentially what I am is a storyteller.

Alex: That was an interesting thing I noticed about the album (“Intimate”), was that instead of it being a concept record like Darkside of the Moon, it was like each song was a chapter in a book.

Dan: Yeah, and so one song will be about what it’s like to be raised in a community that was demolished and bulldozed to the ground and be thrown out of your home. Then right from there I go into a song about being born in the Bible belt and what it’s like to be raised as a Southern white man in America. What I loved is that I could take all these different points of view together and write about them.

Alex: And bring them together under one collective album.

Dan: Yes, and I guess the big connective factor is the voice. If I’m taking a song that was a country hit like “She’s in Love”, or taking a jazz song or a pop song like “I Do (Cherish You)”, the thread is always going to be my singing.

Alex: So while it’s like the role of a narrator in a book. Even though they’re not a character themselves, it’s going to guide the reader along the whole way, or the listener in this case.



Dan: The funny thing is that no one really knows, they’re not playing games, but sometimes what will happen is I’ll sit in on someone else’s emotional experience. For example, my best friend Keith (Stegall) was talking about the pain of a divorce. So the song “Back Before the War” is literally just him recounting how strange it is to be a person for so many years and now there’s lawyers and papers and documents. I just slipped into as the first person and finished the song. The great part is that so many people are like, “Oh, you’re still writing about yourself”, but the reality is that I kind of like slipping in and out of other people’s worlds and finishing off their stories.

Alex: Yeah, it’s like taking on the role of a character much like an actor would, it’s all still part of the performance.

Dan: Yeah, and that’s part of getting older is developing more empathy, more of an understanding for people other than yourself. So when you’re younger you’re writing songs about getting your heart smashed, because we’re young and we’re breaking up with girls and writing these iconic love songs about it. Then when you’re in fifties and you’ve been with the same partner for twenty plus years, you know you can’t always write about getting your heart smashed because you’re in a different place. So you really have to develop your imagination or else you’ll peak when you’re twenty-three.

Alex: Yeah, exactly, instead of aging gracefully like some artists. What was the theme behind the title, I know it’s also the title of your book, behind the track “My Father’s Son”? What perspective did you write that from? Is it a personal story or you taking on a character?

Dan: That’s a very, very personal story, the album kind of ranges all over the place, so some of the songs are very, very personal. “My Father’s Son” probably being the most personal song on the record and that really is a journey of my father’s and my experience. Our struggles, our love, his need to control me, my need to resist his control, my need to move through the anger that I might have felt that all children feel towards their parents due to family dynamics. I learned to accept him and love him, especially just before he died, so I wrote that song just before he died, played it for him, then I went on to write the book of the same title “My Father’s Son”.

Alex: I’m sure that having a new approach to making a new record in the first place, it made it easier to change the dynamics of your own personal songwriting in new directions.

Dan: Yeah, it was really fun to do that, I think we all like doing different things, mixing things up and I think that’s what keeps us fresh. I’ve been writing songs since I was fourteen, so forty-one years, so in order to stay fresh after writing so many songs, it’s really important to mix things up, throw yourself off balance. Write a jazz song, then write a country song, and do all these things people would never expect you to do and do it.

Alex: Yeah, absolutely. What do you think was ultimately the goal of making this album (“Intimate”)? What was your mindset making this record?

Dan: I wanted something really, really authentic and to sound like nobody else and for it to have an arc of storytelling, and some kind of sense of human connection. I think that’s what we all sometimes long for, that’s the what so many of us, sometimes myself included, are missing, is that sense of human connection. I was trying on this record to reach out to the connection, to find it and then to share it. Like “How I Feel”, the first single, is all about how two people that live together can feel so disconnected and how to break through that disconnect.



Alex: Moving on to this new chapter in your career, did you have any ideas about how you’re going to present the new album in your live setting? Would you be playing it (“Intimate”) in its entirety or mixing it into a live set of assorted songs.

Dan: The latter. What I do is I perform solo because I think it’s much better to tell stories. What I do is I tell stories, read sections of my book and different articles I’ve had published and those articles and sections of my book naturally unfold into songs. I’ll read a scene about me and my dad and about an argument we had and then I’ll go into a song about it. That being said, I play songs that I wrote in 1973 to songs that I wrote two weeks ago. I think that if the audience is going to see someone and there are certain songs that they love, I think you have a responsibility to play those songs. So it’s going to be really a mixture of songs from my new album, old hits and songs I’ve written since my new album.

Alex: Yeah, absolutely. That way it can kind of put some of the new songs in perspective or in context for some of the people that might not have heard it, especially not in a live setting.

Dan: Exactly, you’ve got it.

Alex: Most importantly, how do you not let the fact that you are an amazingly well awarded artist not interfere or maybe taint your mindset before you go into making a new album?

Dan: I just take it one song at a time, and every time I write a song or an article, I kind of act as though I’ve never written a song or a story before. So I just totally kind of zone into that song, everything in the world depends on whether I can deliver that song. I think that most people that are so called “professionals” don’t really think of themselves that way. The other thing is that is when you’re in Nashville (Tennessee), some of these guys playing on my record have Grammys as songwriters. The guys that were playing drums and guitar played with Shania (Twayne) to Paul Simon (of Simon and Garfunkel), to Sting to George Strait. Not that I would have had an attitude anyway, but I sure as hell wouldn’t cop an attitude around those guys and play “Mr. Celebrity”. Both of those guys have worked with a thousand celebrities that are a lot bigger than I am.

Alex: Yeah, no doubt. That must have been refreshing though, to be able to play with people that you can relate to in that respect as well.

Dan: That’s what made me sing so well, is that the players that played on my album, we all kind of fell in love with music at the same time. We were all about the same age, fell in love with music in the late 50’s, early 60’s, and we all started making a living in the 70’s in our own way, making records or writing hits. Then somehow we all managed to hang in there and continue writing or making music in our fifties. It was sort of a beautiful…the word connection comes to mind. I was just so inspired, not only by how brilliant these people were as musicians and songwriters, but how humble they were. No one had an attitude, and these are some of the best players in the world and I thought, “Oh my God, I am just going to sit here and sing as long as you guys want to play”. I wasn’t thinking about a record, I wasn’t thinking about hits, I wasn’t thinking about being a star, I was just thinking, “I just want to sing with these guys because this just feels good”.

Alex: That’s a very unique opportunity so I’m glad you got a chance to make the most of it.

Dan: Thank you.

Alex: No problem. That’s all the time I need so I wanted to thank you for taking some time out to answer questions.

Dan: My pleasure.