Dany Horovitz: ‘It’s about those hopelessly romantic and booze-filled evenings’

Toronto singer-songwriter Dany Horovitz has released his fourth album Days Never Know, an album charting new beginnings, stories ending and what ifs, all set to his signature singalong melodies.

The first four tracks of the album – ‘Way About You’, ‘Brave for You’, ‘Rock ‘N Roll With You’ and ‘Soul Of A Poet’ – best sum up the tone of the record, switching from upbeat to darker themes. ‘Soul of a Poet’ beautifully encapsulates his storytelling and I tell him that it makes me think of two strangers who run into each other at a bar, swap life stories, and end the night by dancing to this song. ‘That’s great!,’ he said, sounding genuinely pleased. ‘I did put the songs in order to get the songs to talk to each other. A happy song, and then a sad song, and a happy song, and then a sad song. That’s especially true with the first four songs. ‘Brave For You’ is about a relationship that just isn’t working, it’s like the anti-hero to the song ‘Hero’ by Enrique Iglesias (laughs). It’s saying “I’ll do anything for you when everything is perfect”. The next song is ‘Rock ‘N Roll with You’, where you’re at a bar, you’re ready to restart your whole life and then somebody comes in, and they change everything, they give you all these wild ideas ‘Soul of a Poet’ is then what happens a few weeks later. It’s the aftershock of that. And it’s like, well, you’re great, and everything is perfect about you, and the problem isn’t you, but this is now like Meat Loaf’s ‘Two Out Of Three Ain’t Bad’ It’s saying: “I want you, I need you, but there’s just no way I’m ever going to love you” – the two out of three. Those first four songs really speak to each other, I think, and then the whole album speaks to itself in that happy or sad way.’

The opener ‘Way About You’ sets for the tone for the more upbeat songs on the album, with its infectious banjo, frisky guitars and huge, singalong chorus. It’s unabashedly romantic, the kind of song that puts a smile on your face and gets you tapping along: ‘I wrote that song a while ago,’ he said. ‘Some songs I write with great intention and some songs are a bit more throwaway and honestly, that one was a bit more throwaway. I thought it was a little lighter, a little more romantic than most of my songs but I did like the hook and I played it around the house to myself. My producer, Calvin, sometimes brings me into the studio to work with students. He’s a teacher at an audio engineering school. I thought it would be a good one for audio engineers to just learn their craft for a day. He turned to me afterwards and said: “What was that song? That’s got to be on the next album!” He thought it was terrific. It just goes to show that you never really know, or as Calvin says, days never know! He recommended bringing a guy named Matt O’Halloran in who really knows harmonies very well. We made very slight tweaks to the song structure, nothing crazy but the real thing was how he helped the vocals get that beautiful poppy sound.’

As the song kicks off: “Baby, you got those specks of gold floating around in those blue-grey-greens. And maybe I got just a little lost following down some ancient dreams.”

‘Way About You’ got its first outing as the lead track on an album of the same name earlier last year and Horovitz quipped that he liked it so much that he decided to put it on this album, too: ‘I always think of how The Beatles’ song ‘Yellow Submarine’ is on Revolver and it also has its own album. I thought, if they can do it, I can do it!’

‘When we constructed ‘Way About You’ musically, we thought it would do well to have Avicii ‘Wake Me Up’ vibes’

Interestingly, he says that most of the instrumentation is not done by him on these tracks: ‘I write the songs, I sing the songs, but I hire musicians who really know what they’re doing to take it to the next level. One of the main collaborators I have is a guy named Sean Royal, and he plays bass, guitar and keys. He’s got a banjo, which he put on a song on my Phanerorhyme album (2023) and it was so beautiful, we thought we wanted to bring the banjo back for another song. When we constructed ‘Way About You’ musically, we thought it would do well to have Avicii ‘Wake Me Up’ vibes.’

‘Rock ‘N Roll With You’ is the perfect road trip song about throwing caution to the wind and heading out for new adventures with someone. ‘That one I actually did write with intention, even though it is a bit cheesy and a bit romantic,’ he said laughing. ‘I was listening to a song by Meatloaf and Cher called ‘Dead Ringer For Love’, if you know it? It’s this really great rock and tune about two people who meet at the bar. They’re both nowhere in their lives but they meet each other and take a night off together. If you’re a fan of Meatloaf and the Bat Out Of Hell album (1977), it’s about those hopelessly romantic and booze-filled evenings (laughs). It’s the theme that comes out and I thought that I’d love to write a song like that.’

As the song goes: “I got a dream to go somewhere far. I got a tank of gas in my car. Now you look my way and suddenly I can’t remember my plans. I can see in your eyes, that you know the feeling. Of wanting to leave, of finding new meaning.”

Even before he got into the studio, Horovitz knew that he wanted to sprinkle a bit of Beatles magic on it: ‘That’s going to be a huge theme in my songs. With this one, I wanted a bit of ‘Let It Be’, we wanted to amp it up a bit, make it a bit more rock. I love that song and I love what Sean did with the guitar solo. I love the way that we put together the harmonies on the vocals. It’s funny you pick up on those two songs because those are the two songs that I get the most feedback on. Even though in my heart, I feel like I’m a little bit more like a Leonard Cohen, dark lyric songwriting kind of guy (laughs), the ones that people gravitate towards always seem to be the happier songs.’

‘They’re neither personal nor are they random – they’re moods that I’m feeling and emotional truths that I’m trying to get at’

I tell him that it is a reflection of our times, that the increasing geopolitical and economic uncertainty instinctively makes people gravitate toward songs that are more uplifting and he agrees: ‘Yeah, if things were going really well, then people would gravitate towards ‘Brave For You’ or something like that. (A song that implies that a relationship is doomed.)’

Like many songwriters, he doesn’t know what mood a song will take on until he’s finished it: ‘Like any other songwriter, I sit at the guitar and the muse, as it were, breathes through me. Whether it’s a happy song or a sad song, I don’t know until it’s done. And when I talk about intentionality, it’s really more about the chords that I strike. I’d say it’s probably 70% darker and deeper, 30% lighter and happier but I’m always trying to paint a picture and tell a story. Hopefully that comes out and hopefully a combination of the melody, the harmony, the instrumentation, the lyrics and everything that you’re resonating with.’

Vivid, emotive storytelling is the backbone to Horovitz’s songwriting and it’s clear that open and sincere emotions underpin everything he writes. ‘Very much so,’ he said. ‘They’re neither personal nor are they random – they’re moods that I’m feeling and emotional truths that I’m trying to get at. I can tap into a sad memory just like you can but it’s not going to be as interesting as writing a story that later, when I listen to it, I connect to as a listener. I took a course at university about authorship. When you read a book, you, as the reader, bring the meaning to a story more than even the writer had. I always think about that as giving me leeway to be off the hook, to write songs in the first person that aren’t about me, and then just see where it takes me and refine and revise however I need to. One thing about the English language is rhymes are lazy but that means that poetry can be more beautiful for that reason. It’s that whole T.S. Eliot thing about “great art comes from the greatest restrictions”.’

”Days Never Know’ comes from a Ralph Waldo Emerson quote where he says that the years teach us much that the days never know’

He gives me an example: ‘If you know that at the end of a sentence, you’re going to use the word “free”, “tree” or “three”, the question you have to ask yourself is how are you going to get there? By not having to make it personal and by committing myself to some kind of story that makes sense, I’m forcing myself into a framework that produces, I’m hoping, a rich result as opposed to if I just let anything happen, which would be too broad, or if I made it about myself, which would be too constricting.’

And although he hasn’t written a song with T.S. Eliot in mind, he thinks about the quote “April is the cruelest month” from his poem ‘The Waste Land’ (1922) ‘all the time’: ‘Actually, ‘Days Never Know’ ‘comes from a Ralph Waldo Emerson quote where he says that the years teach us much that the days never know,’ he said. ‘It’s about growing older but there are little smatterings here and there from everything. I have a song called ‘Waltz Once More’ on the Phanerorhyme album that takes Shakespeare soliloquies that have violent meanings and I turn them around and turn them into a love song. That was a real challenge! That was a song with intentionality. I’m proud of that one because it is one of the few songs where I’m actually playing the instrumentation. The idea was to take Shakespeare soliloquies – the ‘Once More Unto the Breach’, ‘Dear Friends’ from Henry V and I think I took some from ‘Macbeth’ and ‘Hamlet’. They’re all about mortality and violence. I thought: “How do I say, okay, you’ve just gone through a breakup but I’m here for you, despite what you’re feeling?” So instead of ‘Once More Unto the Breach’, I turned it into ‘Waltz Once More’. Sometimes I get a bit carried away (laughs) and sometimes I find the right balance and I think that’s one of those times.’ We get chatting about ‘King Lear’, Shakespeare’s famous tragedy that it turns out we both love to read. ‘They say that good writers borrow and great writers steal,’ he said laughing. ‘If it’s in the public domain, I say go for it, you know, go steal it!’

Horovitz’s music is infused with modern takes on familiar sounds: melodic guitar and piano chords, popping bass licks, and toe-tapping percussion. His lyrics are stories of love, loss, and life, drawing inspiration from ancient poets, modern philosophers, and personal experiences. Born in Montreal and raised outside Toronto, his grandfather owned a record store and Horovitz spent his childhood listening to old records and dreaming of making music. His father grew up in the record store and when they moved to Toronto, he took a lot of the records with him: ‘He had a real oldies style, everything from Elvis and Frankie Valli up until Creedance Clearwater Revival and The Eagles, basically the whole period of early rock ‘n’ roll from Chubby Checker and Little Richard all the way up to Led Zeppelin. The influence was more my dad than my grandfather because my dad grew up working in that record store. He played guitar and he wrote his own songs, so I got a sense of how chords fit into each other before really understanding what song structure was. I still don’t know necessarily what strong song structure is. I only know what feels right to start and to stop and that’s enough.’

‘You listen to something by John Denver and the whole world opens up for songwriting, because it’s so simple and so beautiful’

Growing up on such a brilliantly eclectic mix made him really appreciate the beauty of acoustic guitars: ‘You know, you listen to something by John Denver and the whole world opens up for songwriting because it’s so simple and so beautiful. It’s the same with Tom Petty. My dad had an Eagles songbook and a Beatles songbook and I remember, especially with the Beatles songbook, playing and listening to that. The one album I remember listening to over and over again as a kid from start to back, was the ‘Innocent Man’ album by Billy Joel, which is not a guitar focused album (laughs) but that’s the one with ‘Uptown Girl’, it has a very oldies kind of feel to it.’

Horovitz started playing the guitar when he was 14, although he got into singing earlier, in an amusing anecdote that he recounts: ‘When I was a kid, you used to get little badges for being part of all the different things at school. We’re all sitting in the big assembly at school and there are about 40 or 50 kids in the choir. I nudge my friends I’m sitting next to having a bit of a laugh amongst ourselves and I say: “Watch this”. Somehow, I just get up and I stand up with the choir having not been in it at all (laughs). I must’ve been about eight. The choir director, Mrs. Claxton, she gives me a look (laughs), but then gives me a badge. I felt so badly that the next day at lunch, I went up to her and I said that I felt really bad and wanted to give her back the badge. She said: “Look, Dany, we actually need more boys in the choir. Why don’t you just join?” And so I did!’

His dad also gave him some brilliant advice when he started to play the guitar: that for two weeks every day and for half an hour, he should press down on the strings with his fingers and just pluck the strings out, to build up calluses. In the guitar books, he showed his son the little chord charts that show where to put your fingers: ‘You can follow that,’ he said enthusiastically. ‘It allows you to smoothly transition from one finger position to the other. You’ll be in a really good position to get to the songs out. Start with the G, E minor, C, D, and then take it from there. And to this day, those are still the easiest chords to play.’

‘He said that Beethoven wasn’t the best for structure and he wasn’t the best for this and he wasn’t the best for that but where he was the best was always finding the absolutely right next note’

I tell him that I’ve been learning to play Beatles songs on the guitar and how the B7, Fm7, B7, Em, A7, A to D7 chord progression has blown me away because it’s so beautiful and he gets very animated: ‘It’s hard to be the most popular act in the world and also the best act in the world,’ he said. ‘I think they’ve definitely done it. More recently, I was listening to Leonard Bernstein talk about about Beethoven. He said that Beethoven wasn’t the best for structure and he wasn’t the best for this and he wasn’t the best for that but where he was the best was always finding the absolutely right next note. I feel that way about The Beatles. I know in the studio, they invented a lot of things using feedback and tape but I think mostly what they always knew was what the next best note was and that’s why their songs are so memorable. I think it probably comes from a few things. One is when they were younger, they would learn chords and they would try to work those chords into songs because they were just interested in knowing all the chords. And two is that they never learned proper music theory, so they didn’t know what they were supposed to do. There’s a part in – I think it might be ‘Strawberry Fields’ – where if you run the chords, it’s actually them just slightly moving their fingers down the piano in a sequence. I’m sure they were at the piano, finding the easy thing to play and then realising that with their talent, they could find the the pleasing thing to sing.’ I say that they use the B7 a lot, which has come to be synonymous with The Beatles for me and he grins: ‘I love the B7! I feature the B7 prominently in my song ‘Free Tonight’, which is off my first album. And you’re right about the B7. Anytime I go into a chorus, or I divide a chorus with a seventh, it feels very Beatles-ey to me!’

Horovitz quotes Brian Wilson, who famously said that “music always happens in the following order, music, lyrics, story”: ‘You get the music and how you feel, and then some lyrics come to you, and then you write the whole story. I think there’s something to be said for that but they also kind of happen overlapping. Left to my own devices, I’ll sit at the guitar, or the piano, and I’ll noodle around a bit and I’ll try to paint a picture in my mind. There’s a song called ‘Be My Baby Tonight’ that came out of me one evening, just as I was riffing on what I thought were jazzy chords, E’s and A’s nonstop – and a B7, I believe! Sometimes, when I haven’t written a song in a while, I think: “I gotta do something!” The song ‘Roads and Roses’, which I love on the new album, came about because I really wanted to see if I could marry the metaphor of a garden growing for the starting of a relationship, and a highway for a metaphor for leaving the relationship. I think I landed the plan all right on that one. Every time I learn something new, I feel like there’s a new opportunity to write a new song.’

Ultimately, what he is striving for is to create vivid stories that resonate with the listener: ‘Listening to a song that you like with a great melody, it catches you, but then hearing lyrics that create a vivid story for you, keeps you. Then the great instrumentation that changes from bar to bar to bar gets you coming back again and again. Hopefully, it becomes a song that you listen to enough times and sing to yourself, and you love it. Those are the songs that I like and those are the songs I try to write.’

‘I called it Ampersand to reflect the collaborative nature of the work’

Next up will be a live album, Ampersand, later this year, with singles leading up to its release, as well as an album called Pub Pop, which will be out next year. ‘I called it Ampersand to reflect the collaborative nature of the work,’ he said. ‘I was so happy my producer, Calvin, thought we should go into the studio with a bunch of musicians and recreate some songs from my first album. We did ‘Moving On’, ‘Free Tonight’, and ‘This Side of the Looking Glass’, which are three of my favourite songs. We added a piano-heavy, cello-heavy version of ‘Way About You’. There’s a woman named Christina Dare who plays bass on the live sessions. She came in for that song just to do harmonies with me, and I think our voices meld really well together. I’ve also written a couple of new songs that are going to go on it, including one called ‘The First Cup of Wine’ telling the Greek myth of how they invented wine (laughs). The way it goes is Bacchus comes down from Mount Olympus and teaches a farmer to make wine. He makes wine for the entire village, they have a great party, the best night of their lives! They wake up the next morning hungover and murder the farmer. And that’s the story!’

Which musician would he most like to go out drinking with? ‘I think we all know the answer to the question,’ he said laughing. ‘It would be Paul McCartney or John Lennon just because they were the main songwriters. I wouldn’t want to talk to them about their stories because they’re so well documented. Instead, I would want to trade notes about songwriting. I wouldn’t even go to a bar, I’d go to one of our homes with some beers, swap words, try to find some emotional truths and maybe even write a song together. That would be the most beautiful thing I could do.’

He continues: ‘As a back up, the other one I would want to do is Billy Joel. Same thing. Him on the piano and me on the guitar and see where it goes! I’ve seen interviews with Paul McCartney where he writes songs on the fly, he’s the greatest, he’s so generous with his time that way. You’re not really supposed to show how the sausage is made but he doesn’t care because he’s not insecure that he won’t be able to write something great.’

Horovitz tells me a fascinating story about McCartney and the actor Dustin Hoffman: ‘There was a song he wrote, something about Picasso that apparently came out of a session where Dustin Hoffman met him at a hotel and said: “Is it true you can write a song about anything? Can you write a song about this news story about Picasso dying?” And he did and it ended up being a big hit! He’d be a fun guy to spend an evening with. He’s such an inspiration because he’s clearly a guy who loves what he does. Leaving aside the quality of the great music he makes, whatever your passion is, that is the kind of person you want to be. He’s living that life and we should all be doing more of that, whether it’s music or something else. Take Mick Jagger, he’s as young today as he ever was, he’s still knocking it out of the park. I saw Rod Stewart in concert last year and he’s still knocking it out of the park! They’re able to turn it on because they love it. They don’t feel weighed down by the music, they feel liberated by it. That’s what music can do. To write a good song, you have to write hundreds of songs and to have that kind of discipline, you have to love doing it.’

It’s clear that he does love doing it and he’s had some entertaining moments along the way: ‘I was hired to play at a local farmers market, and so I played an acoustic set,’ he said. ‘A bunch of parents came with their little children who wanted to listen and dance but my stories can be pretty dark, so after a song or two, I paused and turned to one of the moms and asked: “Is this kind of music ok?” She laughed and told me: “You’re overthinking it, a two year old doesn’t understand what you’re singing.” I said “Fair enough” and finished my set!’