LET LOOSE

South African Dan Patlansky is an established musician, vocalist, songwriter. His latest, self-produced album, ‘Shelter Of Bones,’ is the perfect opportunity to hear his talents in action. Dan sat down with Blues Matters via Zoom prior to the Christmas festivities to tell us all about it:

by Glenn Sargeant Images: Tobias Johan Coetsee (studio) & Laurence Harvey (live)

Hi Dan, how are you?

Hello! I’m excellent Glenn.

The new album ‘Shelter of Bones’ was co-produced by yourself and Tom Gatza from Hamburg, Germany. How did you want to approach the album either personally or as a team? Well let me just say that he produced three of the eleven songs. I think that the main kind of premise for the album was to dial it back a bit in terms of going a little more lateral towards the blues if you compare it to previous albums. Previous albums have been slightly heavier in a sense. My first love is the blues; I come from that blues kind of background. Not going back to traditional blues necessarily, just to have a little bit more of that latter feel on the whole album. That was the basic global premise for this album.

One of the tracks I really like on this album is ‘Soul Parasite’ which has tinges of Led Zeppelin. Was that done consciously or sub-consciously? I think probably more on a subconscious level because I’m a massive Zeppelin fan and I have been since I was a kid. If you listen to anything enough, the vibes of that eventually start coming out in your own writing. That’s a great question, because the heaviness - like the blues-rock heaviness - is where I want to be in the production kind of mind -frame. That song definitely had that intention, I suppose. I definitely look at Zeppelin as a reference for songwriting, arrangements and all that kind of thing.

Interestingly, that was one of a couple of tracks that you took on vocal, guitar and bass duties. Was that kind of a deliberate thing for you or was that more of an intent?

That’s a good question. Just to answer that question I will kind of explain the recording process of the album: it was originally tracked in 2019, and supposed to be released in 2020. That is the worse year in the history of man to release an album so that gave me an opportunity to rework songs and to change things. So, because I had already paid a ton of money to session musicians, studios to do the initial recording , and I wasn’t entirely happy with the product. When it came time for re-recording I had to kind of be a little more economical with it. Obviously, I can’t play the drums so I had to get my drummer into track it but bass is something within reason, something I can play as long as it is not over-complicated . it is a guitar player bass part. It was just because it didn’t seem to make sense on that particular song to book a bass player. I felt confident enough to play the bass parts.

That is a good thing though, because it is your record and you do have an approach on how you want it to sound. Then you have ‘Snake Oil City’ and in my notes I have “Although it is a fictional place, the subject matter mirrors reality”. Would that be a fair statement?

(Laughs) It would be the fairest statement you’ve made all day I promise you! I’ll tell you why; I live in South Africa and it is a beautiful country with beautiful people but like most countries right now the government is insane. That is the only word I can fathom to bring out. It feels like the government is just a bunch of criminals. An example of that is when this whole pandemic hit our economy was not doing great before this hit and then a lot of businesses shut up shop. Then one of these big organisations gave the South African government tens of billions of dollars as a little injection into the economy. Not one cent can be accounted for and it just went into politicians back pockets. It feels like we are being run by a criminal enterprise. That is where the whole storyline for ‘Snake Oil City’ came from. It is the most traditional blues song on the album and it’s got that and I thought “What better subject matter for a traditional blues song.” A fairly bleak scenario I guess. scenario I guess. ballads on this album. The inclu-

I was going to mention this; you have a headline tour on the UK in March/April 2022 and I thought to myself , “I bet he could be really sneaky and play that song and then without saying anything segue into ‘Taxman’ by The Beatles. (Laughs) You know what? It is so interesting that you say that because I actually did an online John Lennon festival for his birthday. It was run and setup by Mollie Marriott the daughter of Steve Marriott. Mollie is a good friend of mine and she toured with us a couple of years ago on a particular album and she set this whole thing up. Even though that is not a strict John Lennon song, that was the song I performed on there because it has a blues basis. I had very similar thoughts when I was learning the lyrics to the song it strikes a crazy resemblance to ‘Snake Oil City’ in a sense. It is a very similar scenario.

I don’t really like pigeonholing music but you do have a couple of ballads on this album. The inclusion of ‘I’ll Keep Trying’ has you in a reflective mood.

Was that a difficult song to write?

It was a very difficult song to write. That was one of the songs that was produced by Tom (Gatza) and I found that his strength as a producer is ballads. He knows how to draw the most out of ballads and it was a very reflective and personal place to write from. It is pretty much about my personal downfalls in life and it is written towards my wife saying I understand the downfalls that I have and it is something that I am constantly trying to work on and improve on. We’ve got downfalls in our personalities but it is about recognising them. I tend to write a lot about stuff that worries me and keeps me up at night and I need to change that.

That’s strong assessment. I suppose you could say it is some form of emotional acknowledgement. Would that make sense?

Without a doubt! I often find that people say if you have problems write them down on a piece of paper. For me, if you take it one step further and write a song about it that is a very powerful thing to be honest about who you are as a human being. By writing a song about it, you become more aware of it and you have a really good think about it. It is almost therapy.

I agree with you on that completely. ‘Presence’ has got a lovely psychedelic guitar tone. What guitar, pedals/effects did you use?

Let me just think about that – on ‘Presence’ we got a keyboard clavinet, a pokey sound. I was pretty much using the same type of rig that I was using on the rest of the record a standard clean sound. A slightly overdriven sound for the chorus. I think a lot of that psychedelia comes out with that particular keyboard sound. It very often gets mistaken for a guitar because it has a distorted kind of tone to it. It is the same sound that Stevie Wonder used on ‘Superstitious’ and it gives it a guitar tone and feel with the psychedelia vibe.

Okay that makes sense I just wasn’t sure. You will be touring the UK in Spring 2022 with special guest Arielle. How are you feeling about touring globally after the last couple of years?

One word – ecstatic. To be honest, during the lockdown I had moments where I thought this would never ever happen again. I have done limited touring in South Africa but 2010 was the last time I toured the UK with Walter Trout. It is almost surreal and I am beyond excited to be touring again. To get on the plane and get back with the UK musicians I use. I almost have this level of anxiety because I haven’t done it since 2019 almost like I am doing it for the first time again. But the feeling of excitement, anticipation and joy is overriding that. It is almost a small slice of normality again where you can go on a plane and go to another country and go tour. I almost took that for granted before that you could just do that. It is going to be my first time leaving the borders of South Africa since 2019. Super excited to bring this tour to people.

In terms of the shows, is it going to be a trio setup or is that planning still in the works?

So for the last couple of years I have always toured as a four-piece, the trio plus a keyboard. But on this tour I am going back to the trio because for many many years I toured in that format. The trio brings a very particular raw real sound. It has something magical and a lot my heroes like Jimi Hendrix - they grew up in trios. I have decided to go with a trio and when I was touring South Africa we are still limited in venues and I couldn’t afford to take the full band out on the road so I had to leave the keyboard behind. I love the challenges of a trio with these incredible musicians.

Dan Patlansky’s new album “Shelter of Bones” is released by Virgin on February 25. The album is available from www.danpatlansky.com.

His UK tour with special guest Arielle, runs from March 31 until April 12, 2022.

Tickets: www.thegigcartel.com have ever met in my life. Not men-

I’ve been fortunate enough to see you perform live in the UK a few times over the years . I was at your first show at The Borderline in London and saw you again with Joe Satriani at the Hammersmith Apollo. That must have been a really fun tour for you? It was fantastic. That was one of the highlights of my career and I have been fortunate enough to support big names such as Bruce Springsteen in Johannesburg but Satriani was really special. Firstly, I grew up listening to the guy and secondly I found it was more of an appropriate audience that I was exposing myself to. Even though I don’t necessarily do the Joe Satriani thing it was a guitar loving audience. It was really a life-changing tour because Joe himself was one of the most humble guys I have ever met in my life. Not mentioning names but I cannot say that about everyone I have supported in my life and I have had times when it has been a difficult tour and you feel like you are intruding all the time. With Joe it was completely different and it helps to play well and feel comfortable and it is one of those tours I will remember on my deathbed.