Daniel Donato Explains the History Behind His "Cosmic Country"

Daniel Donato was packing up after a gig at Robert’s Western World, a famous Nashville honky-tonk, and counting his tips in the alley when he heard a phrase that would define his musical career. He was approached by a regular at the venue named Donnie, who was eager to praise the singer-songwriter’s performance, steeped in country, bluegrass and bluesy improvisation.

“I don't know what you were playing in there, Danny,” Donnie told him. “You’re one of the finest figures I've ever heard, but you play country like I've never heard anybody at Robert’s ever play it. … I can't think of anything to call your sound. I can't call it country, but I can call it cosmic country.”

For Donato, it was serendipity. “That was good for me, because it told me what kind of country music I made,” he recalls. “Because, you know, growing up in Nashville, I don't really write songs that are truthful to me that are about back roads or girls.”

A few months ago, Rolling Stone named Donato the "New Guitar Hero of Nashville." That's high praise from the legendary glossy, the type of review most musicians dream of receiving. But Donato shrugs it off.  "I don't really think there's anything 'new' about me — it's just been me," Donato explains. "I guess it doesn't feel new to me because I've been doing it every day like my life depends on it since I was fourteen. But I get that 'new' probably helps inspire some clicks."

Donato is a philosopher of sorts — he consistently references hermetic texts — and the theories and mysticism he reads are reflected in the freewheeling songs that have sent him soaring from Nashville honky-tonks to sharing the stage with Widespread Panic and embarking on cross-country tours.

"I definitely feel like the story of my life is following the curve that a lot of hero's journeys have," he muses.

That journey began with Donato shredding on Guitar Hero. He was eight years old, and his family had just moved to Music City, where he would later develop the brand of "cosmic country” Donnie identified. But Donato's sound was first influenced by the guitar-emulating video game that he and his friends would play — and then Queens of the Stone Age, Pantera, Cream and Jimi Hendrix all inspired Donato to pick up his own ax at age twelve.

At the time, Donato was drawn to "the archetypal guitar gods. Then when I was fourteen, I started getting into country music, and that's when I really started diving into a lot of classic players," he says, listing Chet Atkins, Buck Owens, Don Rich, Merle Haggard, Willie Nelson and "a lot of old-time country guitar players that not a lot of people that don't play that style of music really know.

"I would hear things, and there would be this feeling of 'I have to re-create that sound. It has to come out of me,'" Donato recalls. "And when I started doing that, it was just a compounding effect." Donato calls that effect "the eighth wonder of the world."

"And here's we are today," he says, "sixteen years later."
During those years, Donato embarked on "a musical odyssey," he remembers. His long, strange trip kicked off when he began busking at age fourteen on Broadway, the street in Nashville lined with raucous honky-tonks where the music continues late into the night. He is still grounded in that experience, the grit of the come-up. "I can't really separate myself from all the hours and nights that I was putting down on the street," he reflects, "carried by the after-hours crowds of people and making $70 from playing for four hours."

He and his supportive dad would use that cash to grab a cheeseburger and root beer at a club and see a show. The money didn't just go to food, though. "I'd take $20 and pay the band playing to sit in on a couple songs," Donato says. "They saw I was really into it and I had a good ear for it."

Through that, he played alongside some "old-school session players," Donato recalls, the type of local legends who may not have found commercial success or fame, but "in terms of musical content, were the most wealthy musicians." And good mentors.

It may have been an informal education, but listening to Donato's music today, it was incredibly fruitful. He says he played 464 shows with the famed Don Kelley Band, which played Robert's Western World, where most Nashville musicians would go to after their sets at the Ryman. He was kicked from that band after he was caught smoking a joint outside the venue (pot's still illegal in Tennessee), though, so Donato started playing guitar in other bands before writing his own music and striking out on tour.

"After that, I started to do cosmic country, because it was it was time for me to start doing it on my own," Donato says, and after a long search, he found his bandmates to fulfill his whole vision. "It was just finding the right personalities that I could create music with and create an experience with other people to listen and connect to."

People have certainly connected: Donato now has a devoted following enamored with his unique sound. "Cosmic country is 'as above so below,'" Donato says, referencing the esoteric phrase stemming from the Tabula Smaragdina. "Because with the cosmos, you have the ultimate unknown. And then with country, you have what is known, discovered and orderly. And there's a harmony, a universe of elegance and beauty and truth to be found, between the dance of those two things."

While Nashville locals had known him for some time, as Donato began touring, he picked up a swath of fans in the jam scene who were attracted by the type of rollicking, improvised stylings that leap from Donato's guitar. So it's no wonder that he's made many fans in the jam hub of Denver, where he'll be playing a two-night run at Cervantes' Masterpiece Ballroom this weekend starting Friday, January 5. Donato has played Denver at least five times on his many tours, from late-night sets at Knew Conscious with Andy Frasco to the Ogden with Kitchen Dwellers.

Denver is one of Donato's favorite places in the country. “There's something about the frequency in Denver that is superbly cosmic. And I'm just so grateful to everybody who would take the time to come out to our show and help create an experience for all of us to enjoy and live in together," he says. "I really love the frequency of Denver. I think it's a special place that, you know, I hope until the very last tour of my life I get to play every time.”

And while his incredibly technical guitar skills are what catch fans' attention first, Donato's lyricism is just as potent. Reflector, which he released in November, warrants a full listen-through, encapsulating this moment in the Donato odyssey. As the album title suggests, Donato's goal with the release is "to let people know that the internal world comes first, and that the external world is a reflection of your internal world," he says. "And that's good news, because you have a lot of control over your internal world.”

The musician/philosopher continues: ”We live in a time where we're trying to get people to put all their eggs in the basket for what's happening outside of them, and trying to distort people's perceptions of themselves to where they don't really need to be individuals — they just can be part of the collective. The more that you live within your internal world, the more like yourself you become…and that helps the world around you and your internal world. ... It's about having faith and finding who you really are inside, embracing that journey. These are all beautiful values and principles that are old as time itself."

Perhaps that's why, even with all the accolades — from Rolling Stone to his rapidly expanding fan base — Donato has stayed humble. He still sees himself as a student of life whose purpose happens to be making music.

"As far as I'm concerned, if you could play music and it helps somebody have a life experience that has truth, beauty and goodness," he concludes, "nothing else really matters."

Daniel Donato plays Cervantes' Masterpiece Ballroom, 2637 Welton Street, at 7 p.m. Friday, January 5, and Saturday, January 6. Tickets are $29.