What Billy Strings is for getting hippies into bluegrass, Daniel Donato is for getting the jam crowd into classic country—a campaign he continues on his sophomore album Reflector, out now.
Donato’s first album of all-original material, Reflector was worth the three-year wait from Daniel’s 2020 debut A Young Man’s Country and comes packing with 15 tracks. Many of the songs on the album will ring familiar to fans who caught any of the 220-plus live concerts Daniel and his backing band of Nathan Aronowitz (keyboards/vocals), Will McGee (bass/vocals), and Noah Miller (drums and percussion) played last year. In the studio, though, Donato’s original compositions are given the proper spotlight, rather than the extensive jamming that defines his live shows.
“Things to me that are real are kind of fraught with duality,” Donato told Glide of issuing his first all-original album. “And one of those dualities that usually ends up happening is that some things are easy and some things are hard. Reflector is definitely an example of that, where some songs were very easy to bring into existence and some songs were immensely hard in the sense that they took a lot of time and space to settle on an intuitive level. So that was a trip on its own accord.”
Informed by generations of tradition in country, honky tonk, bluegrass, and rock n’ roll, Donato’s influences shine through on the standout singalong “Hi-Country”. Though the chug-a-lug driving locomotive rhythm associated with country greats like Johnny Cash powers many of Donato’s songs, the guitarist/songwriter shows his versatility with relaxed numbers like the first half of the two-part “Dance in the Desert” that bookends much of the album. Elsewhere on Reflector, Donato slows to a blues funk on “Double Exposure” and takes a leisurely waltz on “Halfway (In Between)”.
Of course, Reflector abounds with Donato’s 21st-century brand of cosmic country that has made him one of the jam scene’s rising stars, best summarized in “Gotta Get Southbound” as his classic chicken pickin’ explodes into full-blown psychedelia. The fan-favorite live instrumental “Sugar Leg Rag” slams the foot back down on the gas pedal, flooring the intensity past the runaway train of instrumental “Locomotive #9” all the way to the closing reprisal of “Dance in the Desert”.
Reflector arrives at the end of a banner year for Donato, who in 2023 has sat in with Bob Weir, Widespread Panic, and Billy Strings as well as played entire shows as a guest of Grateful Dead drummer Bill Kreutzmann in Billy & The Kids. As expected, Donato will keep his breakneck touring pace up through the rest of the year including co-headlining dates with Eggy and an appearance at North Beach Music Festival before wrapping on December 16th with his annual Daniel Donato’s Cosmic Country Christmas in his hometown of Nashville. Visit his website for tickets and a complete list of tour dates.
Stream the new Daniel Donato album Reflector below or on your preferred platform. The LP is available on vinyl along with a number of merch bundles on his website.
Daniel Donato – Reflector