Daniel Villarreal // The Eisenberg Review Interview

Photo by Cassie Scott

A conversation with the drummer and bandleader about the origins of Panamá 77, how DJing influences his approach to live performance, and the role of post-production in shaping the sound of his new record Lados B.

Panamá 77 was one of my favorite releases of last year. There was just something so approachable about the grooves and textures of that record that really spoke to me. It was a record that I spent a lot of time inhabiting the world of, and it was very inviting in that way. And I really don't feel like we can talk about your upcoming release Lados B without first touching on Panamá 77, if not in part because Lados B is the result of the sessions that ultimately became Panamá 77.

Exactly. Like you said, Panamá 77, that's my first solo adventure as a drummer leading my own ensemble and also producing and creating these songs, some of them from scratch, some of them from pure improvisational and just bringing that spirit from everything I heard through music. I'm a DJ. I also play in different kinds of bands from indie rock to classic rock to cumbia to funk, all kinds of stuff that I love to hear, especially world music, African music and things like that. Then I always wanted to do something when the opportunity will come to kind of represent who I am. If you meet me, it is like, "oh, this guy plays here", but they can box me just in one category: "This is a cumbia drummer".

People don't even know that I started playing cumbia in 2014 when I moved to downtown Chicago from the suburbs of Chicago and then we started Dos Santos around that time. Then Dos Santos is kind of like a decade old band and that was kind of my beginning in the city of Chicago. But I'm talking about all that because that comes and brings all the spirit that what I wanted to do with Panamá 77, having that component that represent me or who I am as a drummer, who I am as an artist, blending a little bit of everything without going too hard like, "oh, I want to do a jazz album, I want to do a Latin album, I want to do a rock album."

I just wanted it to be something cohesive. It was just a good compilation of tunes. I have organ on it. I have things that are more like in the jazz side, but I would say I never swing, actually, like I'm not swinging in Panamá 77; you don’t hear a bebop or any kind of jazz standards, patterns and things like that. But anyways, besides that, I just wanted to represent a little bit of who I am, everything that I do without going deep into a certain style. I just want it to be overall a vibe. Like presenting a vibe, presenting the sonics, and I was just concentrating on those sessions from Panamá 77 that I did back then in 2020 purposely to develop some of the songs in the album. It came out of improvising live with Jeff Parker and Anna Butterss and live with Bardo Martinez from Chicano Batman and his keyboard player.

I was lucky to be friends with these wonderful musicians and creating these live sessions outdoors in the middle of the pandemic when people couldn't go to studios. That was October or maybe September of 2020, the pandemic just started in March. Then everything was fresh with trying to make music. Then it was kind of also a hard thing and that was a good opportunity, slowing down in the world being like, I've been a side man, I've been playing in Dos Santos and I play with this band in Chicago called Wild Belle, I play with other ensembles around the city and I've been thinking like, "well, now it's time to give something to myself and explore these ideas,” and I was able to do that and channel and challenge out the energy of what [became) Panamá 77.

And there is so much to unpack in that answer. I think I definitely hear, being a DJ myself, the vibe setting and the incorporation of a lot of different sounds. You're curating an experience—an autobiographical experience—as much as you are anything else on that record. And I think even subconsciously, maybe that's part of why I've responded to it so much in addition to the quality of the music. I love that and that sheds some real light onto it and also, knowing the time at which it was recorded, I'm sure it was like you were all shot out of a cannon. I mean it had been six months probably since you'd really actively been in the same space collaborating and you recorded it, it was at an outdoor garden in LA?

Yeah, it was an outdoor patio of the label International Anthem. Scottie McNiece, he lives out there. Then I was telling him, "I want to record this live", and then he said, "let's do it on my patio".

Then he was able to facilitate that for me, the space, and I was able to do a whole trip out of it and I drove all the way from Midwest to the West Coast with my drum set and then set up outdoors and trying to create a vibe out there to feel safe after three COVID tests before even meeting the players, things like that. That was the vibe back then. I remember filling up gas on the way there and people were wearing gloves. It still everything so fresh and uncertain that I was thinking at some point, "well, I don't even know why I'm doing that. I don't even know if this is going to even be released or I don't even know this is going to go anywhere." I just went for adventure and I was lucky enough to have my record label International Anthem to support me and Scottie McNiece being a big inspiration to use his patio and support. "Let's do it. Like why not? Just come over, stay with me. Let's record outdoors."

I love that and I think I've responded to the material on Lados B a lot because it adds additional context to Panamá 77, but the energy on it is so raw because it is improvisation that you really get to hear Jeff, who's a terrifically versatile guitar player, and Anna cook in a way before the layers and textures are added on top of it. I love some of the sparse grooves you're able to achieve on that record. I remember the first single, the second track, “Sunset Cliffs,” that is just like slow riding music. I love the music video for that. That's exactly what it is. It's one of those sparse grooves where you just let the feel of how it's played communicate the groove to it and it moves on its own.

Yeah, it's all about the vibe. I always think about music like, "Hey, I want people to vibe." I want to say something like, like you saying being a DJ and how it speaks to you, even when I put my sequence of the track list for my albums, I think in a DJ way. Because you cannot mix a song, sometimes you can have these rough, rough mixes of things and sometimes a song after another cannot be cohesive. And even if you have something that is super explosive and you have something super slow, you still have to present it in a way that makes sense as a DJ.

You can be playing Miles Davis’ Bitches Brew, but then you want to segue to any other genre of music, it can be like chicha music. That makes sense? In my head, doesn't. But you can curate it in a way sonically that it trans-segues and it can be in a smooth transition. It can be even from the tempo of the song. It doesn't need to be the same style where it can be just creating the vibe and that's the reason that some of my songs have some intros that builds into it and some outros that kind of fade out and have some space echo or dubby type something. That's the whole thing using those buttons on the mixer, you have the echo, you have the reverb, you have the roll button. That's the same way I feel like I want to present that to people like, okay, of course I don't using physically those buttons, but the vibe is there.

Absolutely, and I mean you're speaking my language, Daniel. You're presenting music in a way that makes sense to you, but it also has to make sense to the audience because it is performance too.

Yeah, I always say some DJs want to be musicians and some musicians wants to be DJs and that all complements each other because they admire each other because they're putting the tracks out there. And remember before live concerts, the only people that were putting music were the radio people on the airwaves playing stuff they liked or they were kind of being a promoter popular at the time and that was the first people that put that in people's homes. The DJ is as important as the musician and musician is important as the DJ. I think that they compliment each other because it is all about the music at the end. I don't care what style. It can be death metal to heavy metal to avant-garde jazz and they all come across like, okay, this music at the end is the preference of the audience.

I'm all about taking people through a journey. Hopefully you get the chance to see me live at some point, but I try just to create that also and I have DJs that have come to my live performance and telling me, "I love how you play your songs live because it feels like you are listening to a whole different album, it's a different vibe. It takes you to a journey". And even that compliment right there, I feel good about it because I shift something. It is not all about drumming, all about being technical and flashy. That will come back and that's also that kind of player. I can go there, but I'm people are not going to dance to a bunch of drum fills or they don't want to feel good if you are like... *imitates rapid fire drumming* All the time.

You can be like Dave Weckl or Vinnie Colaiuta or Buddy Rich; you can be the most outstanding drummer, but what you really saying? In a conversation, it's the same thing with the audience. Do you leave space for the audience to breathe? Do you leave space? Why are you trying to come across? At the same time, me being from the background of a listener, I want people to feel and dance and groove or do whatever experience and not me forcing something like "I'm a badass. I'm going to show you everything that I know." That's another side of stuff.

Bringing it back to the new record, Lados B, I think this is very instructive as to your approach as a drummer as well because I hear you in a lot of the compositions, both on Panamá 77 and Lados B, setting the table and there's a beautiful yin and yang on cuts like “Traveling With” or “Republic” between you and Jeff Parker in particular where you are setting the stage and you're flowing with him. There are some points at which he's really ripping off just super blistering instrumental passages and then you bring him back. You're providing a foundation. I think that that's what makes you such an effective band leader and what comes through so effectively on these two solo records is that you're listening and provide space. You're a very generous band leader I guess is what I'm trying to say.

I try to be the best leading for the best of the band and the situation. I don't think about me. I think about the song first. Then I think about sonically, the curation of the tune, you know? A lot of things come in post-production. This album Lados B with Jeff Parker and Anna Butterss is a trio. The majority of the album sound came from just the raw sessions, especially Lados B, just concentrating those two sessions. The tone for post-production is like, "okay, I hear the upright bass intro that Anna did or I start with a drum beat in ‘Sunset Cliffs.’" There's a song in the album called “Bring” It that you hear a beautiful bass intro the Anna does and then…

Yeah, it kind of reminded me of Alice Coltrane a little bit in certain moments.

Exactly. You know why it reminds you of Alice? Because, when I took that song to studio, it was very rough, but the bells, the channels, the congas… I have these African bells. I am a decent conga player. Then I'm able to overdub some auxiliary percussion. In Panamá 77, I did all the percussions and the auxiliary percussion and all the drumming of course because I was in the sessions, but sometimes I even think I should have another drummer to see how it sounds, but maybe in the future, but at the same time I feel like how you take that in post-production it's already sounding…If I wanted to release something just sounded like that, it would be good, but it would represent me? I don't think so.

Because there's a lot of albums made so clean and so jazzy and so trio perfectly capturing the essence of organically what it is, but I'm more like experimental and psychedelic. Okay, I want to put some congas. It's all about the rhythms because in my live band I have a conga player or sometimes I can play a little bit of percussion with my left hand and I still play drums. Then all those things, it won't be really me like, okay, how are I going to take this post-production that keep being me? I want to pass these congas through, I overdub through a tape echo machine. That's what I did with “Sunset Cliff.” You hear that little conga solo, it sounds almost like underwater. I did that through a tape echo and then using reverb and using like, "oh, let's do this, put some reverbs on the congas" and things like that.

I feel like that's what makes the post-production kind of unique, that makes it like the curation of Panamá 77 cohesive to Lados B: having that canvas that allows me to put the final touches that relates to what Panamá 77. Hopefully I keep producing. That can be a staple of me, but you never know what the next move will be, but that is what I like to do with my records. Capturing what the band is playing live, taking it to a studio, sitting back and it's like, "okay, I hear some congas or I hear maybe more keyboards or I hear bells or whatever." Or I hear to remove this part here and there's chops and things like that that happened. Not many in Lados B because I try to keep it as organic as... That's the reason that you hear some songs that fade out because it was like an eternal jam. I feel like some of those raw tracks I ended with, I end jamming for 15 minutes. Out of that 15 minutes, what was the meat of it? Three or four minutes because what what I’m doing even later, there's so much amazing thing happening. Maybe a super great solo of Jeff or maybe will be a super great interactions. It's just see the big picture, but you capture this and you present this because that's how much that you can present. But then when you come to the live show.

Yes.

See me play, then you see the big picture.