I’m Olivia Foster, here with Radio UTD, and I’m here with Mina and Kelley from Daisy the Great. Do you guys want to share a little bit about yourselves and what you guys are up to right now in Texas?
Kelley Nicole Dugan: Sure, hi, I’m Kelley.
Mina Walker: Definitely. We are Daisy the Great. I’m Mina.
KND: I’m Kelley.
MW: We’re in Waxahachie, Texas, right now. We are at a coffee shop on our way to Dallas. We’re about forty minutes from Dallas, and we’re gonna perform in Dallas tonight.
That’s so exciting! Where are you guys performing again? Because, I kinda forgot.
KND: We’re performing at Three Links, Deep Ellum, in Dallas.
Okay. I couldn’t remember if it was Three Links or Trees, so, okay!
KND: Yeah.
That’s really exciting. Last year, I saw you guys at Dada, so, it’ll be fun.
KND: Oh cool, yeah. Last year was really fun.
Yeah, that was such a blast. I brought a friend with me who had never seen you guys or heard of you guys before, and he was floored. He’s such a fan now. So, yeah.
MW: Hell yeah.
The vibes were great. I stole a setlist. It’s framed. I don’t think you can see right behind me.
MW: Oh my gosh.
KND: That’s awesome.
So, yeah, gonna try to steal another one tonight, start collecting them.
MW: We can also just give you one.
KND: Yeah.
Oh, really? Wait. I’ll take you up on that.
MW: Yeah yeah yeah. We’ll give you one.
Thank you!
MW: You can steal it if it’s more fun, though.
You know, I’ll leave the joy of stealing to other people, because then I feel really bad, and then I have a camera, and then if something happens to the camera, I’ll feel extra bad because it’s not my camera, so, thank you!
MW: You got it.
This is the best day ever. Usually I have to elbow my way up there, so…. Thank you! So, you guys just started your headlining tour this week, right? You just finished up touring with the … it was the Vaccines and the Kooks, was it?
KND: Yeah!
Okay, how was that?
KND: It was so fun. It was awesome. Been a really good month, and they’ve played such beautiful rooms, so it was really nice to be able to have a big stage and a big venue, and get to run around and meet new audience members and new fans.
That is so freaking awesome. And you guys just started the headline tour this week, was it?
Both: Yeah.
MW: It’s [a] short headline tour. It’s just five shows, kinda getting us back to New York, because we ended the Kooks tour in San Francisco, in Oakland. So, we decided, since we have to drive all the way back to New York anyway to get ourselves back there, that it would be fun to add some headlining shows. So yeah. And come through Texas, because the Kooks tour didn’t come through Texas, so we thought it’d be fun.
That’s so exciting. I’m glad you guys chose to come here. I’m really, really excited to see you guys again. Who do you guys have opening for you tonight? Because, I saw that they were tagged on Instagram, but—
KND: Yeah, we have Tex Patrello opening for us.
MW: Yeah, they’re super cool. You should listen to their music.
Yeah, I’m definitely going to. I have a spreadsheet of musicians to check out, and they’re on there now, so really excited to hear them tonight.
MW: That’s awesome.
Where do you guys find your [openers]? Because I remember last year, you guys had an opener from Austin with you, as well as Olive Klug.
KND: Honestly, when we’re doing a headline tour, it’s a mixture of people submitting to us, and us just looking online and finding music that we like. These openers for this run, I feel like are mostly people that we….
MW: We found a lot of our openers on Bandcamp.
KND: Yeah, we’re just looking up people. We really like having openers, so I think just doing a bit of research on the music that’s happening in that place, and then reaching out and seeing if people are free.
MW: Yeah. And on Bandcamp, you can search a state or a city and see—a lot of people have where they’re based in their Bandcamp. But it’s hard, because sometimes Bandcamp people have uploaded stuff, like, ten years ago, and they’re not a band anymore.
KND: There’s a lot of that that’s happened.
MW: And I was like, “Augh, I love this band!”—
KND: They were like, “We’re … not….”
MW: —and then I realized that they haven’t released anything since 2001, so, yeah. But you also discover a lot of cool music that way. But yeah, for this tour specifically, we reached out to people locally. But it’s different ways—you get recommendations from people you know in the area, or just blindly search on the internet. But we’re really happy with everyone that we found for this tour.
Oh, that is so cool. I remember when I spoke to you guys last year, we talked about the process of planning a headliner, and how much more work it is than being an opener. How was the planning for this, since it’s a lot shorter?
KND: It was definitely easier, because it’s just less dates, so there’s just less to do. But we are still on the road without a tour manager or anything, so the roles are definitely still there. So, we’re like our own crew, and we’re essentially managing ourselves on the road. It definitely is a lot to do, but it’s also fun, and it’s nice to be able to hold it in our hands and know what every aspect of what we’re doing is. I think we really thrive in parts of the industry that we can manage and control and tailor to us and what we like, so in that way, it’s really nice to have all the roles be filled by us and our band members. And I also think that doing that really bonds us as a team. Right now, we’re on the road with just the four of us, because when we do support tours, generally we’re a four-piece. So we’re on the road now with Nardo and Monty, who are in our band normally. We’re all like a little team, running around, doing shows and making it happen.
MW: It’s also good, I think, just to know how everything works. If we get to a point where other people are doing the jobs that we’re doing now, it’s nice to have a level of understanding of how much work it takes to do these jobs.
Yeah, no, that makes complete and total sense. What do you guys have lined up for after this tour? I think I saw in an Instagram caption that it’s “studio time” after this, but … yeah.
Both: Yeah.
MW: We’re gonna keep writing and recording. We’ve written a lot of music, and we’re performing some new songs on this tour. Performing three new songs. But we haven’t recorded them yet. We’ve recorded demos of a lot of songs, but I think that, since we got back from our Europe tour in fall, we’ve been getting out all of the stuff that we’ve been wanting to write for a while, because we have been touring for three years and didn’t have a lot of time to write. So we have a lot of ideas that we’re trying to flesh out. Yeah, so I think it’s gonna be studio time, recording time, and yeah, we just kinda wanna dive into what the next project sounds like.
Oh, that is so exciting. Because, I had listened to the Tough Kid EP when it came out, and I was really excited, and when “Looking U Up” came out this summer, I was there when the music video was there—
MW: [laughing]
It was my song of the summer. I was unhealthily obsessed with it.
KND: Thank you.
So … hopefully you guys are playing that tonight. But—
MW: [thumbs up]
Thumbs up. I’ll take it. We talked last time about your songwriting process, and how you guys had had some songs that you’d been working on for quite a while, and they kind of changed and morphed a lot as you played them. Have there been any changes between the last album and what you guys are working on now?
KND: Yeah, definitely. I think that what we are making now…. Okay, generally I think we are pretty free genre-wise. I think that there’s a slightly rock-ier thing happening now, which I do think is a product of playing a lot of shows and touring a lot, because we are coming to writing from playing on a stage, and it just feels really good to play music with a lot of energy back behind it. There’s also more delicate songs that we’re making as well, so I wouldn’t be able to say it’s fully rock-ier.
MW: I think that the songs are…. I think that we learn every time we make music, and everytime we play, I think that the songs are…. It’s like, as we grow up, our music grows up too, and I think that there’s more texture to the music that we’re writing now, and more wisdom on our part from just growing as people.
KND: Yeah.
MW: So I think that every album and every project is like an evolution of the band, and I think it’s gonna be really cool for people to listen to us in order and see how—I think that, as we grow, our music taste grows and expands—
KND: It changes, yeah.
MW: —and changes, and we learn about different sounds, different production styles and stuff, and I think that we’d never want to feel stuck anywhere. So I think we just write what we feel inspired to write in the moment, and it’s gonna feel like a new development.
KND: Yeah. It’s also honestly like, we’re writing a lot right now, so I don’t even know what the album is gonna be. I don’t know what we will choose from what we’re writing, because we have way more music than we expected to have. When we got back from tour in October, we nearly every day we wrote a song. So it’s like, definitely way a lot of songs.
MW: Yeah.
KND: I think we just didn’t have time to have dedicated writing time until then, so we just kinda let everything start getting formed into an actual song structure. And when we’re coming back, I feel like we’re still gonna write a bit more, so—
MW: We’re at the “spaghetti at a wall” stage at the moment.
KND: It’s playful, though, and it’s really fun, so I think that that is always a reflection of what the music will end up sounding like when it is released. So we’re having a lot of fun, and we feel really creative, which I think will hopefully make a fun and creative record in the end, but yeah. We’re not sure what it’s gonna be just yet.
This is so exciting. And, for the record, your guys’ songwriting process and your recording-creating process sounds so much healthier than other bands I’ve spoken to. So I’m really happy that you guys have a lot of fun, and I think it shows in the music. And I think it also shows when you guys perform, so … thank you guys for creating music that you guys enjoy so that we can enjoy it, because it is so much fun.
KND: I wanna hear the tea you have.
What?
MW: [quiet] We write from a dark place.
KND: I wanna hear the drama that you have heard, yeah. But, another time.
Another time. Yeah, no, I gotchu. Another time. You kinda mentioned that your influences might have grown and shifted as you guys have gained more wisdom. What are some artists that you guys are really listening to right now?
Both: Hmmm.
MW: What am I listening to right now? I’m listening to this band called The American Analog Set. I think the music is very nice to listen to. It’s kind of acoustic-droney, but it really calms my brain for some reason. I think they had a cult following in the nineties but are having a resurgence or something. I don’t know, honestly, that much about them. I just know that I heard one song by them, and then I heard a lot of songs by them and liked every single one. So yeah, they had some albums out in the nineties and two-thousands. But it looks like they put out something else in 2023. But the album Know By Heart from 2001 is really good.
Okay, I’m gonna listen to that on my commute to your show. Because that sounds really cool.
MW: It’s really nice, yeah.
KND: I feel like I haven’t been listening to any one thing that much. I made a playlist—so, like, when we tour generally, I don’t drive, because I have not driven much in my life. I’m from New York, and I got my driver’s license when I was like twenty-five, and I just literally have never driven without my mom. So normally, I don’t drive, but this tour, I started to take some driving shifts, and I made a playlist that is called “Driving,” and it’s really expansive. It’s a lot of different genres of music, and has a lot of different stuff on it? But I put some songs from the new Sufjan record on it, and there’s ABBA on it, and there’s Samia on it, and there’s a lot of different stuff going on. But I’m in kind of also like a spaghetti vibe, where I wanna hear a lot of different things.
What’s funny is that all three of those artists—there are vibes that are really congruent with Daisy the Great.
KND: Yeah, yeah, definitely.
That’s really awesome, actually. Next time I have to recommend your music to someone, I’m just gonna be like, “Do you like Sufjan, ABBA, and/or Samia?”
KND: Right, exactly.
“Because, there’s that, plus locked-in harmonies.”
KND: Yeah, you’re right.
“So what more can you ask for?”
MW: We gotta work on our ‘80s disco.
KND: Yeah.
You guys can get the suits with the flared legs and everything.
KND: Yeah, exactly. That’s the next vibe.
MW: The disco album.
You guys in your Waterloo era. I love it. Alright, I think I’ve kept you guys for a little longer than I said I was going to, but thank you so much for sitting and chatting with me.
KND: Thank you.
MW: Great to talk to you. See you tonight?
See you tonight! I’m so excited. Definitely gonna take you up on that setlist.
KND: We’re almost to Dallas, so—
MW: We’ll see you soon.
Yes, okay. You guys enjoy your coffee, and I’ll see you tonight!
MW: See you later.
KND: Bye!
