Q: Can you tell us a bit about yourself and how your childhood impacted your musical direction?
A: I’m a musician, author, and professional engineer. I’ve released three albums of original music and a string of singles. I’ve also written five business novels and a book of poems.
My producer, David Logan, and I made a record together a long time ago, when we were young and foolish. The record went nowhere and David & I went off separately to seek their respective fortunes. I launched a management consulting company, raised a family and traveled the world helping companies improve. David went to California and became a big-time music producer in film and TV. But we never forgot our work together or our friendship.
I kept writing songs and poems, usually in hotels and bars around the world, late at night, as a way of recording my experience for my family. Music and song writing were my passion and avocation. I never expected my songs would be produced.
During the 2020 pandemic, I began to write new songs and to polish my older songs. What began as a trickle, turned into a torrent of music. Encouraged by the quality of the songs, I decided to look up my old friend, who was now living in Rome and teaching composition at Santa Cecilia Music Academy.
After twenty-five years, David & I began to work together again. We put together a band comprising the best young players in Rome. Our goal was to create the kind of music we love, and to tell my family’s story. Shame on the Sun is our third album and is available on all the on-line stores.
My childhood was difficult. My parents were ‘Displaced Persons’ (DP) – refugees who had fled war, poverty and extremism – and suffered from poverty & mental illness. Compassionate strangers helped me come to terms with all of it, andI have deep respect for the healing arts. I learned that laughter & forgetting are the pathway to forgiveness.
I want my songs to reflect the tragedy & loneliness of life, as well as, the comedy and high spirits. I see music in terms of color – sun and moon colors. In a given album, sun colours may predominate – but moon colours put them in context, and vice-versa.
Q: How are you planning on growing your fan base and sharing your music with the world? What message do you have for anyone who is about to discover “Pascal Dennis”?
A: We’ll keep releasing insanely great albums and singles – no compromise, no shortcuts. And we’ll fill our channels (YouTube, Facebook, IG etc.) with remarkable audio & video content so that our listeners can find us easily.We will not compromise on quality or ‘dumb down’ our songs in any way. I write in the alt and retro styles I love – Country, R & B, Jazz, Pop and Latin. If a given song is an eight-minute rock opera – like ‘Cabaret Casino Waterloo (NYC 1981)‘ about New York City at the bottom – so be it. If it’s a big band rave like ‘Toronto, Toronto‘, or fast bossa nova like ‘Angel in the Snow‘ – that’s how we’ll record it. The pundits say people nowadays have short attention spans, and can’t handle depth. They say you have to give people very short songs. I don’t care what the pundits say. We want to create an entrancing experience for our listeners. I want to tell stories that make people laugh from the belly or feel cathartic sorrow at their core.
Q: Who is the most inspiring artist for you right now? And where do you find inspiration for making music?
A: My biggest contemporary influences are Brian Wilson, Paul McCartney and Ron Sexsmith. I also love the great jazz & bossa nova composers like George Gershwin, Victor Young, Hoagy Carmichael, and Antonio Carlos Jobim
I find inspiration all around me. In the words of the Greek poet, George Seferis, ‘…the song is everywhere…’, like a dolphin swimming with your little sailboat. I feel blessed to be able to write & record with an outstanding producer like David Logan, and the remarkable Crazy Angels band.
Q: Can you tell us about the story or message behind the album, “Shame on the Sun.”?
A: Shame on the Sun is a happy album presented in ‘sun colors’ with indigo, blue and deep green undertones. Joyful, droll songs like ‘Tricky Dick Forever’, ‘Iggy, Spike & Lester (My Interstellar Band)’, ‘COVID in the Doghouse Blues’ and ‘Tree of Life (/bahrain’, are offset with bittersweet songs like ‘Shame on the Sun’, ‘Elliott Bay’, and ‘Vancouver Time’.
The title track is a meditation on the fleeting nature of happiness and the bittersweet realities of life.
Q: How would you describe your sound in one word for potential listeners?
A: Alt – if I could add more, I would say Retro with a modern twist.
Q: Did you face any challenges while writing or recording “Shame on the Sun”?
A: The writing, arranging and recording flowed beautifully. David Logan and I have developed an effective, relaxed process over the years. We meet every Friday morning at a visual board that shows the status of each song. Everybody knows what to focus on and we communicate in real time. We have a lot of fun, combined with high quality & productivity.
Q: What is the message of your music? And what are your goals as an artist?
A: I want to tell the remarkable stories I know – stories of laughter and forgetting, of high comedy and droll pratfalls. I want to tell my family’s story – desperately poor & disadvantaged migrants who somehow survived and built a life for themselves. I want to share what I have learned about how to live a good life – laughter, forgiveness, passionate engagement, soaring ideals and droll acceptance, and most important of all, mercy and kindness.
Q: Who is your dream artist to collaborate with? (dead or alive)
A: Paul McCartney. I was always a ‘John Lennon guy’, but have come to appreciate McCartney’s musical genius, optimism, energy, resilience and decency. Brian Wilson, would be a close second, and for many of the same reasons.
Q: What is your advice for people interested in pursuing music as a career or for those trying to enter the industry?
A: It has always been difficult for artists, but in my view, we are now at rock bottom. Big Tech gets all the value and is terribly unfair to artists. (In fact, some people believe we are in the midst of a massive theft of intellectual property). My advice to young musicians, therefore, is to understand the terrain and prepare in advance. In my case, that means having a second career so that I could support my family, and have the freedom to write and record my music the way I feel it. Become a lawyer, carpenter, engineer (like me) – something that’s fun and remunerative – and gives you the freedom you need as an artist.It’s essential that artists become subversive in this way, and keep our stories alive. A society without music, without the arts and the stories they tell, is a society without a sould. We have to keep the flame alive until this long dark winter passes.
Q: If you could go back in time and give a younger you some words of wisdom, what would they be?
A: Find the comedy, and accept the absurd in life – it was ever thus. Laughter and forgetting are the key to enjoying life.
Be kind, gentle and merciful. People are doing the best they can.
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