Daniel Davies on Touring as a Kid, Working With John Carpenter, and Exploring the Technological Unknown

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When I interviewed John Carpenter a few months ago, it was also mentioned to me that his godson and longtime collaborator Daniel Davies was also prepping a solo album, Ghost of the Heart—his first record of solo material for Sacred Bones since 2020's Signals—and after speaking to John a few times now, I jumped at the opportunity to talk to one of his closest collaborators. I appreciated Daniel's insights across his considerable career, and I'm sure you will too:

You've been making music for a long time professionally, dating back from your playing in Year Long Disaster. Reflect on that for me.
Pretty much from the inception of that band, it was just touring all the time—opening for different bands like the Cult, Foo Fighters, and Mötörhead, and just grinding it out on the road. Over time, that could be rough, living road life all the time. It wasn't really working for me anymore, so I wanted to make a change in my career. I was thinking about my love of movies and music, and I figured I should turn my focus towards composing from there.

Tell me more about life on the road. You got a little taste of that at an early age, after being on tour with your father.
Yeah, I mean, I was on the road with my dad from two weeks after I was born until I had to go to school.

What was that like?
It was a blur. You're just always in a different place. As a kid, you don't really understand what's happening that much when you're that young. It's an unusual experience, to travel all the time—and, you know, it's not necessarily real life. My main memory was that the the back of the bus had this big window. When you're a kid, everything seems so big. They even had a full-sized video game [cabinet] in the back. Everyone was so nice and fun, and there were some good times there, but I was really young, and I didn't understand what goes into touring until I was older. When you're not the person doing it, it's not work for you. I grew up in England, so I remember going to New York and noticing how smooth all the sidewalks were—stuff like that.

Tell me more about the ups and downs of touring regularly. Even when I've gone on tour with bands for a story, I've been like, "I'm not even performing, and I find this exhausting."
When you're a big band, it's a lot different than when you're in a van. The music part is the fun part—the work part is driving seven hours that day, and then maybe sometimes you don't even make the gig because there's a snowstorm and you're stuck in a motel outside of Denver and then you just got to wait 'till they open the road again. Then, you have a great show, and it's worth—or, it was a shit show, and it doesn't feel worth it. It's just kind of part of it, you know? I've had the experience of van touring and sleeping on the floor, as well as doing bigger shows being in a bus. It definitely changes how you play, your touring chops. Just sitting in a studio it's just different. You approach and think about it differently.

What was it like when you started touring with John and Cody?
It was amazing. We didn't ever think that was going to be something...when we were approached to do that, John was like, "Okay, well, you toured, so what are we going to do?" A lot of the score work that John has done, and that we do together, is pretty riff-based. Everything has like a rock feel, so putting the band together for that kind of setup—how can we perform it where it's not really relying on computers and it's all performed live—you want to keep that that kind of feel.

When you contributed guitar to John's score for Vampires, that was your first time working with him in that capacity.
I worked at the studio, answering the phones. They were working on the album for the movie, and they said, "Can you go get your guitar and pedal board and come and play on this?" The session assistant drove me home, I got my stuff, and came back. They were like, "Okay, here's the track, you can play along to it." They recorded the practice and kept it, and then that was it. When I started playing guitar, I wanted to focus on being in a band, stuff like that. I didn't fully understand what composing was at that time. I was still in high school and not really thinking about much outside of that.

Tell me about the differences, as you see it, between your past time in bands and working with John and Cody.
When you put out a soundtrack for a movie, you don't see the audience. John directs a film and puts it out, and then that's it. You're at home and the movie and music is out there. But when you put out music and play it, the audience is there and you're getting the energy back at you. I don't think that John had fully experienced that, and as we experienced that all together, it was amazing, you know? So the three of us have our own language now. We had it then as kids, but then it's just evolved.

I've interviewed John a few times now, and every time I speak to him I'm very struck by the warmth that he has for his relationship with you and Cody. Tell me more about that. When did you and Cody start playing music together?
It must've been in high school. I think he started playing music before me. He's a little bit younger than me.  He was just so proficient so early, so soon. When I started playing music, when you see someone that's good, you want to be better—at least, I do. I'm a curious person, so if John is doing something, I say, "What is that? What are you working on? How do you do that?" If Cody was learning something in guitar, he showed me. I had a high school band, and he was playing drums in that band. John set an environment for us as kids where he wanted us to do our best. He just lets everyone flourish, you know?

Listening to your new record, there's a few sonic connections to your recent soundtrack and scoring work, as well as your work with John and Cody. Tell me about this record in the greater context of your career as a musician.
Working on synth scores means that I've learned how to use them over the last 10 years, and I really fell in love with them in addition to guitar experimentation. I wanted to see how I could use all that outside of film scores. I'd been working on some songs here or there, but not really thinking I was going to do that. I'd played a couple of demos to John Spiker, who helps me, mix our soundtrack work and the Lost Themes albums. He was like, "Yeah, let's just make a record."

Working with John and Cody influenced my songwriting because working with them is very immediate. You see the image, and it guides you on what to do. But in this case, you have a seed of an idea and instead of judging it and letting it go, you write it, until you have a song, you know? Once I have an idea that I like, then I'll experiment on how to put the instrumentation.

This record also fits in really nicely with the Sacred Bones roster in general, which obviously releases a pretty diverse slate to begin with. Listeners typically come to them for darker, more complex takes on a lot of different types of music, including rock music. Tell me about working with the label. It seems like it's been a really fruitful partnership.
It just developed naturally. [Label founder Caleb Bratton] and I have just become friends over the years. I'll say to him, "I want to try this," and he's like, "Just send it on over." There isn't major thought behind it. It's all based on feel. We've become close over time, and they do great work. I love their perspective and what they want to put out there, and we're aligned that way.

Have there been any artists that you've discovered on the label, as kind of a result of being a part of it, so to speak? 
Hilary Woods. I like Lathe of Heaven. Molchat Doma are great—I'm doing the Atmos mixes for their album, so that's cool. They're like a Russian Depeche Mode.
It's a far out sound.

Tell me more about mixing—what goes into that, and what it requires of you as a musician that's different.
I got really into it over the last year or so. Sometimes I love mixing, and sometimes I hate it. When you're composing, you write the music, you engineer, and you mix. Sometimes, by the end, you can be a little bit burnt out. I might not know what I'm hearing anymore and need some fresh ears to help. With Ghost of the Heart, I was thinking, "I want to learn how to do Atmos," and it's all integrated into Logic now. I just like to learn what's out there as technology changes. When I was younger, I was slightly against technology a little bit, but I don't think that way now. I want to know what's happening, you know? That's the best thing about music—it's ever-changing and always evolving.