New Release – Waltz Once More by Dany Horovitz
Dany Horovitz is a Canadian singer-songwriter, known for delighting audiences with his memorable melodies and beautiful storytelling through vivid lyrics. Each of the singles off of Dany’s debut album ‘Free Times’, received radio play across Canada, the United States, Europe, and Australia. Dany’s music is infused with modern takes on familiar sounds: melodic guitar and piano chords, popping bass licks, and toe-tapping percussion. His lyrics are stories of love, loss, and life, drawing inspiration from ancient poets, modern philosophers, and personal experiences.
His new single ‘Waltz Once More’ is out 6th October. A pre-save is available here.
What inspired you to write this song?
“It was a combination of things. I had not written a song in a while so I wanted to try and take a different approach to songwriting to re-invigorate me. So I wanted to write a Waltz, which I am not sure that I had consciously done up to that point. I also had this strange idea of taking some old poetry that was originally intended to be about mortality and death and turn it on its head, so that they came out as a love song. For the life of me I couldn’t tell you why I found that interesting but I did. So I started with this famous speech from Shakespeare’s Henry V, which begins, “once more unto the breach, dear friends”. It is a rallying cry, intended to rouse the passions of the soldiers who are tired. The risk is death and the reward is eternal glory. Anyway, I thought that the idea of going into battle “once more” could be turned on its head to mean “expose your heart to love once more” where the risk is getting hurt again and the reward is an everlasting love. The stakes are obviously lower in my song than for Henry V and his soldiers but I felt like my new story worked, at least for one verse. Then I went searching for, and found a few other speeches that could be turned on their heads in a similar way, from Hamlet and MacBeth, and I added in a few musical breaks plus a little soft ending of “dadadas” and that’s how I wrote the song. It was a lot more fun to write than I’m probably making it seem.”
Do the lyrics have special meaning to you?
“I always like being able to work in little nods to poems or literature that I love, but probably never quite as obviously as in this one. So that’s something I enjoy. Also, I like that the ultimate message of the song is, even if you have been hurt before you should try and love again because it is worth it when you find the right person. Most of the last few songs I’ve released have been pretty dark lyrically so it’s nice to be able to have just a pure “nice” song out there every now again.”
How is this release different from your previous releases
“I am very grateful to Spotify For Artists’ “Noteable” program, where they offer independent musicians a free studio day. There is a studio here in Toronto, Noble Street Studios, that is part of the program. Normally I record the songs in my usual studio, Dreamhouse Studios. So the first thing that’s different is that this song was recorded in a different place, and largely over a single day. The second thing is that there were really just two of us working on the song. Rather than use my whole team, ‘Waltz Once More’ was recorded just with myself and Kara MacKinlay, an engineer and harmony expert who has been a part of my team for a while but who had yet to produce any of my songs. So now she was playing the role of producer, engineer, and mixer. She also plays the bass and violin on the song. What’s great is that with her experience as an engineer she was really able to get the best of me out of my guitar and harmonica, and as a harmony expert she was able to get the best out of my vocals too. In the end, this song really fits into my album ‘Phanerorhyme’, and sounds like we recorded it alongside everything else, even though the recording process was totally different.”
What is your favourite memory of recording?
“Two things, really. The first is that I was able to record with my grandfather’s harmonica. It is this large, Goliath harmonica, that sounds a bit like an accordion when it’s played. To use it, you’ve got to have the right kind of song in the right kind of key. What we ended up doing was using both my normal Marine Band harmonica, and also his Goliath. So, wherever you hear the “accordion” sound that’s actually a harmonica. Having that sound on one of my records was really special.”
“And then the other great memory is the fact that I was playing the main guitar part on this song, which was the first time I had done that. I’ve done it a little bit since then, but normally I use professional studio musicians because they can play anything better, in a shorter amount of time. But I set the challenge for myself, which is really more about confidence than anything else, and since then I’ve been more involved on studio recordings too.”
