All You Need Is Time: A world of multimedia and ponder with Daisy the Great

by Alexia Mihaila

RARE: Alexia Mihaila; DTG: Daisy the Great; MINA: Mina Walker; KELLEY: Kelley Dugan

Daisy the Great is an American indie pop band fronted by singer-songwriters Kelley Dugan and Mina Walker. They gained recognition with their debut single "The Record Player Song", which recently went RIAA gold. We sat down with them before their London show to discuss their songwriting and their latest album ‘All You Need is Time’. Read about Kelley and Mina’s insights into how they build and navigate the multi-faceted artistic world of Daisy the Great.

RARE: Kelley, you grew up with Opera, while Mina, you grew up in New Orleans, in the jazz scene. How has that influenced your songwriting as a duo?  

MINA: They are all very emotional. Even though we don’t write operettas or anything like that, I think it’s in our bones now that the music we were first introduced to was so vocally driven.

RARE: Do you usually come up with the lyrics or melody first?

KELLEY: I definitely prefer to have lyrics first. A lot of the time I want the words to inform the melody and I’ve been in writing sessions before where I felt trapped by the melody.

MINA: For me a lot of times I’ll come up with a phrase. I would write a journal entry and sing it until I find a melody that works well with those words. Other times I'm on a walk, or in the shower and I’ll just be making sounds. The melody can inform the words a lot of the time when some gibberish becomes a really cool phrase. Maybe come up with something that you don't even fully understand, like living in your subconscious.

KELLEY: The other thing that's funny with us is that when we’re writing together, one of us will be singing in full nonsense and then the other would hear some lyrics. It’s a thing I’ve never done until I’ve known you.

RARE: It’s nice to see the connection between you two since your earlier works are very vocal and choral. Kelly, you mentioned how one of the most beautiful parts of songwriting is to share your questions with the world and a lot of songs feature the pain of growing up. How do you know which events from your life you want to explore in your songs?

KELLEY: A lot of our songs as we're getting older still feel like they're about growing up, even though we are, you know, grown up. I think it's just about continuing to get to know yourself and explore things that you're wondering about yourself, or your place in the world. I don't think there's a time limit on it. A lot of our songwriting is about time and that just naturally brings up things from the past like easter eggs.

RARE: Speaking of easter eggs, the music on the last album ‘All You Need is Time’ features elements of glitter, diamonds, and gold. What would you say are some of DTG’s motifs?

KELLEY: Definitely time.

MINA: Brains.

KELLEY: We talk about our brains a lot. Sleep…

MINA: We talk about not being able to sleep, a lot.

KELLEY: There is a sense of playfulness that feels like a motif even if it’s a little less overt. A lot of our writing will also pair two things together, one of them might be more playful, and then the other side more honest and grounded. It’s just a style that we like to use as a way to get our meaning across.

RARE: Are there any songs from other musicians or bands that you wish you would have written as DTG?

KELLEY: Definitely. I wish I had written ‘Anything’ by Adrianne Lenker or ‘Love Ridden’ by Fiona Apple.

MINA: Yeah, I wish I wrote like every Fiona Apple song. It's hard to say the exact songs, but I do find times when I'm listening to music and it feels like a song that came out of my brain, but better.

RARE: In the past you've covered ‘Scarborough Fair’ by Simon & Garfunkel. Have you considered doing any other covers?

MINA: Well, we are releasing a cover of a Sleigh Bells’ song called ‘Rill Rill’. We've performed other covers as well, and haven't recorded them, but we prepared a cover of ‘Shut up Kiss Me’ by Angel Olson, ‘Night Shift’ by Lucy Dacus, and ‘Love Fool’ by the Cardigans. I think those are all songs that we wish we wrote.

RARE: Mina, you were also previously involved in Subtle Pride as well as Waif magazine, and both of you are also very visual with your art. How do you approach collaborations between the projects you're a part of?

MINA: Subtle Pride actually started before Daisy, while I was in college. And I think that, like through that, I kind ofstarted to realize that I wanted to make music. As multi-media artists, I like to create and that's how I exist in everything I'm a part of. We also came from an acting background so we try to make a whole visual experience, in addition to the sonic experience of Daisy the Great. As far as the other projects go, everything informs each other. I get inspired by my friends. I feel like my friends are like the most talented people I know. When I have the opportunity to collaborate with them, I usually take it.

RARE: Speaking of multimedia, I love your music videos!  How has having bigger productions changed how you explore your creative ideas?

KELLEY: When we first started we had no budget at all. So we would have to ask a lot of friends to help us. Even if all we had was one prop, one room, and one person, we were in a situation where we really had to come up with the one good thought that was a clear metaphor or visual and run with it. It's been interesting working since we have a record deal. 

MINA: Actually, more money ends up feeling like less money. Once you have a bigger budget, you start to think that you can do whatever you want, but I always find that there are more limitations. The hack is to come up with the cheapest idea, and then have wiggle room.

RARE: Now, speaking of your latest singles, ‘Looking You Up’ has very similar themes of unrequited love as in ‘Tell Me Have You Been Dancing’. What would you say was different in the writing process of these two songs?

MINA: ‘Tell Me Have You Been Dancing’, I just wrote one day in the shower. So the writing process of that was like me thinking about somebody that I was missing. Looking You Up is about the beginning of something, like the full access you have to that person. The first one is about a person that doesn't exist on the Internet and then the latter is like having a crush on someone who extremely exists on the Internet, but it was really fun to write. Me and Kelly wrote it together with this writer, Casey.

KELLEY: Casey Kalmenson.

MINA: Casey's really good and her music project is called Little Monarch. We wrote it one day in LA. We wanted for it to be something you're frustrated about, chanted in a fun way, like “I’m being such a clown right now being absolutely obsessed with someone that I barely know”.

RARE: And your most recent single ‘Tough Kid’. You wrote it a long time ago. Why did you decide to release it now?

KELLEY: We decided to hold on to it. I think part of it was that it was an older song and there are a ton of old songs that have just disappeared along the way that we don't play anymore. I think the issue with releasing old music is, a lot of the time you feel like you yourself have grown out of that phase, but this one kind of came back around and felt really impactful on us again. It’s almost as a little gift from our younger versions of us.

RARE: Lastly, I’ve got some rapid-fire questions. Favorite tour snack?

MINA: At the gas stations in America, they have these bags of pickle slices and they're called “Dilly Bites”.

KELLEY: I also love pickles and Babybel cheeses. But most of the time I'll get a nice coffee and pickles, which really sounds horrific. But in the moment it's so nice. 

RARE: What about your favourite spot in New York City?

MINA:  I really like the cemetery behind my house. There's a walk across a bridge in Long Island City. I like to go walk around and sing in the cemetery because nobody's there. It's just a nice place for solitude.

KELLEY: There's a pond, and there's also a reservoir, and I like both of them in Central Park or the Balto's dog statue. I grew up in New York, so I feel like my favourite things are child things. It's funny cause I recently walked by the Balto statue again, and in my like child mind it was up on this big hill, and when I just walked by it's literally like a foot.

RARE: Favorite time of the day or place to write?

KELLEY: In the afternoon on a walk, and sometimes all right, kind of like feverishly late at night. I think I write better songs while I'm walking, just so I feel like I need a little bit of aliveness.

MINA: I'm the same. I like to go on walks without my phone, which is hard when I'm writing because I forget everything that I am coming up with but I bring a little, like, notebook that fits in my pocket, and I'll walk around. 

RARE: What would you say are the top three biggest influences on Daisy the Great?

MINA: For me at least, books. I get very inspired by writers like Octavia Butler, Patty Smith, and Fiona Apple, who I think have a big influence on the both of us. 

RARE: Also you just finished your US Tour. This is your first out-of-the-country tour, right?

KELLEY: It's awesome. I didn't know what to expect. You see, people being like “Oh, come to London, come to whatever” and I hope they show up at the show. So far, we've just been totally blown away. In Vienna, for example, like right when we started we had people singing along right away.