Music / Daniel Romano

Hunger is a dream you die in.

Daniel Tavis Romano (born 1985) is a Canadian musician from Welland, Ontario. He began his musical career as a member of the punk band Attack In Black, but is currently focused on making Country Music, having released several solo albums in the genre. The National Post calls his solo output "Country Music for People who Don't Like New Country Music".

Apart from his solo efforts, Dan has also provided instrument work, production, and cover art for fellow musicians, as well as going on tour with them as part of backing bands. The closest relationship he has established in this regard might be with Dallas Green of City and Colour, with whom he has gone on tours in support of the latter's albums Bring Me Your Love and Little Hell. Dan was also responsible for producing the cover art of Bring Me Your Love, and played a variety of instruments on both albums.

Discography:

• Daniel, Fred, and Julie (2009, with Fred Squire and Julie Doiron)
• Workin' For The Music Man (2010)
• Sleep Beneath The Willow (2011)
• Come Cry With Me (2013)
• If I've Only One Time Askin' (2015)
• Mosey (2016)
• Modern Pressure (2017)
• Human Touch (2018)
• Nerveless (2018)
• Finally Free (2018)
• Visions of the Higher Dream (2020)
• Dandelion (2020)
• White Flag (2020)
• Kissing the Foe (2021)

Beware, my good friend's a troper, roving around in our fair land:

• Album Title Drop: "Paul and Jon" does this for Sleep Beneath the Willow:
  Take a day of rest, won't you, my Paul
  Sleep beneath the willow, my dear Paul
  • The title track of If I've Only One Time Askin'.
  • Workin' For The Music Man has two title tracks ("Workin' For The Music Man" and "Workin' For The Music Man Pt. 2"), but only the first one incorporates the album title into its lyrics.
  So it's pick and pickin' hard, as long as you can stand
  Pickin' all the day, workin' for the music man
• Blatant Lies: "I'm Not Cryin' Over You", where the protagonist claims he is crying only because he needs to practice for an acting role, but where it becomes more and more obvious that he is, in fact, crying over the lover with whom he split up.
• Book Ends: Workin' For The Music Man begins and ends with a track titled after the album itself. The second is far more morose than the first.
• Break-Up Song: "Old Fires Die" is about a married couple whose love has cooled.
  She said lay it on the line, let me know what's on your mind
  Tell me darling, where did we go so wrong?
  What do you get, from loving me, why is our marriage in danger?
  'Cause I get more happiness from a bottle, and more love from a stranger...
• Call-Back: In the second verse of "Learning to Do Without Me", Dan uses the first line of "A New Love (Can Be Found)":
  She's learning the way, of the wild side of life
  Some stranger is with her, for the first time tonight.
• Con Man / Sinister Minister: Swindling preacher Joseph Arthur in his eponymous song.
• Deal with the Devil: Like many before him, Dan portrays the entry into the music business as being one of these in "Workin' For The Music Man".
• Death Song: "Let Me Sleep (At The End Of A Dream)"
• Did You Think I Can't Feel? / Mangst: "There Are Lines In My Face":
  Just because it doesn't seem to hurt me
  Just because I never speak my mind
  When I'm gone, you think I'm gone without you
  And then I leave all my love behind
  
  Just because I never want to face it
  Just because I never answer why
  When we're close, I feel that you're much closer
  And then my eyes can no longer cry
  
  But you'd never know by the sound of my voice
  You couldn't tell by the clothes that I wear
  But if you looked a little closer at me
  You'll see there are lines in my face that don't come from smiling
• Heterosexual Life-Partners: With Spencer Burton, one of his Attack In Black band members (who is also pursuing country/folk music as a solo act). They have each other's initials tattooed on their arms/wrists.
• Iconic Item: An acoustic guitar with his name inlaid in what appears to be mother-of-pearl on the fretboard. Some find it a tad garish/gauche, others consider it part of Dan's charm.
• The Last DJ: Dan's solo output is almost outdated in its style, and isn't quite geared for pop appeal. From the cover art to the slow-paced, whisky-soaked atmosphere, his albums are decidedly old-school. Dan himself has stated in interviews that the kind of country music he likes is a thing of the past, and he doesn't believe that bringing it back—at least to the mainstream—is possible.
• The Lost Lenore: Since he makes country music, it's only natural that a portion of his output is about this trope:
  • "She Was The World To Me" compounds this with an Unrequited Love apparently separated by socioeconomic class, ending with the protagonist wondering whether his love will mean anything in the hereafter:
    And how will it be with our souls,
    When we meet in that spirit land?
    What the human heart never knows,
    Will a spirit then understand?
    
    Or in some celestial form
    Will our sorrows repeated be?
    Will I still be nothing to her
    Though she is the world to me?
  • "Louise"
  • "He Lets Her Memory Go (Wild)" never specifies what happened to the woman, but it's strongly implied that she is dead.
  • "Nothing" and "Two Pillow Sleeper" are more ambiguous, but can certainly be interpreted this way.
  • "Old Canal"
• Middle Child Syndrome: "Middle Child".
• Mundane Made Awesome: "Old Fires Die" shows conclusively that country music might be the only genre that can make an accordion sound dignified and mournful.
• New Sound Album: Mosey represents a fairly significant departure from the four mostly old-school country sound albums that preceded it, having a broader palette of styles and stronger infusion of blues/rock. One significant song of note is "One Hundred Regrets Avenue", which is a Billy Joel-esque piano number, being the first song in Dan's solo discography that does not feature any guitar.
• Old Flame: "The One That Got Away (Came Back Today)" is about what happens when The One That Got Away comes back and turns the Second Love into "yesterday's news"/a third wheel.
• One-Man Song: Shady evangelist "Joseph Arthur", chicken farmer "Chicken Bill", and the broken, lovelorn "Two Word Joe" all get a song.
• The One That Got Away: The sad love songs that don't fall under The Lost Lenore tend to fall in this category instead:
  • "Lost (For As Long As I Live)"
  • "A New Love (Can Be Found)"
  • "So Free" is about this trope, but from a woman's perspective.
  • "Learning to Do Without Me"
• Renaissance Man / Hidden Depths: Apart from being quite capable on multiple instruments (guitar, pedal steel, bass, organ, piano, mandolin, and drums, to name a few), Dan is also a visual artist, having produced concert posters and album covers for himself, his bands, and musical projects of friends (such as the aforementioned cover art for Bring Me Your Love). Finally, he is also a skilled leather worker.
• Subverted Rhyme Every Occasion: "Helen's Restaurant"
• Take That! / Self-Deprecation: One clever line in "Time Forgot (To Change My Heart)" can be interpreted both ways. The song features a male protagonist whose fiancee was stolen away from him by his best friend. The new couple moved to the countryside, and had a baby girl who is reportedly very similar in appearance to the protagonist. The protagonist goes to the countryside and finds where they live, and after getting drunk, breaks into the home with ill intent, but has a change of heart and settles for kneeling by the sleeping baby's bedside, telling her to listen to her mother, "for [her] father's a disgrace": her acknowledged father, for being a false friend, and her biological father, either for being a fool and not discovering the infidelity before it was too late, or for being a Stalker with a Crush who can't let it go.

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And I still don't even have a cent...

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