Interview: Dana and Alden Renew Traditional Jazz Outlines with ‘Coyote, You’re My Star’

Dana and Alden’s sophomore album ‘Coyote, You’re My Star’ finds the TikTok comedian and organic farmer brother duo creating an approachable, distinctive acid jazz record based upon simple pleasures and whimsical storylines.

Stream: ‘Coyote, You’re My Star’ – Dana and Alden

We think young people are tired of commercialized music that is made to be mass consumed, and that what they really want is something deeper and more abstract, music with a message.

Dana and Alden McWayne have tasked themselves with the daunting mission of rejuvenating the infatuation of jazz music amongst young people.

Let’s face it – the extent to which the average 20-something year old is excited about Coltrane, Ellington, Davis, etc. is rather slim (but not without exception, of course). However, Dana and Alden are striving to change that narrative with their June 21, 2024 release of sophomore album, Coyote, You’re My Star.

And then once you find out that the brother duo – Dana, an organic farmer in North Carolina and Alden, a TikTok comedian (@Gucci-Pineapple) – are behind such tunes, you can’t help but consider the influence the duo’s “unconventional intertwinement” can have on a genre that was already founded upon unorthodox principles: innovation, experiment, and creative complexity.

And perhaps such unconventional intertwinement is the exact formula Dana and Alden drew up to launch a grassroots campaign touting the beauty of a seemingly lost world of music amongst Gen-Z’ers.

But unconventionalism was always a motif throughout the lives of the McWayne brothers. Growing up in Eugene, Oregon and initially taking after soccer and basketball, jazz music was never on the forefront of the minds of the duo, who would trade court time for music practice any day. It wasn’t until high school that Alden took to the drums while Dana took to the saxophone, revealing a whole new world of creative possibility.

College split the brothers apart, completing their respective degrees on opposite sides of the country. However, the flame to create and record outweighed the geographical difficulty, and the pandemic eventually brought the two back home to Eugene, where their first EP “Brothers” was created and shared – a nod to their late mentor Kenny Reed, a local pioneer of the jazz scene in Eugene.

Momentum carried the duo to create their first full project Quiet Music for Young People (2023), which instantly found itself at the forefront of acid and avant-garde jazz playlists, with the notable help of tracks “Let’s Go to Trader Joes” and “Dragonfly” reaching viral success, combining for over half a million user-generated videos on TikTok and Instagram combined.

Perhaps left up to fate, a studio session in Los Angeles toward the end of 2023 provided a creative spark for the duo to embark upon a new project, titled Coyote, You’re My Star – inspired by the realities of nature providing a few howling coyotes to make their presence known outside the studio, creating both sonic and thematic inspiration for a new project that even features the guest howls.

“I don’t think people ever expected a brother duo consisting of a TikTok comedian and an organic farmer to make Acid Jazz,”  Alden McWayne said in a press release. “We never expected coyotes to start howling outside of our studio, instantly becoming the muse of the first song off the album. After that, we composed songs about everything that makes us feel alive: Our mom’s garden, Anthony Bourdain, and frozen chocolate bananas. We sought out to make a Jazz album that sounded new and old at the same time.”

The beauty of this project lies within the free flowing nature of topic, feeling and expression, creating atmospheric feeling based off of more concrete topics (frozen chocolate bananas appeared difficult to base a jazz track off of in my mind, but leave it to the whimsicality of the McWaynes to pull it off).

“We created, free of attachment to any outcome, and are so excited with the result,” Alden McWayne shares. “We made this record full of the same wonder we felt that night in the coyote’s yowls.”

Joining the brother duo for this project is Salim Charvet, a saxophonist and key contributor throughout the record, with his creativity being featured on “Bourdain,” a tribute to his admiration for the notable influence Anthony Bourdain had in the eyes of travel, writing and culture. Also joining this project are Eli Torgersen on guitar and Andrew Mitchell on bass.

In regards to the overall atmosphere of the record, it’s incredibly approachable – fresh, unique, and just flat out cool.

There’s a diversity of influence and sound, resulting in a little something for everyone; “Frigate Bay” has a distinct reggae influence, “Family Garden” features the beautiful vocals of Melanie Charles, “You Can Do Anything” has almost a 90’s hip hop undertone – all things that aren’t necessarily standard for your typical jazz record, but again, the mission here is to make jazz for young people!

Equal parts light and entrancing, there’s a back-and-forth between the more playful spin on acid jazz (take “Ice Cream Song,” for example) and the hypnotic droning of synth and wallowing saxophone cries, best featured in “You Can do Anything” and “Popular Front.” Dana and Alden do an incredible job making this record friendly and welcoming for the novice jazz enjoyer, bouncing between spunky and traditional, creating a truly unique listening experience.

We feel that our responsibility as artists is to talk about what’s going on in the world, and the moment we stop doing that, we stop being artists. We want to use our music to make young people realize that we don’t have to accept this reality that has been forced upon us.

A testament to creativity and experimentation, Coyote, You’re My Star nods to the greats through influence, but is inherently unique to itself.

An incredibly welcoming entry into the gates of jazz music, it’s both exciting and refreshing to hear an acid jazz project created by young people, ultimately for young people.

Atwood Magazine sat down with the McWayne Brothers and contributor Salim Charvet to further discuss inspiration, the realities of creating jazz as young people, and the dichotomy of a TikTok comedian and organic farmer making music together.

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:: stream/purchase Coyote, You’re My Star here ::

:: connect with Dana and Alden here ::

Stream: ‘Coyote, You’re My Star’ – Dana and Alden

A CONVERSATION WITH DANA AND ALDEN

Alden McWayne: It kinda just happened. We started posting bedroom jams to Tik Tok covering DOOM and Earl Sweatshirt and then young people began to gravitate to the sound. People our age have grown up listening to such quantized, perfected pop music that when we hear something out of the box it really is refreshing to the ears.

Dana McWayne: When we were in middle school our dad saw an ad in the local paper for a Sunday jazz jam run by a drummer named Kenny Reed who was from Brooklyn but had ended up in our small town. We could barely play at that point but Kenny saw us in the back row with our instruments hidden under our seats and called us up to play. He became Alden’s first drum teacher and for the next 10 years he took us under his wing and we played several nights a week with his band around town. He taught us the jazz tradition, taught us to improvise, taught us to play with no mercy and going to his jam every Sunday was like church for us.

When we hit high school we started listening to a lot of hip hop and became obsessed especially with Madlib, J Dilla, Karriem Riggins and Georgia Ann Muldrow. We realized we were hearing samples of all of the jazz songs that we had been playing for so many years. Specifically Madlib and J Dilla’s sample catalogs served as huge inspiration because they were pulling from such a wide variety of styles and from many obscure artists. Our goal became to put out records that someday would be sampled and turned into something new. There’s something timeless about records that can be sampled decades later, they have such strong emotion that people from any decade can relate. We quickly found that a lot of young people had ears for our music as a result of growing up listening to sample-based music. We think young people are tired of commercialized music that is made to be mass consumed, and that what they really want is something deeper and more abstract, music with a message. This is what Jazz or Black American Music has been from the start, and our goal is to respect and uphold the tradition while creating something that’s unique to us.

Alden: Dana and I were stuck together during the pandemic and we stopped taking music so seriously. We had both grown up practicing to be serious technical jazz musicians and during the pandemic we let go of making music to impress other musicians and started just making music that was enjoyable to us.

Dana: I think both of us wanted to start releasing music and we have so much trust in each other as brothers that we knew if we made something together it would be good. During the pandemic every evening I would sit down at the piano and start playing and once I had found something I liked I would yell for Alden to come play drums. He would always know exactly what to play over what I had made, like we had the same ears for the music. After a couple months of this we realized how much music we had made and we remembered that we had always had the dream of touring and making music together. The pandemic made us ask the same question as many other people: “If not now, when??” so we decided we wouldn’t wait any longer to pursue our dream together.

We think young people are tired of commercialized music that is made to be mass consumed, and that what they really want is something deeper and more abstract, music with a message.

Alden: We have found an interesting middle ground in our musical tastes. Dana is more into acid Jazz, Italian film scores and Brazilian music while I’m more into indie rock like Alex G and Big Thief. I think we find a curious compromise between those two sounds.

Dana: When we started I was more of the leader as the older brother because for many years Alden had been the drummer in bands that I had led. But as time went on Alden found his confidence and put his sound into the music so now neither of us is really the leader. We trade off taking charge whenever one of us hears something that could happen in the music.

Alden: We spent four days locked in a studio together drinking La Croixs and we all had colds. Each day we would arrive at Solomonophonic’s studio at noon and leave at 2am. We’d go back to Eli’s house and all pass out on his floor and then wake up, make breakfast together and do it again. Jared (Solomonophonic) really created a space for us to just throw as much paint at the wall as possible.

Dana: This record was really about capturing the sound of the band that we found on our last tour as openers. We’ve got Eli Torgersen on guitar, Andrew Mitchell on bass and Salim Charvet on sax and keys and these guys have just become like family to us. We wanted to see what would happen if we locked ourselves in the studio with limited time to create an album. In the end the low budget and time limitations helped us to not overthink shit and we’re proud of what we made.

Salim Charvet: Dana and Alden asked me if I wanted to write a song for the band and I was just sitting in my living room with a keyboard watching an episode of no reservation in Brazil, thinking about the sound of the band and the tune came like that naturally. I was also listening to this Brazilian album a lot at the time: “Mudei de Ideia” by Antonio Carlos e Jocafi, so you can definitely hear the influence in the song. I’ve always liked Bourdain a lot and I always regret that I’ll never get to meet him, so I felt like dedicating the tune to him.

Alden: Our bassist Andrew Mitchell was in his grandparents’ house in St. Kitts and made a reggae demo using instruments from his childhood.

Alden: Benny took a chance on us and it was the best two weeks. Every night we were able to watch and learn from his band how to entertain a crowd.

Dana: We loved playing as openers because every night was a challenge to win over a crowd that for the most part had no idea who we were. Night after night people reacted to what we were playing, and it made us realize that we had something good going on.

Alden: Oregon really instilled a love for the Grateful Dead in us but also growing up in such a counter-culture place like Eugene gave us permission to be weird and take creative risks in our music.

Alden: “Trader Joe’s,” I thought, had viral potential, but I never imagined “Dragonfly” would take off the way it has!

Dana: I never would have guessed he would become a famous comedian. For years he was my shy little brother who was always on the sidelines at all my soccer games, eating bagels and reading Calvin and Hobbes. But then when he was in middle school I discovered his burner instagram account where he was making the crudest, raunchy jokes I’ve ever heard come out of a middle schooler’s mouth. At first it scared me because I felt like I didn’t even know my little brother anymore – who was this kid?? But I quickly became one of his biggest fans. I’m not really online but I do have TikTok for the sole purpose of watching my brother’s videos.

Salim: To me people tend to sacralize the word “ jazz” and its culture a bit too much, and I was like that too before I think, only allowing myself to play specific styles with specific people in specific venues and refusing to play other styles with other people. People think of it as elite music that’s only accessible to certain people but that’s not what it’s supposed to be. There shouldn’t be any imposter syndrome or anything like that, we’re just making honest music that we find beautiful and hope people enjoy and we try to put the least amount of ego into it.

Alden: Think about loving your family, yourself, and your life.

Dana: Our message to young people is to tune back into life and take up political struggle. The state of the world right now can make you want to numb yourself and distract yourself with technology and drugs from what’s really going on. Both of us did it for a long time too when we had lost hope. It may feel safer to tune everything out but if you don’t let yourself feel the bad stuff you won’t feel the good stuff either. We feel that our responsibility as artists is to talk about what’s going on in the world, and the moment we stop doing that, we stop being artists. We want to use our music to make young people realize that we don’t have to accept this reality that has been forced upon us.

Our message to young people is to tune back into life and take up political struggle… It may feel safer to tune everything out but if you don’t let yourself feel the bad stuff, you won’t feel the good stuff either.

Alden: I want to play music with Dana and the band and travel the world. We’re already hungry to make another album!

Dana: I want to start writing film scores like my hero Piero Umiliani did and of course make as many records as possible with Alden and the band.

Alden: I was listening to a Marcos Valle vinyl this morning.

Salim: I was listening to Milton Nascimento’s “Nada Sera Como Antes (acoustico EP)”

Dana: Piero Umiliani, Donald Byrd, Roy Ayers, Wayne Shorter and Weather Report, Azymuth, Tim Maia, Hermeto Pascoal, Madlib, Charif Megarbane AKA Cosmic Analog Ensemble.

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:: stream/purchase Coyote, You’re My Star here ::

:: connect with Dana and Alden here ::

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