25-year-old North Carolina songwriter Dane Page grew up wanting to be a lead guitarist. He had no interest in singing or writing songs until about halfway through college when he fell into a rabbit hole of classic literature. Hemingway led to Twain, who led to Steinbeck and to Vonnegut. Spending time surrounded by words, and by friends who were writers, sparked an interest in writing and singing songs.
The songs on Dane Page’s first full-length album, “Selma,” are rooted in classic songwriting, but are set in a varied, imaginative soundscape. This is folk music with an adventurous spirit and without any preconceived notions about what folk music should sound like.
On this album I hear an interesting juxtaposition between old school songwriting and some unusual sonic soundscapes. When “Guthrie Skies” starts, you’ve got some synth sounds going on, but it’s not like the synth sounds are an add-on. They’re driving the song instrumentally. Is that something you anticipated when you wrote the song or is it something that you developed in the studio?
“Guthrie Skies” started out as an old-fashioned train song. I went into the studio with my producer (Jacob Early) and we talked about the direction of the album and what I wanted. If you listen to “City to City,” the last EP, it’s pretty straightforward Americana. But with this album I was more into textures. I don’t think of different instruments so much as different textures. I wanted to incorporate some of these textures that I love from music I was listening to while I was writing these songs. That was Bon Iver. His newest record was really big for me.
“Guthrie Skies” was originally a straight-up “Billy Joel” piano ballad. So, we brought a piano in the studio to try some things out, a midi piano kind of thing, and we were just looking through some synth and piano sounds and we found the sound that was close to the sound we used for the record.
And I just started with (he sings the opening synth part) and we were both like “whoa, that’s interesting.” So, we looped that a couple times and we just started playing the progression over it, and it just fit. It was just this really cool, weird thing that would drive the song, and that is not a guitar. The whole goal was to find more interesting textures to drive songs.
You get a very good response to the title track, “Selma,” at shows. Part of it is the melody. It’s the most hooky thing you’ve got on the album. So, it’s not surprising that people like it. But I think that it’s more than that. What I hear is this love song that’s expressing the way a person feels when they don’t really get why someone is into them. They think that maybe they have a little bit more than they deserve. That’s what I hear. But then I read another take on it, where you said it comes from losing a member of your family outside of Selma, North Carolina. Are there two aspects of that song? How do they work together?
You were a dreamer’s dream
You were some god’s scheme
You were hard to hold
hit like a lightin’ bolt
Your beauty was a sun
I hadn’t felt in days
Over top of my mountains
She radiates.
So tell me
The things that I can’t see
Oh Selma, why you fallin’ for me
I ain’t no
Bird in your tree
Oh Selma, why you fallin’ for me
There are multiple aspects. I wrote the chorus and the verse, the first one, at different times. Months apart. The first verse was a straight up love song. I had been working on these verses, thinking, these are cool verses, these are cool lines, I’ve gotta do something with them.
My dad’s parents lived in Bath, North Carolina. They’re from Wilson, North Carolina. They died almost exactly a year apart from each other. They were this unbreakable, unshakable loving couple. They loved each other so much. Everything they did, even when they were arguing with each other, you could just tell that it’s gonna end with a laugh. If anyone can find that in the world they’re lucky.
I took it hard. I was going through a rough period at the time. They died and I was on my way to my grandma’s funeral in Wilson. I was all over the place. I was heartbroken, sad, confused, unsure, and I just saw the sign for Selma, North Carolina. A lot of people gravitate toward Selma, Alabama, but this is talking about Selma, North Carolina. I saw the sign, a little green sign, “Selma – 10,” or whatever, when I looked out the window. I had my notebook like I do a lot of times whenever I’m a passenger in the car. So, I wrote down “Selma, tell me the things that I can’t see.” So that’s the context of that line.
But that just sat in my notebook for a while. I was going to Appalachian State at the time, and I was up at a coffee shop there. I was doing some schoolwork and I ended up on the Greek gods and goddesses Wikipedia page, reading “Judgment of Paris.”
Really quick synopsis of part of the myth, Judgment of Paris: Paris, a mortal, had to judge the beauty of three goddesses, each of whom offered a bribe. Hera offered to make him king of Europe and Asia, Athena offered her wisdom and skill in war, and Aphrodite offered him the world’s most beautiful woman. He chose the woman.
Through all the misogyny, and all of the craziness, I found the fact that he chose Aphrodite and this girl over all the war power, over all the kingship, all the power that he would have…I thought, wow, that’s something. It’s incredible what you’ll do for love. And that made me think of my grandparents. It’s not the best correlation. There’s a lot of things wrong with it, but I just thought about that. I would give up a lot of things to have what my grandparents had. I would give up a lot.
I started writing all these things. It all started tying together, but I needed a chorus. I’ve got three solid verses. So, I started flipping back through my notebook and I saw that “Selma, tell me the things that I can’t see.”
And I started thinking about my grandparents, and the Greek gods, and I started thinking, “Selma…what does that even mean?” And I looked it up and it means “Protected by the gods.” So, I was like, it was meant to happen. It’s about my grandparents, Greek gods, and also my insecurities.
I think that you mentioned to me once that you grew up in a religious family. Did you encounter music in a church setting, and, if so, did that influence your songwriting? The song “Green and Blue” feels almost hymn-like to me.
Lord give you greens, give you blues.
Give you purple and red in all the hues.
Give you everything
He’s got in between
Lord, give you greens, and give you blues
Hymns and traditional church music were definitely a part of my growing up. I grew up playing in a church.
What did you do?
I played guitar. I was the lead guitar at my church for a while.
It (“Green and Blue”) felt very comforting. That’s what I wanted out of that song. That’s a song that I’m writing to my kid in the future. I’m a teacher. I teach guitar in middle school, so I work with kids, teaching them all the time, and so you start to get into these parenting things. You try to approach a kid one way and it just doesn’t work. So, I wanted to come up with a creed, I guess. An ideology behind how I want my (future) kid to feel. I want them to know that they’re going to get their heart broken and that’s part of the process. There’s gonna be hurt, but there’s also healing. That’s what that song is for me. I wanted it to be almost a hymn. That’s a good way to put it. I didn’t particularly think of it that way, but I did want it to be comfortable. I wanted it to deliver a serious message in a comfortable setting.
On “Whiskey Wishes” you play around with the timing, with the tempo, a lot. And right before the three-minute mark you do this sort of crazy, unexpected thing, where you totally change up the rhythm and sound of the song for a few measures in the bridge. It ratchets up the drama of the song a whole lot. And then you settle back into the chorus, which is kind of restrained.
We slowed down the tempo to 20 beats a minute and we switched to 3/4 for that measure. This song originally started as a 3/4 country song, or 6/8 probably would be more like it. Every single one of these songs has started pretty old school. Hank Williams was on repeat while I was writing this record.
So, we were trying to figure out how to drive it. There was a drummer I played with in church, and he’s a jazz drummer outside of church, and he said “you’re either leaning back or you’re leaning forward.” I’ve just carried that with me. So, in that song I was definitely leaning back. With the chorus I wanted to drive it more. In that part there wasn’t a whole lot of words. It’s pretty sparse. It needed energy. So, I just capoed way up so it would have this really high, in-your-face guitar part, and as quick finger-picking as I can. It was a pain to do that finger-picking part. But we came up with that and the rest kind of fell into place.
And so, the bridge is hearkening back to what it was. We made this really painful song—I was not happy at that point, when I was writing that song. We made this beautiful melody for it. I thought it’s all right, I think it’s pretty, but I wanted that anger that I was feeling to come through. Because with sadness there’s, a lot of times, anger. You’re angry at yourself. You’re angry at someone else. You’re angry at the situation. So, I wanted the anger to come through this pretty thing that we made. I thought the words of the bridge really captured that frustration.
It raises the intensity. It’s interesting that you raise the intensity by slowing it down. A lot of times the rest of a song is speaking metaphorically or hinting at something and then a bridge tells you what the song is really about. It says “Ok, now listen, here’s what the song’s about.” And the bridge in this song does that, not just with the lyrics but also with the sound. The fact that you totally change the rhythm is like saying “OK, now pay attention.”
It’s almost like a look behind the curtain, you know? Like, here’s the play, but here’s what’s really going on behind it.
“You’re Not the Only One (Cryin’ Tonight),” has kind of an 80s pop sound. Have you listened to a lot of 80s pop?
Probably not as much as my producer. He maybe didn’t grow up during that time but he listens to a lot more of those 80s sounds. That’s big in the indie scene right now. The 80s snare, the gated reverb and all. That’s what we shot for. And then the strings have an 80s-ish thing to it. The 80s that I get is more from the music of today that pulls from the 80s. It’s like a secondhand 80s sound.
I like making beautiful music. And if that comes from the 80s textures or the 90s, 2000s, 70s, 60s, whatever, I’m down for it.
