Danny Starr

A London native, Danny Starr taught himself the guitar as a teenager and eventually found his calling as a singer-songwriter. Ahead of his new single release, he talks to us about how he writes, working as a musician in the Covid era and the music he's currently digging.

How did you get into music?

I started teaching myself guitar when I was about 13, 14. I played rugby a lot in my teens, I was playing at a pretty competitive level, for England divisions, but I had to stop when I suffered an injury. It became apparent then that music was the one other thing I was good at, it kind of helped fill that void. It was a sort of therapy in a way!

How do you write - how does a song come to you?

I have a note on my phone - used to be my iPod - full of things I've heard that I've found interesting, like bits of conversations, phrases, etc. When I get home I'll play around with lyrics and chords and see what I can put together, what sounds good.

You've got a new song out on July 23rd, Belong - tell us a bit about it?

It's about how we all have a kind of need to feel like we "belong" to something, and how the pandemic pretty much took that ability away from us. We were having to live in a completely new way that we weren't used to, we weren't able to "belong" to anything. I started work on it in late 2019 actually - I'd just been broken up with, and a couple of months later Covid came along and really added another meaning to it all.

Now music venues are beginning to open up again, do you have any shows planned?

I do, I have a headline show at The Grace in London in October. I actually played at the Hackney Oslo about a month and a half ago, right when things were opening again, and that was a really fantastic experience, just because it had been so long! I'd been touring just before the first lockdown, when Covid was becoming more and more of a thing, and our audiences were getting smaller and smaller with each show. I was like "Thank you for coming - not just for wanting to see me but for risking your lives to come!".

What are you listening to at the moment?

I have a playlist on my Spotify called Danny's Ear Candy, which is all the stuff I'm currently listening to. Right at the bottom of there is Kanye West's Violent Crimes, which is about his struggles raising a daughter in today's world, and I think it's just so beautifully written. I've been listening to quite a bit of Kurt Vile as well, which a friend got me into - he'd gotten into his stuff during lockdown and kept telling me to check him out!

Words: Scott Bates