[Transcript edited for clarity]

Absent Sounds: Hi, my name is Weadee. And my name's Weajue. You are tuned in to another episode of Absent Sounds here on CJAM 99.1 FM, reaching higher ground in Windsor and Detroit. Today we're joined by one of our favourite musicians of the past couple of years — Danny from Frog. Hello!

Danny: Hello. Thanks for having me, I'm so excited. I've been to Toronto once and I loved it — I don't think I've ever been to Detroit, but shout out to everyone up there. I love the Midwest, the Great Lakes. Let's go.

Absent Sounds: You've never been to Detroit? That's actually kind of crazy.

Danny: I've been to Michigan, I think. I was in a lot of bands and went around the country a lot as a kid, but I never went up that far north.

Absent Sounds: For sure — it is cool from the outside.

Danny: I think Detroit's a cool city from the inside too.

Absent Sounds: Our first question — what's on your 2024 wish list, if you had to make one for this year?

Danny: Holy moly, that's a great question. I want to make at least twenty-four albums in 2024.

Absent Sounds: I love that for you. What have you got going on today — you're supposed to have two albums out this month, right, at that rate?

Danny: Yeah, it's ambitious, you know? I don't know if I'm gonna hit that, but I think you gotta aim high.

Absent Sounds: Aim high — maybe you'll get to ten.

Danny: Yeah, or twelve. That'd be cool too.

Absent Sounds: Twenty-four is actually how many books I have on my Goodreads list to read in 2024. I started one and I'm already a book behind.

Danny: Yeah, me too.

Absent Sounds: Grog is the album you just released — have you ever actually had grog?

Danny: Oh yeah. My brother had it while we were making the record and calling it Grog — he said it was kind of weird, kind of disgusting. I liked it, honestly. It's just rum, water, and lime, really simple, not even that alcoholic. The story goes that sailors would save up their rum ration for a week or two and then get blotto one night and be useless the next day, so they watered the ration down so you couldn't drink that much at once.

Absent Sounds: Is it a special-occasion thing, or do they serve it on New Year's Eve?

Danny: They serve it morning and night — you get a half pint a day. I only really drink beer myself, but I had to try it since I was naming my record after it. It's amazing that as part of your job you'd get to drink rum — that was just the norm for most of human history.

Absent Sounds: So if you're at a show, at a bar, is beer your go-to between sets?

Danny: Definitely. Though if I had to pick a spirit, I like gin a lot. I read Luis Buñuel's autobiography — he's a filmmaker whose films I really love — and most of it is about alcohol, because he loved gin. He wrote about how to make his favourite martini and how much fun he had drinking. Ever since, I've been into gin because of that.

Absent Sounds: That's inspirational. When he leaves Earth, the only thing left will be people making these drinks going, "I learned this because of this man."

Danny: Well, he was also a filmmaker, and the films — I recommend them. He made some of the best movies ever.

Absent Sounds: What's he made that you can name off the top of your head?

Danny: In 1924, with Salvador Dalí, he made Un Chien Andalou — it's basically the first surreal film, like fifteen minutes long, and somebody cuts their eye out and it turns out to be the moon. There were riots in Paris when they showed it. My favourite of his is Belle de Jour, starring Catherine Deneuve — a great movie.

Absent Sounds: Part of the sailors' daily diet was grog — what does yours consist of?

Danny: I drink a lot of coffee. I like bagels, probably too much. I grew up in very Jewish areas, so Jewish food is my comfort food — bagels, matzah ball soup, that stuff. I'm not even Jewish myself, it's just my favourite type of food.

Absent Sounds: Bagels are for sure our favourite breakfast too. When we were studying abroad in Tours, France for our last year of university, we couldn't find bagels anywhere — we had to bring some from Canada.

Danny: Oh, why were you in France? A study-abroad program?

Absent Sounds: Yes, for a year — we grew up doing French immersion, so it was either Ottawa or France for the program, and we picked France.

Danny: Seems like an easy choice.

Absent Sounds: Speaking of France — one of the stereotypical culinary things there is eating frogs. Have you ever tasted a frog, or a snail?

Danny: Escargot is actually one of my favourite foods, I love snails, they're the best. I tasted frog once — it was cool, but it wasn't really my thing. Frog legs. It kind of hurt me, honestly — I feel a real unaffinity toward frogs, psychologically, philosophically, whatever you want to call it.

Absent Sounds: That's exactly how I'd imagine eating a frog would feel — it would hurt my soul. How do you like your snails prepared?

Danny: There's a restaurant called Encore in Larchmont, New York, the town over from New Rochelle where I grew up — for many years they had the best snails I've ever had, better than anything I found in France. A lot of garlic, a lot of oil. They have some magic way of doing it. I could have it right now, honestly, thinking about it makes my mouth water.

Absent Sounds: New Rochelle actually reminds me of La Rochelle, a place we visited near where we were living in France — so there's the connection.

Danny: The Huguenots are somehow involved in the founding of New Rochelle, I think that's why it's named that. I think I have a little French Huguenot in me — Protestants who got kicked out of France and moved to the Netherlands. One of my grandmothers comes from that line.

Absent Sounds: So it's in the bloodline somewhere.

Danny: Somewhere back there, ancestry-wise.

Absent Sounds: A little bit of a random question — you're two for two getting people you love to learn drums. First your friend Tom White, then your brother Steve. Who's next on the list?

Danny: My wife, actually. One night she came downstairs when we were living at my mom's house, and she played drums while I played guitar, and we played Beatles songs. She had a little bit of bop, you know — she hit hard, there was some interesting, cool stuff there. I think she's got a lot of promise. And if it's not her, it'll be one of my kids — they love hitting stuff. Drums are a great instrument for three-year-olds.

Absent Sounds: Speaking of your three-year-olds — what's it like being a father of twins? We consider ourselves a blessing to our parents, and we love hearing the other side of the looking glass.

Danny: Becoming a parent is an experience most people go through in one way or another, and it forces you to become a different version of yourself. It feels really violent and traumatic while you're going through it, but it's actually a really good thing for you. With twins it's just even more, and crazier — especially at the beginning, it's just panic, every day is panic. But you get easier and better at it, and eventually you make it work for yourself. I think it's the biggest blessing that's ever happened to me. I was definitely gasping for air, near death, at certain points, but I'm better for it.

Absent Sounds: Was today a panic day or a blessing day?

Danny: The panic days are few and far between now, thank God. You get better at it, and they get easier too — they start helping you. My son Frankie helps me bring in the groceries. They're not running into the street all the time anymore, they're listening, not always, but a lot of times.

Absent Sounds: They can start being helpful in other ways too — like playing drums on the album.

Danny: Yeah, they're on the record. My daughter Sally was in the playground with me, on one of those musical playgrounds where you can hit the bells, and she said, "Listen to the music, Daddy — baa baa black sheep, have you any moors?" That's what she thought the lyrics were. I thought it was really cute. Then my son came over and said, "No, no, don't talk to her," because he wanted the attention. So it just felt right to throw them in there — they're part of me.

Absent Sounds: I love that. Do you have a favourite nursery rhyme?

Danny: I've thought a lot about nursery rhymes, because they're always so dark. Ring Around the Rosie, Pocket Full of Posies, Ashes, Ashes, We All Fall Down — that's about the plague, right, you get a red face and then you die. That's why I think they're fascinating — the things that ripple through the ages, the rhymes and songs that stick, are never straightforward, they're always gothic and dark underneath. I think instinctually humans are drawn to that — it's gotta be light and dark.

Absent Sounds: It's so interesting that it just keeps passing down through the generations. Speaking of generations — I've read that the generation being born now would be Generation Alpha, and a lot of people say they're to be feared.

Danny: They really do say that about every generation. I remember when Millennials were the ones everyone complained about, and now it's the Zoomers. Everyone's always convinced things are different this time, when human beings haven't really changed that much in the last recordable amount of history — you read about stuff happening two thousand years ago and society hasn't really changed that much. In any case, I'm happy with the way my kids are, I'm excited for them to become real people. My daughter's already started manipulating me in ways I can't anticipate — I don't think I'll be able to recognize it soon. I was sitting on the couch and she said, "I really want to change the channel." I said, "Why don't you find the remote?" And she said, "You're on top of it, you're sitting on it." I got up and said, "I'm not sitting on it," and she said, "Can you get it?" — she got me to get it. As a three-year-old, she already outsmarted me.

Absent Sounds: You're done for.

Danny: Definitely done for. I think for good or for bad, she's gonna get some things happening.

Absent Sounds: This next song is kind of an anthem for Black women, for people of colour — and I'll assume you don't identify as a person of colour, but correct me if I'm wrong.

Danny: No, no — Northern European descent.

Absent Sounds: Just making sure. Is black your favourite colour, then?

Danny: I love that you guys think of it like that. When I was writing that song, yeah, definitely. I'd been reading The Odyssey, and I read Ulysses by James Joyce.

Absent Sounds: You actually finished Ulysses?

Danny: It took a while. It's something you gotta commit to — I got a companion book that explains it, because I was trying to do it on my own and got to the Telemachus chapter, where he's walking on the beach, and I thought I totally knew what was going on. Then I read the companion book and realized I had no idea. All the chapters from Stephen's perspective — Joyce is just so smart, that's how Stephen thinks, he's read so much and weaves little literary webs into his own reality all day. It's really hard to follow, but I'd recommend it if you want to do it — just commit, it takes a while, and a book that explains the chapters helps a lot. The song ended up being about Odysseus — I don't know why I was writing about him, it just felt right at the time. It was a lot of fun, a really different kind of song than I usually make.

Absent Sounds: While reading the lyrics I felt like I was really reading the story. To my untrained ear I sometimes miss words because of your distinct accent — do you have a name for it? Your singing voice?

Danny: I don't know. People used to think I was southern or something. My mom's from the Midwest, the middle of nowhere, and I really like the way her relatives talk, and the way other people talk in general. I just sing the way it feels right to sing — it's not something I'm doing on purpose, it just comes out sometimes.

Absent Sounds: Do you like the way you talk?

Danny: I think I talk like I'm from New York, which I am — but maybe I don't, I don't know. It's just the way it comes out. I definitely tend to mumble a lot, I don't enunciate very well. I love the way accents are, though — the way people talk in New Orleans, in Minnesota, in Atlanta, in New York. I love it.

Absent Sounds: I once saw a quote that the US is too big to know itself, which I almost think is the opposite — in the UK, if someone's doing an American accent they can tell if it's wrong, but when someone's doing an American accent well, people just say "yeah, that sounds American." Maybe because there are so many different ways it could sound.

Danny: Usually that's a California accent people default to — Californians are the most involved in media, worldwide. You turn on the TV and want to talk like Britney Spears, like a Kardashian, and they're all from Los Angeles. Britney might be from somewhere else originally, but she moved to LA and that's how she talks now.

Absent Sounds: It's wild — the population of Canada is roughly the population of Southern California.

Danny: Definitely a lot of people there, but it's shrinking — they've made it too hard to live there.

Absent Sounds: We've gotta get our CanCon in — Canadian musicians you'd highlight alongside your own music.

Danny: I love so many Canadian artists. Joni is definitely my favourite Canadian musician — I'm a huge Joni Mitchell fan, she's so amazing. I love Robbie Robertson and The Band too, most of them are Canadian I think, except for Levon, but it still counts. And obviously Neil Young. Joni's number one for me, though — I think she's the greatest, and her whole catalog is so different, making records with new-age jazz musicians that are all really out there. I feel like people don't even really understand how amazing she is. Everyone loves Blue, the one with "A Case of You" on it, but the whole catalog is just so different.

Absent Sounds: Right when you think you've got a hold on her, you find something new and go, "wow, I never heard this before."

Danny: I feel exactly the same way.

Absent Sounds: There's so much humor in your music, which made me wonder what type of humor comes naturally to you — physical, self-deprecating, surreal, wordplay, topical, observational, bodily, dark?

Danny: I like all of those. Life is funny. I feel like people get into their art and think, "I don't want humor in this, I want it to be profound" — but that doesn't move me. For art to be meaningful, I think it has to be from this reality we live in, and in this reality, everything is funny. Like — Donald Trump was president for four years. I'm not a political person, but if you zoom out a little, that's so funny. A reality star, a shyster who went around fleecing everyone in New York, ends up president — if it hadn't actually happened, that would be hilarious. Because it did happen, it's kind of sad instead.

Absent Sounds: The moral of the lesson I've taken from it is that you can truly fake it till you make it — who knows, maybe one day you'll be president too.

Danny: As far as humor goes, I love every type that makes me laugh, but what I really like that other people hate is puns. I'm a pun fanatic — a pun-atic.

Absent Sounds: Give us another one.

Danny: I just did.

Absent Sounds: We're greedy. How high can you jump?

Danny: Really high. I've always felt that energy to jump really high and really far. I skateboard, I love skateboarding — that's basically the only sport I actually watch. I like the Mets too, but skateboarding's the real one.

Absent Sounds: Were you a long jumper or high jumper in school, or is skateboarding the sport?

Danny: No, I never ran track — I was on the hockey team in high school. I could do everything technically, skate and all that, but I just wasn't paying attention for most of the games, which is why I wasn't very good. I'd just skate around lollygagging, thinking about other stuff.

Absent Sounds: Whenever I think about not paying attention, I think about grade five — I was at volleyball practice, swinging my arms back and forth getting ready to bump, completely zoned out, and the ball just hit me in the head. I always think, "yeah, I really don't pay attention to what's going on around me."

Danny: I'm exactly the same way. I think it's actually a superpower — when you're always off in your own little world, people around you say "hey, wake up, pay attention," but you have this ability to zone in on something and just stay there. If you push that toward the one thing you're really interested in and never leave, you can get better at it than anyone else. Being a space cadet is secretly powerful, because you can stay in the same train of thought longer than anyone else — nothing pulls you out of it — so you make more connections than others just by being there longer.

Absent Sounds: While prepping for this we looked through your Tumblr, but it's defunct — any plans to revive it?

Danny: I think I deleted all the old posts. I was trying to figure out a way to make my website have almost nothing on it, and I've succeeded — I use it like a website now, not really like a Tumblr. Honestly I'm already on the internet too much, I don't want any more social media, no TikTok at all, I don't even have one.

Absent Sounds: Likewise — no Threads, nothing.

Danny: Oh my god, no way. I don't want a new thing, I don't want more reasons to be away from the real world — I already am too often. I want to be with my children, look at them, talk to them. I don't want to be looking at my phone anymore.

Absent Sounds: That's a wrap!

Danny: That's a wrap. Thank you — this was so sweet, it was really nice to meet you guys. I loved hanging out with you.

Absent Sounds: Thank you so much, that was really fun, and we love Frog. Yay, Frog.

Danny: Thank you. Nice to meet y'all.

Absent Sounds: You too — see you around.