
“Love Yourself”, or whatever it’s called. Maybe it sounds dumb, but I like the new thing by Justin Bieber…. At home, we’ve been listening to Charles Mingus. For more information, visit Learn more about about Dan Reeder in the following All Access interview: Thanks for your time today! Where does this interview find you? Is there music playing in the background? If so, what is it? I’m at my studio.

In 2012, he published an overview of his work titled Art Pussies Fear This Book. Since moving from California to Nuremberg, Germany, over 30 years ago, he has won various visual art awards, participated in numerous exhibitions, led art seminars, and took on a visiting professorship at the Akademie der Bildenden Künste (aka, Germany’s Academy of Fine Arts). In addition to his musical background, Reeder designs all of his album art (including the cover of “Nobody Wants to Be You.”) and is a critically-acclaimed visual artist. You’re hearing every piece of a self-made artist and his multi-faceted skill set - from the soulful, smoky vocal overlay to a singular, meticulous guitar sound, but best of all, you’re hearing the ingenuity that is Dan Reeder. When you listen to Nobody wants to be you, you’re hearing more than an album. The bluntness of the lyrics are softened by Reeder’s crooning yet, even with multi-layered harmonies, his voice maintains its iconic “wisp.” While the album varies from the folk groundwork laid in the past, Reeder’s musical intelligence is as present as ever. On the other hand, the opening and title track, “Nobody wants to be you” is much more soothing.
#Dan reeder work song full#
Compared to its predecessors, his latest work delivers a brighter, more energized tone, full of what Reeder calls “easy piano.” This can arguably be heard on the first single, “Kung fu is my fighting style”, a rock-n-roll, piano-driven ballad with a uniquely-distorted electric guitar solo, which also happens to be the only guitar on the entire album. While “Nobody Wants to Be You” is the precursor to a full-length (set for a 2018 release), the EP isn’t lacking in tenacity and holds true to his distinct style: slightly quirky, painstakingly honest, and undeniably witty. The New Yorker’s Ben Greenman coined him as “one of the foremost outsider artists in modern folk” and he was featured on the Emmy award-winning show Weeds (“Work Song”). The albums garnered glowing reviews publications like No Depression deemed him “brilliant,” and NPR’s Fresh Air compared Reeder to Prine himself. Prine listened, signed Reeder to his label, toured with him four times, and released all three of Reeder’s previous records: “Dan Reeder” (2004), “Sweetheart” (2005) and “This New Century” (2009). “Nobody Wants to Be You.” marks Reeder’s fourth release on Oh Boy Records, a relationship formed after Reeder sent a burned CD to John Prine in the early 2000’s. Reeder has stated that he is a painter who plays music because "there are some things you can't paint." A second album on Oh Boy, Sweetheart, appeared in 2006.Last week on November 10th, Oh Boy Records released Dan Reeder’s newest project, “ Nobody Wants to Be You.” The five-song EP is distributed by Thirty Tigers and was produced by Reeder himself. approach, which, given the fact that he built every instrument he played on the album, Reeder has taken to its furthest extreme. The album, simply called Dan Reeder, received a good deal of critical acclaim for its unique, homemade blend of blues, folk, gospel, and field hollers, and for its decidedly D.I.Y. A cassette tape of Reeder's work made it into John Prine's hands and was released on Prine's Oh Boy label in 2003. Also a musician, Reeder began making his own instruments, using them to write and record his own songs on a recording rig he also built himself.


The couple relocated to Germany, where Reeder currently makes his living as a painter. He attended Santa Ana College and later studied art at Cal State Fullerton, where he met his German-born wife. Dan Reeder was born in Louisiana in 1954, the son of a minister, but grew up in Southern California.
