— by Brandee J. Tecson, with reporting by Matt Paco
It takes time for a band to evolve from mere dorm-room ruckus to bona fide music gods, but the Minneapolis quintet Dropping Daylight always kept the faith.
"Every time we embark on something new, there's always a million reasons why it won't work, and maybe three reasons why it will," frontman and co-founder Sebastian Davin said. "But then we look at the options and we don't want to do anything else. We would be leading a life we don't want to live. This is what keeps us going."
Davin, who had been fueling a love of music since childhood, was a classically trained pianist studying at Boston's prestigious Berklee School of Music when he crossed paths with drummer Jake Englund. In the winter of 2001, the duo birthed the idea of forming a band and ditched the hallowed halls of Berklee to pursue a more informal music education.
"Going to music school kind of felt like the music industry with training wheels," Davin explained. "It's kind of like you're not going to fall over, but you're also not going to get anywhere. In reality, the business is a lot harder and not every door you open is going to work out.
"I think too many people get caught up in practicing their scales and don't focus enough on actually doing something with their music," he added. "If anything, it drove us to realize we didn't want to sit in school for four years. We wanted to be out traveling, playing music in front of people."
So the music-school dropouts headed home and recruited high school buddy Rob Burke to play bass. Still missing a key element, Sebastian called on his then-14-year-old brother Seth to master the guitar.
"When Seth was of age, we just decided it was about time he unleashed some fury upon the world," Sebastian recalled. "So we just got together and everything fit. The chemistry was good."
Brought up in a conservative religious household, the younger Davin had been nursing music dreams of his own, despite being parentally banned from watching MTV. "One day I was home sick," he recalled, "and I saw Bon Jovi's video for 'Livin' on a Prayer' where he's flying around the crowd, and I was like, 'That is what I wanna do!' "
With the final member on board, all that was missing was a killer moniker. Enter the band's initial name, Sui Generis, a Latin phrase that means "unique and of its own kind" — or so they thought.
"It turns out there was another band Sui Generis and they're the biggest band to come out of Argentina. They're like the Eagles over there," Sebastian said.
The band changed its name to Sue Generis and released the indie effort Back to Nowhere in October 2002. Eventually the guys ditched the odd moniker and opted for a more uplifting name that was easier on the tongue.
The name Dropping Daylight came when they were going through a lot of changes. "Our careers were speeding up and it just kind of fit the mood of what we were going through," Burke said. "It seemed appropriate because it described where we were at the time and that we were turning a new leaf and going with something different."
Soon the Midwestern natives were signed to Octone Records, the same label that boasts Maroon 5, and playing on the Vans Warped Tour. But they say their big break came at the South by Southwest music conference in Austin, Texas.
"It was just a room packed full of businesspeople and we made them all sweaty. We rocked it," Sebastian recalled.
"Our shows are never what people expect," he continued. "We put a keyboard [onstage] and automatically you see the hardcore and rock kids rolling their eyes like, 'Oh God, this is gonna be kind of lame,' but we like to treat our instruments like someone we're pissed off at, so I slam down on the keyboard and it's really natural and we just go into a frenzy. At the end of at all, we usually win over people who don't think the keyboard can kick ass."
Dropping Daylight's first full-length album, Take a Photograph, showcases their blend of lounge-y piano and trashing guitars and is due this fall.
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