Portugal might not be your first thought when thinking progressive rock (it wasn’t mine), well it is time to think again and put aside any preconceived ideas, because it is home to the rather excellent Daymoon band. With the new album Wednesday released in January (available here), it’s looking like an exciting time for the band, so we couldn’t resist getting the latest from multi-instrumentalist (and all round nice guy) Fred Lessing. Here’s what he had to say:
Can you tell us about the band’s origins. Where did you meet etc.
The band started out in the early 1980s under the moniker ‘Dead Landscape’, and eventually disbanded in 1984 as our kind of more complex music was not in demand in the Portuguese music market at the time. So while the other band members all went into more commercial realms after that, I took on the moniker of ‘Daymoon’ and insisted on my kind of more complex music, recording four demo albums, that never got finished properly though. An actual Daymoon band eventually came together thanks mostly to Portugal’s biggest prog event – Gouveia Art Rock (a definite must if you like prog!) – where prog fans from all over the world have been gathering once a year ever since 2003. Including initially Fred and Paulo, and friends, who subsequently formed an, alas, short-lived project called Mispel Bellyful. Together, they recorded a rather adventurous self-titled album named ‘Mispel Bellyful’, which ended up being also the foundation of the Daymoon stage and studio band. This band comprised several Portuguese musicians, but then disbanded for a few years, after my wife died from cancer. Thanks to our then drummer and now keyboarder André, Daymoon was resurrected in 2013, to record Cruz Quebrada, an album about cancer, death, and love. It was on this album that Swedish musicologist Thomas Olsson – producer of legendary Swedish prog band Isildurs Bane – and Isildurs Bane trumpet player Luca Calabrese joined Daymoon. And so Daymoon proper was born.
What are the musical influences of each band member and how do you forge them into a cohesive whole?
Well, let’s see the individual preferences first:
I (Fred) actually come from a mix between a singer-songwriter background with dreams of doing concept albums, added by a decade and a half of playing baroque music. My musical background is extremely eclectic, ranging from Cat Stevens to Bach, the unavoidable Tigran Hamasyan, and far-out acts like Thinking Plague.
Lavínia works as a TV and stage artist, and started off originally with a background in 1990s gothic and neo-gothic music.
Paulo is one of the organisers of Portugal’s largest improvised music festival, called ‘MIA’, and he favours improvised music, but also more the more adventurous facets of jazz and prog.
Jeff loves singer-songwriters like Joni Mitchell, but also a wide range of jazz and fusuin.
Thomas works as a professor of musicology, and his preferences are extremely wide-ranging, from modern jazz to contemporary music and world music.
Luca is a renowned jazz musician, and he particularly enjoys 70s jazz.
Bringing them all together is not particularly difficult for two simple reasons: 1) my vision for any track is always based precisely on their preferences; and 2) they know my vision for each track. In other words: the ‘Daymoon’ sound is a result of all of us, curated by me.
Can you tell us about your local music scene. Is it supportive? Are there many places to play?
Not really, I’m afraid. Portugal is a very small country, and if prog is for a minority only, imagine what that minority means in a tiny country… We played live between 2009 and 2011, and prog was still somewhat ‘fashionable’ among insiders then. But even so, we never had audiences of more than 70 people. Mostly just a dozen or less. As for now, just like the prog reviewers, the insiders from those times are by now too old really, and a concerning portion has in fact died. Younger generations are not interested in prog, at least not in Portugal. So unless one gets sponsored (something that doesn’t happen in Portugal for fringe music like ours), it’s simply not viable anymore. Well, for now, I’m massively grateful to our rather delightful label manager Kathy Keller for all the hard promo work she’s been doing relentlessly for us!
What’s the best and worst thing about your local scene?
The best and the worst in two sentences: The local scene was minimally supportive for prog until some 15 years ago, and we were even given the chance to perform on stage at the renowned (well, speciality-renowned) Gouveia Art Rock festival. Our sales in Portugal were reasonable at the time too, even though we only garnered international recognition well after that; now they are close to nil.
Can you tell us about the band’s discography (demos, singles, albums)
With the advent of home-recoding in the mid-90s, I myself and friends recorded four demo albums between 1997 and 2000. The recording quality was poor and my own vision for Daymoon as a project was unclear, veering between pop, prog, singer-songwriter stuff, and occasionally a little more complex stuff. Then, in 2001, I started a more ambitious project: a concept album based on cosmology, called ‘Fabric of Space Divine0. I invited a series of musicians from all over the world to help me pull this off, and our rather magnificent, but most ill-equipped band of daredevils actually did pull it off, but with a result that was technically poor, and so it got shelved eventually.
The years between 2007 and 2009 saw the first and only stage incarnation of Daymoon, featuring exclusively local Portuguese musicians, among them namely drummer and soundman André Marques, who would be the only one to stay with the band later on. Together, we recorded our debut album ‘All Tomorrows’ (Mals Records), which was mixed and produced by Andy Tillison, of The Tangent. After that, André Marques and I produced two more studio albums together: a re-recording of above-said ‘Fabric of Space Divine’ (released again on Mals Records), followed by ‘Cruz Quebrada’ (Progressive Promotion Records), dealing with the impact of my wife’s death on my life. It was on these two albums that Thomas Olsson, Luca Calabrese and Paulo Chagas joined our project as guests, introducing a whole new, more experimental dimension to our sound.
In 2016, we began recording ‘Erosion’ (self-released), but André Marques left the band that year. We were now Thomas Olsson, Luca Calabrese and Paulo Chagas, joined by a new singer: stage and TV actress Lavínia Roseiro. With her powerful and deeply emotional voice, she was the perfect choice for ‘Erosion’, our hopefully blatant political statement. Lavínia also produced and mixed one of the tracks. The album was eventually mixed and mastered by Vince Welch, of our dear prog friends Bent Knee from Boston.
From 2021 on, the band crystallised into a 6-piece ensemble, split neatly between Portugal and not-Portugal. Now lacking a drummer, for our latest album ‘Wednesday’, we chose not to use any drums at all. Some tracks were once again mixed by Vince Welch, who also mastered the album, and his astounding wife Courtney Swain sang on one of the tracks.
How do you feel you’ve evolved musically throughout your career?
On one hand I went from basically a singer-songwriter to writing full-on prog for some years, to currently mostly curating a bunch of wonderfully creative and gifted musicians. On the other hand, I went from dreaming of a career in music to someone being grateful for being able to being creative and share emotions with fellow musicians and an audience.
Can you tell us about tours you’ve completed. Any war stories you’d like to share?
We only performed live a handful of times, but our first gig was the toughest for me. It was at a side project of the Gouveia Art Rock festival, and we were the opening act. We were the last to do the sound-check, so the stage was all set for us when we arrived. The audience lights went out, the announcer announced us, and out we dashed onto the stage. My setup for the first song was a microphone, an acoustic guitar on a strap around my neck, a flute on a stand, and an electric Fender guitar held in a special stand. The first 3 minutes of the song consisted of me playing the acoustic guitar, singing, and playing the flute, plus of course the band doing their wizardry. And all went well until that particular part where the 8-piece band stops, and I’m all by myself playing a guitar riff on the Fender Strat. Except, when I hit the first note on the strat’s A string, it goes ‘booooooing’, and I see two of the strings hanging down in a limp curve! My mind went blank. The band waited for me to play the riff. Nothing happened for 30 or so seconds. I froze. The whole band froze. The audience froze. And no one in the audience noticed the hanging strings. And then, Adriano, one of our youngest band members, playing percussions and clarinet, suddenly started a frantic dance and playing his percussion, waving for us to join in. The band did. While I waved to a musician friend in the audience, and asked him from the stage to tune the strat for me. The whole band now went into a rather wild, entertaining Latin-inspired but decidedly un-proggy groove improv for a few minutes, but once I got back my strat, our show finally resumed as planned. Our poor keyboarder though never recovered, and went into a massive bout of stage fright that lasted throughout the entire show.
The saddest thing is I never realised that I could simply have played the solo guitar riff on the acoustic guitar around my neck!
Will we see you on the road anytime soon?
Unlikely. We stopped playing live in 2009 basically because Portugal is a rotten place for a Portuguese prog band to play live. International prog bands excluded Portugal from their tour roasters some 10 years ago because audiences are tiny, payback is nil, expenses and the effort overwhelming. Even so, we’ve been daydreaming about a few live showcases at the place where Lavínia performs at the weekends – a steampunk rock show and venue near Lisbon called ‘Custom Circus’ – but that’s really just wishful thinking as the band members just live too far apart. Unless we come up with a whole new version of Daymoon yet again…
What’s next for the band? How do you plan to reach the next level?
The next album is already being planned, and it will be even more of a personal thing this time, with me probably writing the bulk of all tracks. The core is: I’m selling my house in Sintra to escape massive over-tourism, as outlined somewhat acrimoniously on the opening track of our fourth album Erosion. This house comes with a smallish but gorgeously romantic garden, where my wife spends many weekends tending expertly and rather romantically to the flowers and plants. Hence the working title: ‘Farewell to a Garden’. In my mind, the album is going to be acoustic almost throughout, again no drums, and as quaint as can be. But one never knows… Maybe it’ll become our first ever punk album…?
Finally, what’s the one question (and answer) interviewers never ask but you wish they would?
“Can you explain what you mean by ‘Sit with me and watch with me time-dark seas of entropy‘ Just kidding 😉 I dare not explain…
