After releasing his fifth album More or Less, Dan Mangan has definitely been doing more.
The JUNO Award winning, Vancouver-based musician has been touring and cranking out complex folk-rock hits, over and over again in his 15 year career.
He has created upbeat tunes with deep lyrics that contradict the foot tapping music they have been put to.
Now the musician find he is torn between two colliding worlds— domesticity, now being a husband and a father to two children and career musician.
“There’s an element of me that is being investigated (in the album). Me as an artist and … me as a dad and me as a husband. What does me look like now that I am both of those things?” said Mangan. “I don’t want to just be one of them… When you become a parent it’s like you dive into a swimming pool and you are immersed in water and everything feels different and you hear sounds from above the water and it feels as if you are not a part of it and after a couple years, when your kids are old enough you can rise to surface and have your head above water.”
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More or Less, which was released in November, is an exploration in finding the balance to still be a great musician and a successful and present father. Witnessing the birth of his children changed Mangan and the way he saw humans.
“Watching a birth is like watching someone die. It’s a sense of absolution and mortality,” said Mangan. “It creates all kinds of intrinsic epiphanies but the rebirth thing that is almost more about me and my self identity who I felt I was when I was younger was this tireless ever reaching adventurous dude played songs and lived by the seam of his pants and now I have spent a number of years in a very domestic situation nesting and becoming a dad.”
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Scheduling time to be creative has been the key to his work life balance. Finding the time to be creative and write the narrative stories that come to fruition through his songs, where no two are similar. This album he says he dug deeper into himself to create a more personal album where all his songs are in first person and not assuming a character.
“I am digging into a more personal flow of my work. It’s more personal, it’s me, first person. I am not assuming a character of any kind and writing about my life. In the past hid behind metaphors and purposely vague lyrics and they were just different and there is a part of me that just needed to try this,” he said.
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Performing has become a drug to Mangan that he cannot get enough of, and as he embarks on his next tour in the new year, he hopes to connect with his audience a little more.
“Being a creator of any kind there is a desire for connection at the heart of existing and everyone has own way of getting to that place,” said Mangan. “What is the intangible thing in life to experience some magic and sometimes my shows get to that pace where it feels otherworldly and its just happening and its all sort of beyond us. That’s ideal not every show can get there.”
Mangan will perform at the Kelowna Community Theatre Feb. 13 tickets are available at selectyourtickets.com
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