DAN MANGAN COVERS THE LUMINEERS’ “SLEEP ON THE FLOOR”
BEING SOMEWHERE OUT NOW VIA ARTS & CRAFTS
This month, Dan Mangan will be supporting his JUNO Award nominated, Polaris Music Prize shortlisted, album Being Somewhere, on his 10-date European headline tour. Today, he’s sharing an acoustic cover of The Lumineers platinum-certified single “Sleep On The Floor”. “When I got word I’d be touring Europe supporting The Lumineers last year in June, I knew I wanted to cover one of their songs,” says Mangan. “They have so many hits but ‘Sleep On The Floor’ was always the one I’d crank when it came on the radio. Wes has a distinctive and strong vocal approach, and I thought it would be interesting to attempt the song with a whisper. Rather than wide open chord changes, a simple piano plodding along keeping pace. The song is about escape, and as somebody who has literally spent a fair amount of time sleeping on floors and couches around the globe, I wanted to explore the sonically comforting elements of my own nostalgia from a life on the road.”
More About Being Somewhere
Being Somewhere, Mangan’s sixth studio album, cuts incisively but never forgets its underlying thesis: It’s cool to care. Mangan arms the rebels in the crusade for tenderness. The album is a combative plea for mercy from a manic world and its effects on the psyche. Whittling his sharpest pen to date, Being Somewhere is marked by Mangan’s singular wit and a respectful deference to the quagmire of existence.
“I wanted this album to feel like the inside crook of a familiar elbow on the nape of your neck, a comforting embrace” says Mangan, “These songs are tenderhearted and unfurl like an overdue conversation with a dear friend. They essentially lay out where we’re at, how I’m doing, and how I think I can help.”
571 emails. 100+ hours on the phone and thousands of text messages. A mere 3 days spent in-person together over two and a half years of long-distance work. Such a displaced recording process might make anyone question the concept of being anywhere at all, let alone being somewhere else.
This is how Dan Mangan and collaborator/producer Drew Brown (Radiohead, Beck) manifested Being Somewhere. All components were recorded in isolation and beamed up to the mothership. No piece of the puzzle ended up as expected, and each moment is the fruition of separate, yet conjoined, rabbit holes.
“The hard part was waiting,” Mangan says of the long-distance process, “sometimes it took six weeks to resolve an issue that could have taken twenty minutes had we been together in a room. But Drew’s dedication and talent cannot be understated, and this music doesn’t sound like anything else I’m hearing these days.”
Under the care of Drew Brown’s distinct touch, Being Somewhere forges sonics well beyond the tropes of modern folk music. Helming the project from Chicago, Brown sourced musical contributions from all over North America, the UK and Japan, including work from Joey Waronker (Beck, Atoms for Peace), Jason Falkner (Beck, St. Vincent), Thomas Bartlett (The National, Taylor Swift), Dave Okumu (Arlo Parks, Adele), Mary Lattimore (Kurt Vile, Sharon Van Etten), and Broken Social Scene frontman Kevin Drew.
More About Dan Mangan
Dan Mangan is a two-time JUNO Award-winning and two-time Polaris Music Prize-nominated musician and songwriter. He lives in Vancouver, British Columbia with his wife and two sons. Mangan has toured extensively in North America, Europe & Australia. He has played Glastonbury and Jimmy Kimmel Live, collaborated with David Grohl, sold out Massey Hall and scored acclaimed soundtracks for television (Netflix, AMC) and feature films. In 2017, he co-founded Side Door, a community marketplace platform for the arts that seeks to democratize and decentralize the entertainment industry by allowing non-traditional spaces to be venues. Watch for Mangan and his Side Door partner Laura Simpson to appear on CBC TV’s Dragon’s Den on November 3. Being Somewhere is his sixth studio album.
European Tour Dates
Feb 22. Graz, AT – Orpheum
Feb 24. Prague, CZ – Café v Lese
Feb 25. Warsaw, PL – Hydrozagadka
Feb 26. Berlin, DE – Frannz Club
Feb 28. Copenhagen, DK – Hotel Cecil
Mar 1. Stockholm, SE – Nalen Klubb
Mar 3. Hamburg, DE – Nachtasyl
Mar 4. Amsterdam, NL – Paradiso
Mar 5. Antwerp, BE – Trix
Mar 6. London, UK – Omeara