DAN MANGAN SHARES ELSEWHERE VERSION OF “FIRE ESCAPE”
GOING SOMEWHERE TOUR DATES CONTINUE NEXT WEEK | BEING SOMEWHERE OUT NOW VIA ARTS & CRAFTS
On tour now with Aysanbee supporting his JUNO Award nominated, Polaris Music Prize shortlisted, album Being Somewhere, singer-songwriter Dan Mangan returns with the second reimagined track from the record. The buoyant and bouncy track “Fire Escape” has been stripped bare and reawakened as a tender ballad; with punchy synths being replaced with woodwinds. “Imagine yourself at a party where you feel too anxious to engage with all the perfectly well-meaning folks around you,” details Dan. “You spot the familiar face of someone who understands you. You catch their eye and gesture toward the fire escape. As you make your move to get away, you anticipate the fresh air and mutually understood stillness that awaits you through the window on the landing. They might rescue you from your head, if only for a moment of respite. Now imagine that the party is actually just the increasingly manic fever dream of modern society. I love how this elsewhere version falls apart in the middle, but rises tenderly for a final plea.”
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.
Tour Dates
CANADIAN TOUR DATES
Oct 18 – Burnstown, ON – Neat Cafe
Oct 19 – Kingston, ON – Grand Theatre
Oct 20 – Oshawa, ON – Biltmore Theatre
Oct 21 – Paris, ON – Paris Presbyterian Church
Oct 23 – Hamilton, ON – Bridgeworks
Oct 24 – London, ON – Aeolian Hall
Oct 26 – Richmond Hill, ON – Richmond Hill Centre For The Performing Arts
Oct 27 – Ottawa, ON – Bronson Centre
Oct 28 – Toronto, ON – Queen Elizabeth Theatre
Oct 29 – St. Catharines, ON – Partridge Hall – FirstOntario Performing Arts Centre
Nov 2 – Waterloo, ON – Maxwell’s
Nov 3 – Peterborough, ON – Market Hall Performing Arts Centre
Nov 4 – Montreal, QC – Le Studio TD
Nov 5 – Quebec City, QC – L’Anti Bar
Nov 7 – Moncton, NB – Capitol Theatre
Nov 9 – Fredericton, NB – Fredericton Playhouse
Nov 10 – Saint John, NB – Imperial Theatre
Nov 11 – Glace Bay, NS – Savoy Theatre
Nov 12 – Halifax, NS – Rebecca Cohn Auditorium
Nov 14 – St. John’s, NL – First Light Centre
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