JACKSON, MISS. (SSP) -- Daniel Guaqueta is the sort of musician who collects quite a thick backlog of recorded material.
He’s been part of some of Jackson’s most prominent bands, such as Wooden Finger, Storage 24 and Questions in Dialect. Daniel’s drum work sets a high standard in the Jackson area, where he picks up a lot of work backing bar, festival, even church gigs.
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| Daniel Guaqueta discusses his new recording project, May 2011 |
“I have this huge body of music,” says Daniel, 34. “They’re all so different from each other. Instead of throwing out all these different types of genres of music that I’ve made, because I really enjoy all types of music, I figured, why not separate the songs into little sub-genres? So they’re more easily taken into a context.”
Daniel, A/K/A TTOCCS REKARP, presents that context in full with his six-album catalog, the “TR Box Series.” It is a sweeping set, covering wild diversities in sounds, modalities and paths of exploration. Daniel’s percussion, his vocals, guitar work and track wizardry all contribute to a general filling-in of the niches in Daniel’s musical career. Spare, minimalist audio conspires with richly produced studio sound -- in an album release that may be intimidating for its sheer mass and amorphism.
The TR Box Series is a project with firm roots in the indie, home-produced mold, but also one that drafts studio tools for much of its final sound. “The amount of instrumentation I had on a song, I couldn’t do that at home,” Daniel tells me. "It was just too much. So I went to the studio to try to get some clarity on the instrumentation.
“The song lets me know what I need to do with it. Like the song called Y You Strut -- it’s very lo-fi, very nasty-sounding, just dirty. You know, electronics. It may sound to an engineer or a music professional as a bad-sounding song. Those drums weren’t recorded properly, or they’re not punchy, and all that stuff. That’s all, to me, highly subjective.
“I just kind of let the song make itself, as opposed to, make every song a recorded song, in the studio."
Daniel says much of the TR Box Series owes its electronic direction to Tre Pepper, A/K/A Loki, also a member of J-Tran. “I’ll compose a song, then he’ll come in and sequence it, make it a little more interesting. I like to work with other people. I really like to just make a blueprint and have other people come in and play guitar, play a bass line.
“I’ll make the song structure," says Daniel, "pretty much the song structure stays the same. But they come in and add their own little thing to it, make it something more than I could have imagined it to be. I highly believe in collaborative thinking."
With (at least) six discs and dozens of tracks, the TR Box Series is a massive publication. “It’s definitely overwhelming to a lot of people, especially if they’ve never heard of me. As far as me coming out of the blue and saying, hey, here are 72 songs. You’ve never heard about me. And a lot of people can see that as, gosh, why are you giving away everything you’ve got?
Daniel compares the effort to walking into a public street, naked. "Here I am, you know? Like, this is what I am, all my faults, everything. If you don’t like it, that’s cool. But at least I feel good that I finally walked out in the street naked, at least for once in my life.”
Each of the six box-sets incorporates a broad theme: Ambient, Experimental, Rock, Beta, Throwback, Electronic. Some of these require description....
The Throwback disc, for instance, combines five or so recently recorded, high-production tracks -- part of the project’s core music, found in each box and feeling very ripe for radio play -- with demos dating back to Daniel’s earliest work. “Throwback is music that I created when I was a young kid, up until college years,” he says. “So it’s real lo-fi, very raw. They’re songs, but you can also hear me, forming as an artist.
“Beta is that moment in an artist’s life where you’re kind of configuring what you do," Daniel explains, "not really experimenting, but try to write music with other people, collaboration. That’s the beta of the musician. Kind of like lighting up the hallway a little bit. Beta is that box.”
Experimental is just as the name implies, replete with glitches. “I have a song in the Experimental, me singing in the New York bathroom,” says Daniel, “doing Tuvan throat singing in a bathroom in New York. The bathroom just reverberated so nicely. That’s an experiment -- experimental sounds and frequencies."
In an aside, Daniel declares, “I interviewed Paul Pena! We had a really nice conversation, it was about a three-hour conversation on the phone. He gave me Tuvan throat lessons!
“I like to overwhelm people. When I do a show, I like it to be a fiasco. I’d like it to be perfectly planned, fine-tuned music. Everything we do is on purpose, it’s not a mistake. And if there is a mistake, we turn it into something beautiful. That’s the part of improvisation art that we enjoy.”
Daniel is playing live shows, under the TTOCCS REKARP banner, in New Orleans, Jackson and beyond. He brings together a powerful stage ensemble -- his current line-up includes drummer Murph Caicedo, Reagan Daniels on guitar, bassist Brent Varner, Ben McCain on keyboards and emcee/vocalist AJC.
“Some of them are the singles that I have out. Like, all the music videos that I have out, except two, we perform."
“I’ve got a band that’s ever evolving,” says Daniel, who fronts the band on stage as he manages lighting and visual elements with an iPhone. “Luckily I’ve been blessed with some really, really proficient musicians. I mean, they know how to read music, they know how to notate things, so they’ll come in, already have the songs learned, so we’ll just knock them out in one rehearsal.
“It’s its own element, it changes all the time. Sometimes I have dancers, sometimes I don’t, sometimes I have something else. It just depends on what is available, and what’s in the works.”
“To me having a band is all about making sure that they’re accommodated, that they’re having fun, that they’re enjoying the music and the performance aspect. It’s not about me, at that point.”
Daniel plans to take elements of the live show north to Nashville, Chicago, New York City and beyond. “I’ve had a lot of people tell me that I would go over well there. So I’m trying to set up a tour now for July.
“I honestly think TTOCCS REKARP could play anywhere, as far as what I can do as an individual. But as far as a sound system is concerned, there aren’t many places in Jackson that can handle the amount of sound that we’re trying to push through as a band.
“I feel like I could play like two or three shows a year in Jackson, and make them memorable. Like me performing on a roof. Or in a black box that I made up in Fondren.
“I like to make a spectacle out of something,” says Daniel. “This Fire show is another spectacle. I’m going to have filmmakers up there on stage, filming, we’re going to have lights, and dancers, and it’s going to be insane. A full body experience, because the stage is so huge at Fire.”
That experience encompasses the design of his project’s box sets. “All the boxes are handmade, they’re screen-printed,” says Daniel, “they have the DVD, a CD, a sticker. Each box has cool little trinkets and stuff in them that are part of the theme of the box. It’s a fun thing, it’s really about having fun and they’re cheap, they’re 10 bucks.”
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| DG with the "Ambient" Box, May 2011 |
You can buy and download selections from the TR Box Set online, at TRMusic.net -- but Daniel is more likely to distribute the Happy Meal-like box packages themselves by hand.
“It’s the best hello I can say to anybody,” says Daniel of the set.
One may even hear a breath of relief from the man. “All that stuff is out, all that stuff is done, he says. "I have cleansed myself of all the past. That closes that chapter of my entire, musical life. And I’m already underway, to my new chapter.”
One may even hear a breath of relief from the man. “All that stuff is out, all that stuff is done, he says. "I have cleansed myself of all the past. That closes that chapter of my entire, musical life. And I’m already underway, to my new chapter.”
Part of that chapter is Daniel’s new surf rock band, Buddy and the Squids. “I’ve always loved California culture, surf culture anywhere in the world. I love the ocean. I respect it and fear it.
“Surf music is soulful, lots of body to it,” Daniel says. “It takes a certain kind of musician to play it right -- it really does. It’s kind of like the blues -- surf music and blues music are a lot alike.
“So what if we’re not near the beach?" he insists. "We played last night and got offers to play Bourbon Street, we got offers to play on the [Gulf] Coast, and Destin, so now we’re on our way. Now I can play the beach and be smelling the salt air while playing these beautiful songs that I highly admire.
“That’s my dream,” says Daniel, “to me that’s like all I’ve ever dreamed of. And I’d be happy just doing that for a couple of years.”
From Daniel's show schedule:
From Daniel's show schedule:
- Thursday May 26, 10p -- Allways Lounge, New Orleans
- Thursday June 9, 9p -- Fire, Jackson
