Daniel Beckman - Uke of Spaces Corners/Village of Spaces Interview

When and where were you born? When did you first begin to fall in love with music? Was this something that was relevant around your household growing up? Tell me about your siblings. Who were some or your earliest influences in your more formative years? 

Wells, Minnesota on November 3rd, 1976 at 6pm. My dad was late to my birth because he stopped at an antique shop to buy me a clock on the way to the hospital. The clock never functioned. It hangs on my wall to this day in the same state. I am a fairly punctual person. But I see that clock as a reminder that although time is important, it is subjective. The first song that I can recall wanting to listen to over and over again was “The Coloring Song” by Petra at about age 6. I enjoyed humming along and singing in church. The sermons felt infinitely boring, but those hymn books, live traveling country family bands and organ blasts were an anticipated balm. As a person with near constant noise, melodies and thoughts buzzing through my brain, I suppose I was always making music and enjoying the comfort that it can bring. It wasn’t untill ‘88, or ‘89 that I had my first full album experience. That was Traveling Willburys’ Vol 1. My dad and I installed a tape player into his car and we really bonded on that one. Other than the installation of the tape deck into my dad’s car at age 12, I don't recall any music inside my house growing up, beyond seasonal Christmas music. Bing Crosby, Andy Williams, George Winston’s “December” and later, “A Very Special Christmas”. My siblings and I had our own sources of music, but that was about it. For the first 10 years of my life, my parents were very restrictive. Only Christian music was allowed in the house. By the late 80’s they shed their Evangellical skins and became full blown progressives!

There were 5 of us growing up together and I was the youngest of them all. They were a bit older so in some ways I was a sole latch key kid. I left home at age 16 to live on my own. As I mentioned, that faux baroque folk rock pop sound of Petra’s “The Coloring Song” was such and undeniable influence really early on. Just one song, but the music that influenced that song comes from a deep portal of song, sound and melody that goes on forever. Another major influence was the trove of albums I found in my brothers closet. We grew up in a village of 350 people and he broke out early. I must have been 14 when I found a Velvet Underground record in his closet, Pink Floyd’s “Animals”, along with a bunch of early U2, a Violent Femmes cassette and Led Zepplin “4”. From there I immediately purchased a record player at a thrift store and this began a lifetime addiction to crate digging, collecting and obsessing. My brother made me a cassette tape the following year for Christmas. On one side John Coltrane’s “Meditations 2,” on the other side, Beefheart’s “Safe as Milk.” I was playing sax in middle school band at the time. The scronk was most appealing to me. One day, during band practice, the whole band was chugging along. I had my eyes closed and was wailing hard and really feeling it. All of the sudden the whole band stops and I’m still blowing. I look up and the teacher is pointing at me screaming “Beckman!!!! OUT!!!!” I never went back to band practice and this was the bedrock to my early philosophy of being a self taught musician. Thank you to my egregious teacher Mr. Vondratreck. 

One day I was hanging up some roller skates in my friends basement rafters. His dad was building something in the room above, banging out a rhythm, some sawing, random shuffling. I recall thinking, “that’s going to be called music someday.” I bought an acoustic guitar from the only x-hippy/now yuppie in my little home town. Almost immediately I removed the two smallest strings and spread the top 4 more evenly across the fretboard. With my own tunings I’d jam along to Sonic Youth, the Velvets, Pink Floyd and the Dead. Later, while kneeled down on the floor, I would play a melody on a little Casio and record that to cassette. Then I’d play that recording into the room and jam along with my guitar, recording that, maybe a record blasting into the room simultaneously, at the wrong speed. Then I’d play that and jam a harmonica along to that, recording that as well. My first multitrack recording studio! There was a great college radio show that drifted over from Mankato, which was a large town about an hours drive away. I could occasionally tune into “beautiful music for ugly children,” which was incredibly exciting. They played a lot of contemporary punk and indy music. A few bands really stood out to me. Alice Donut, Super Chunk and Betty Severt. Then we got cable TV and I became addicted to MTV. Punk was huge for me in my late teens all the way up into my late 20’s. From Crass, to the Minutemen, Meat Puppets, Huggy Bear and the slew of arty emo bands that were around like Nation Of Ulysses, Heroin, The Yahmos, Trenchmouth, God is My Co Pilot, the EX, dog faced Hermans and the Mob. Also jazz, country, blues, d.i.y. noise and free/freak folk. I was game. Harry Partch was a big touchstone for me as well as lots of Folkways music. Bag fulls of International stuff from the library like Sublime Frequencies and Mississippi Records. When Amy turned me onto Michael Hurley in 2000, the holy circle had finally been united! Everything was possible and it all made sense.

When and where did you see your first show and what ultimately inspired you to pursue a life in music and art? Prior Village of Spaces, you participated in the legendary and very prolific Uke of Spaces Corners. How did you initially meet Amy Moon and what led to you guys putting this fantastic duo together back in the early 2000s? 

Beyond a lot of touring family bands that played in church on Sunday mornings, I believe that my first concert was Super Chunk and Bettie Severt at First Avenue in Minneapolis. I won these tickets on the radio and my mom drove me 2 hours to the big city and dropped me off outside the venue. Kinda crazy looking back. I must have been 15? It was around then that I started making music and I’ve never stopped. Well I met Amy on Halloween of 2000 in New Orleans. I was dressed in drag, wearing a trash bag tu tu and she was a 10 foot tall male pirate (on stilts.) We became fast friends, drinking lots of green tea, listening to Dylan, Arvo Paart and Bikini Kill. We had been friends for a season and had planned a camping trip with a few other friends late winter of 2001. Everyone else flaked, so it was just Amy and myself. After the first fire cooked meal of salmon and sweet potatos we became lovers. Spent the following years living in and out of the back of her Toyota Tacoma. The rest is history! I was always writing songs for different bands, but increasinglyI had too many songs for the bands I was playing in. Or some lent themselves more to an acoustic/electric kitchen music format. I'd be singing these songs on the tailgate, or on the back steps, but I’ve never been great at remembering lyrics. So Amy would chime in. She's a natural songbird and a total wizz when it comes to remembering lyrics. So like most things, our collaboration arose from habit and necessity. Amy is an exceptional editor as well, so almost every song I’ve ever written has gone through a process of Amy fine tuning things. ”What are you trying to say here? I don’t think this line needs to be here, you already said that!” etc. The original moniker for my non-band songwrtiting project was called Uke of Phillips. When Amy became more involved in the processes, the name morphed into Uke of Spaces, in part to acknowledge that the practice and process had evolved. Eventually I tired of people asking where the Ukelee was so I dropped the Uke and added Village, an homage to an actual village in Pennsylvania called Village of Spaces Corners.

The group released an incredible body of work with titles such as 2002's debut "This is Gutter Country", "So Far on the Way", "Watershed" and "Flowers in the Night" to name a few. Can you tell me about writing and recording some of these records and what you guys ultimately wanted to achieve and express with this material during the band's wonderful run?

All of those earlier recordings were done before we had children. Amy and I were on the road almost constantly. Living in and out of collective houses, boats, tiny trucks and at one point a hand made motor home that we constructed and convinced to run on vegetable oil. “A streams Area, or Watershed” is an album that we compiled for Caleb and Colleen of Big Blood’s “Don’t Trust the Ruin” imprint. This one relates to a traveler's obsession with beginnings, or origin stories. It was fun to make a concept album with unreleased material that we had already recorded. Through a lifestyle of impermanence, I wanted to create threads of conversations, bivouacs of place through albums, live performances, parties and happenings. Reasons to gather around each other. Life moved fast and our friends and extended community moved faster. Participating in a creative community with lots of art of all forms felt like one of the only permanent bonds within all of the flux.

I first became aware of you guys back in 2010/2011, or so and was totally blown away by the intense, yet poppy compositions! What are some of your most fondest memories of the band and what you guys experienced during those days? Do you have a favorite record(s), or even song(s) if you had to choose? 

Its hard to pick out a favorite record, as they all represent such particular times and places in our lives. Uke of Phillips “Peppermint Bird House Tea Shanty Shack” is such a classic to me now. Recorded 20 years ago, it almost feels like someone entirely else made the thing. But it's still us, just a stones throw and a lifetime away. Some of the parts that the players made up for those songs just kill me. I love it. “Alchemy and Trust” front to back is possibly my favorite. It is the sum of a whole and I can just barely put my finger on it all. “Albumen Ovum” was recorded around the same time and is a companion to “Alchemy and Trust”. I was home alone for a week with the flu and obsessed with watching Moholland Drive. During that time I recorded “Albumen/Ovum” and promptly sent it off to Zully at Goaty Tapes. I can barely recall a thing from that session, although the one song that does include a band was recorded separate from that solo week and was in front of a live audience for public access tv. The band was smothered in damp seaweed, in homage to the late great artist Bern Porter. We had fled New Orleans during and after Katrina in 2005 and bounced around for about a year, during which time we had a sweet little band in Asheville, NC. Some of our closest friends and favorite players were in the band at the time. We did some recording there in Asheville, which produced the album “So Far on the Way”, under the Uke of Spaces Corners moniker. We were always adding bandmates and others would drift away. You never knew who would show up to play. Michael Hurley called us, ‘a raggle taggle band of hippies’. We were increasingly drawn to New England and welcomed with open arms into the folds of extremely vibrant art scenes in Boston, Providence, Western Mass, Southern Vermont and NYC. In 2007 we bought a crumbling 200 year old farmhouse homestead, complete with barn and 2 acres of fertile soil and wooded acreage in Coastal Maine. Here, we renovated and created a destination point, throwing big parties in the barn, opening up lots of space for folks to spend time and stretch out. Enter in the farm folk bammer years. It was a vacuum and that vacuum was filled with so much goodness.

I'd like to jump ahead to your most recent and current project, Village of Spaces. The band released its debut back in 2011 on Corleone Records entitled "Alchemy and Trust". Tell me about writing and recording this record and what that time was like for you guys transitioning to a brand new horizon of music. 

The culmination of our collective Maine housing experience is succinctly encapsulated within our 2009 album, “Alchemy and Trust.” This was our first “In Utero” album and it still feels like an oxytosin dreamscape to this day. We had met Nemo Bidstrup of Time Lag Records and through his generosity, we were able to record this album almost entirely in our home, actually in the room where both of our children would end up being born. Nemo provided the ½” tape machine, engineer/production help, as well as turning us onto countless records which would provide a lifetime of inspiration. Our house mates Clare Hubbard and Andy Neubauer provided more than just accompaniment. Their parts make the album shimmer and glow on and on. Our first child was born in 2009 and during that time we finished up the album, traveling cross country with a newborn, to Portland, Oregon. There we recorded one of the songs with friend and mentor, Michael Hurley, with Alex Yusimov at the knobs. Soon thereafter, Amy and I quickly became consumed by parenting.

The travelers continued to show up to our compound and the concerts continued to happen, but eventually we filled the house with our nuclear fam vibes and kids, so things changed a bit. Our roommates moved on. Touring became limited, but we still managed to get out and play some shows here and there. I forged a now lifelong friend ship with local Maine head and steel player Bob New, which provided a significant uptick in deep jams and new tunage. In 2013, our second child was born with a very significant heart defect. She suffered from grand mal seizures for several years and through this major life change, we longed to live near family and eek out a simpler, more routine based lifestyle. This prompted a temporary, then permanent move to Amy’s homeland of Santa Cruz, CA. In 2014 we moved on to the intergererational intentional community/compound that her parents started in the mid 70’s. We moved from a 2,000 square foot house in maine, into a small one room studio, just a 100 yards from the house where Amy and her two brothers were born in Santa Cruz.

Trd W/D, a label you guys are very familiar with, released the band's next two albums and the great Joshua Burkett worked with you guys on "Mind Change* in 2018. Leading up to the band's most recent LP. "That's Understanding" on TR, what were the bands goals that you ultimately wanted to achieve at this time in your career? Tell me about writing and recording this album and how the deal with the fine folks over at FTR came about? 

Amy and I started Trd W/d records with longtime friend and collaborator Andy Neubauer in 2003, back in New Orleans. We have been contributing individual songs and music to Joshua Burkett’s Mystra Label for the past decade, so when he asked us to do an album with the label, we were delighted! Joshua’s Mystra label, as well as his shop Mysery Train records has been a beacon of creativity for what feels like a quarter century. Amy had transitioned to being full time mother and caregiver to our kids so her role in the band significantly shifted between 2009 and 2020. We were consumed by managing our daughter’s health and Amy was no longer able to join me on stage when we did infrequently book a show. What creative energy she did have, she began pouring into her visual art, something that she has consistently pursued for the past 30 years. This newfound focus and energy has allowed her to create an incredible body of work, doing portraits for clients and engaging in a deep practice of drawing and painting. I began writing songs for this album while taking music and audio recording classes at a local community college. As a 40 some year old, self taught musician who’d never been to college, this was quite a way to change things up! “Secret Recipe” was constructed as a final project for the Digital Music Production Class. I had already taken a couple semesters of Classical Strings, piano and basic music theory that year. The Digital Music Production teacher provided very particular instructions about how many instruments I needed to use, what had to come first, which instruments I needed to construct with soft synth patches and how many live instruments I needed to include. Automation was required, internal bussing, etc. There needed to be verses, bridges and choruses all labeled and color coded within the Digital Audio Workspace. 

I did another song called, “Otter Stamp Song”, similarly for one of those classes. I spend a lot of time working overnights in Big Sur. My employer, folkYEAH! provides me with a campsite and the mornings off to enjoy. Most of the songs on “That’s Understanding” were written in Big Sur at a picnic table in the morning after long nights of working in the field of hospitality, event management and production. Enter the plague of 2020. I finished recording the remainder of the album in isolation, with my little family of four. Our daughter’s struggle with severe epilepsy gripped our family, shaped our days and had a massive influence on the timbre tone and overall vibe of this album. My son and I began surfing every day and I received unemployment for 2 years while writing and recording the remainder of the album at home. We were strict social distancers and had no pod, or peer group. I thrived in the ocean and in my modest home studio, but the kids went a little nuts. We flailed about in a bubble of our own making, surrounding ourselves in as much healing comfort that we could. Knowing then what we now know, would we have done things differently? Hard to say. Our 10 year old daughter has now been seizure free for 2.5 years, so putting most of our energy into supporting her was clearly the right call to make. For “That’s Understanding,” I wanted to make a record that created a space to acknowledge trauma and provide a safer feeling environment for emotions related to trauma. I wanted to create a salve for not just my self and my little nuclear family, but for the listener as well. I also wanted the people I was writing these songs about to enjoy the songs, so in a sense, the album is influenced, but the subjects of the songs. We began releasing records with Feedtube a few albums ago. Byron, co-owner at FTR, has written about many of the bands that I’ve been involved with over the last 20 years in his various columns. We have shared bills with several FTR bands over the years and Ted and Byron are very much part of the same art and music community that we are a part of. Since I’ve been touring in bands we’ve been playing shows in the incredibly fertile Berkshire mountains, home of FTR. 

Would you mind giving some background to tracks such as "Song for Moon' "Secret Recipe", "What a Weight" and "Agnes of Rainbows”? I understand you guys brought in some folks to help bring this album to life including the incredible Caleb Mulkerin of Big Blood.

“Song For Moon” is the second love song that I’ve ever written, about my lifelong companion, collaborator and muse Amy Moon! “Secret Recipe” was written about the pandemic, before the pandemic ever happened. I’m sticking with that! “What a Weight” is a character sketch of my father and my daughter. I’ve taken some liberties here. My dad was emerging from his second open heart surgery and we spoke on the phone shortly after he came back to us here in this reality. I wrote some things down that he said to me in that time where the veil seemed very thin. He recalls none of it and claims that the words are all my own. My daughter Agnes recalls very little about her Grand Mal seizures, but the way that she describes them reminds me a lot of the way people describe near death experiences whether it be drugs, or physical trauma. She is a shaman to this day, if I may take the liberty of using that sacred word. She chants our names and sets us free. She is a magical gift to all. “Little Wind and Sea” is about my relationship with my 14 year old son Olai and our shared love of surfing. His dedication and focus is fierce and for that I am a proud and grateful parent. We’re both obsessed with the force of nature known as the wave. When a swell of water travels across the planet, organizing itself into forms that break and crest into mythical curls, they scrape over sand, reef and cobblestone shore lines. We plan our daily lives around these swells. I am currently homeschooling him for his final year of middle school. Ideally, all work can take the back seat when the perfect conditions arise! “Agnes of Rainbows” is probably the most straight forward song i’ve ever written in regards to narrative. It’s a song about and for my daughter Agnes. It was a gift for her 9th birthday. I did everything I could to ensure that she’d like it. Yes! Caleb has contributed sounds, engineering, production and general magic to most of our albums over the last decade and Colleen has as well.

What have you got in the works for 2024? Any plans for touring/gigs? Is there anything else you would like to further share with the readers?

Our first LP, Uke of Phillips “Peppermint Bird House Tea Shanty Shack” turns 20 years old this year!!! Would be fun to see that reissued again. Touring seems nearly impossible these days. I did a run of 5 shows last fall with my west coast group Village Of Spaces/The Band Of Shapes (The Lodestones) and that was glorious. Unfortunately my bandmates live 4 hours away from me now so we aren’t much of a band. I’ve enjoyed playing solo more recently, but ultimately would enjoy getting a local trio together. I have an albums worth of songs in the works. 5:30-6:30pm, or 7am is the time that I consistently get to engage in the practice of music making these days. Things are moving slow and that’s okay with me right now. I’m working with more key changes than I have in the past and enjoying putting songs in various settings to see how that feels. Engaging in the practice of writing and music making is like maintenance to me. It’s all central to my personal health and well being. It is my hope that when the music lives outside of my body, the result spurs connection and conversation. One goal that I have right now is to do a short tour playing solo Village of Spaces songs in support of a touring/headlining artist.