Daniel Donato Cosmic Country and Its Unique Sound

For singer-songwriter Daniel Donato, who self-describes as a “cosmic country” artist, the past and present play equal roles in informing his unique sound.

“[Cosmic country] is a form of music that takes place in all points of time,” he says via Zoom from his Nashville area home. “When you come to our show, you hear songs and traditions from the past, and new things that are very modern and show what music can do.”

The current tour that brings Donato to Cain Park in Cleveland Heights on Thursday, June 18, pairs him with country icon Marty Stuart and Stuart’s backing band, the Superlatives.

“Marty in his career has been self-proclaimed as a cosmic country artist as well,” Donato says. “It’s like a real live museum. You get to see legends from the past come and play with us, who are bringing this proprietary form of American music into the future. There is so much truth to be found in so many styles. There’s truth to be found in Jimmie Rodgers songwriting and singing and in Cannonball Adderly’s single note improvisations and the same thing goes for the reverb-heavy honky-tonk swing found on Buck Owens’s records and the really heavy four-on-the-floor dance music of Daft Punk. I try to find that true thread that ties all that together. It just comes out in a unique way.”

For Donato, an amphitheater tour with Stuart represents a victory lap of sorts. For the first three years of his career, Donato busked on the Nashville streets.

“That experience was a blessing,” he says when asked about the time period. “It was not obvious at the time, like most blessings. It was one of those deals. I would be lying if I said that every time I step on stage I don’t think about it. It was a blessing in how it crafted my musicianship and how it crafted my perspective now. I now think of this as my career. I have that relative framework of where I started and where I came from and the sense of urgency and organization in terms of my team and my business and my vision.”

Donato put out his first solo record, Starlight, in 2019 and cherished his first-ever studio session.

“If you can get a studio session in the books, they’ve cleared that calendar, and there are five other accounts they could have made more money and received more attention than mine did,” he says. “I think I get less nervous the more we do it, but at that time, I was pretty nervous, and I got in my way a lot.”

Over time, Donato’s live show, which features improvisational jams, has evolved. He took that improvisational mentality into the studio for his latest album, Horizons.

“I feel way more expressive and free when we go to record,” he says.

One album standout, “Blame the Train,” a song with a particularly twangy guitar riff, sounds like Bob Dylan but sped up as Donato’s nasally vocals carry the tune.

“I love Bob Dylan,” says Donato when asked about the comparison. “When I think about the concept of 250 years ago when this country started, I don’t think anyone could have realized what kind of music could have come out of this country. There never could have been a Bob Dylan anywhere else. He’s such a great reflection of the values of this country in that way. He’s uniquely unapologetic. I love him, and I love train songs. I’m a big Jimmie Rodgers and Merle Haggard fan. There was a record when I was very young called Same Train, A Different Time. That was a Jimmie Rodgers tribute album. I thought we just needed a train song.”

Elsewhere on the album, Donato and Co. take the old-time fiddle song “Hangman’s Reel” and put a twist on it.

“We put it through a cosmic country filter,” he says of the song. “I curate music for cosmic country listeners that wouldn’t be obvious. I listen to old Alan Lomax recordings from Western Appalachia. That was a tune I had always loved, and I loved the story behind it. That’s really it. And we play it in the way that we love it.”

Donato says he’s not quite sure how he and Stuart will collaborate during the show, but he says he has a ton of respect for the veteran musician.

“I think Marty and I will play together and even multiple members of our band, which is very rare,” he says. “Marty is also a fantastic photographer. The amount of ephemera and collectibles that Marty has is unparalleled. I think he has the boot that Patsy Cline was wearing the night she died. He has old notepads from Hank Williams and absolutely everything. I was very humbled to find out that Marty was wanting to play with us, but I also know that he wants us to bring it. I think it’ll be exciting for him. I think at this stage, he only wants to do events and endeavors that are inspiring to him.”