Daisy the Great, the folk-inflected indie rock duo comprising Kelley Dugan and Mina Walker, are embarking on an exhilarating journey across North America, opening for The Vaccines and The Kooks.
The band made their debut in 2017 with “The Record Player Song,” which quickly proved an immediate smash, now boasting over 250M worldwide streams. They released their full-length debut LP, I’m Not Getting Any Taller, in 2019, followed in 2020 by the quarantine-born Soft Songs EP. The band has collaborated with some of the best in the indie space including illuminati hotties, Claud, AJR and more.
As they prepare to grace the stage at MTELUS on March 5th, I had the pleasure of catching up with them to delve into their musical odyssey and find out how they feel about touring with all those Brits.
“Super excited!” Kelley exclaims. “We’ve had a bit of a break from touring, and now we’re super excited to get back on the road and be playing the shows. We haven’t performed in North America in about a year, so it’s really, really exciting,” Mina says.
From being acting majors at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts to the musical powerhouse that is Daisy the Great, Kelley and Mina’s musical beginnings were almost accidental. Their foray into musical collaboration blossomed unexpectedly as they abandoned their initial theatrical aspirations in favour of crafting authentic, soul-stirring melodies. “We were supposed to write a sketch, but we were like, ‘Let’s write a song instead,'” Kelley reminisces.
“We wrote the whole script for it. And then when we started talking about songs, we wrote one really epic, like multi-part musical theatre song for it. And then we’re like, okay, well, we need the music for the indie rock kids to play. Like what’s their sound? And then we started talking about music that we’d already written. And I think that the first day that we started showing each other music that we’d already written, we were immediately trying to harmonize on each other’s songs, and it kind of took off immediately. And we never ever spoke about the musical ever again. We were like, let’s just be a band. We don’t have to write a full musical just to be a band. We could just be a band.”
Drawing from their diverse musical upbringing, Kelley and Mina trace their influences back to their familial roots.
“My mom was obsessed with like old musicals, like guys and dolls, singing in the rain, the Wizard of Oz,” says Mina “I basically just watched a few musicals all the time when I was a little kid on VHS. And then I would go out on my porch and sing it. I had this crazy voice when I was a kid, but honestly, I kind of wish I had it now. I don’t know where it went. I like age backwards or something. Cause when I was a little kid, I had a voice that sounded like I smoked six packs a day. And it was like, I was always like out on my front porch and like, “La la la.” Like shaking this crazy, bluesy voice. I think I was just yelling all the time or something. But when I was younger, I was singing all these songs and I didn’t quite feel like they fit in my voice. But I loved to sing. And I think that over time I realized that the best feeling was to write my own stuff to sing. And that’s where I felt like my voice fit. That’s where I started getting inspired by music and stuff.”
“My mom was an opera singer,” Kelley tells me. “I grew up in a super musical home, and I also grew up in New York. So we saw a lot of live theatre and live music. And it was just really kind of always a main part of my life. And then I started doing musical theatre as I was growing up and singing in a lot of different types of genres. So I did a lot of classical singing. I also sang jazz, and I sang theatre, obviously. And then I started writing my own songs when I was maybe like 12-ish. And it was always a giant part of me. And then, as I went to school, we were studying acting and kind of fell to the side for a bit. And then, basically, our acting school was very rigorous, schedule-wise. It was kind of like conservatory-style acting training, and it just took up our whole lives. So I took a little bit of a music break during that time, but I always kept up with my lessons and everything like that. But then, basically, as soon as we got out of school, we started the band. So it was always kind of meant to be, I think.”
Listen to the full interview below:
Fiona Apple emerges as a beacon of inspiration for both artists; embodying the essence of authenticity and individuality, they strive to emulate. “I felt like her voice was so specific to her, and her lyrics were so crunchy and cool,” Mina muses. “I like when you can hear a song and be like, that’s that person, like no question.”
Kelley agrees. “I also definitely grew up mimicking vocalists. So there’s also kind of a wing of inspiration that I feel like I would listen to people sing and then I would try to sing like them. And I think it’s actually been kind of an interesting journey in writing my own music of figuring out what my voice sounds like. I feel like that can be tricky growing up listening to other people. It’s hard to be like, is this version of me singing completely devoid of like all these people I’ve listened to, or is it this amalgamation of all those people put together that can influence me and they can be in there, and I can play with those colours. Like sometimes we’ll be writing a song that sounds nothing like any of these people, but I’ll be like, okay, this one is like a little bit of Brittany and a little bit of like Laura Marling. And then everyone’s like, this doesn’t sound like that. And I’m like, I know, but for me, it does.”
As they gear up for the long drives ahead, the duo turns to music to fuel their journey. “We literally just posted on our socials for people to send us songs because the drives are so long,” Kelley reveals.
Once at the venue though, amidst the pre-show buzz, Daisy the Great indulges in a heartwarming ritual, coming together for a huddle to bolster each other’s spirits.
“It’s like a moment where we come together, and we’re all about to do something really fun,” Mina shares. Like we’re all on the same team, and we all love each other, and we’re all like, ‘Okay, we’re about to do this.’ So I think it’s a nice moment. It’s a moment of like, okay, we’re about to do something together.”
Daisy The Great play MTelus on March 5th with The Kooks and The Vaccines.
Photo credit – Kristen Jan-Wong
Share this :
