DARIEN DORSEY FEATURE INTERVIEW
The last few years have been rough, no matter which corner of the earth you reside.
In America, where producer - and now recording artist - Darien Dorsey hails from, there is finally cause for optimism. The divisive, hostile and frankly draining President Trump years have come to an end, and with the continued global rollout of a vaccine to combat the pandemic there’s hope that better times lie ahead for us all. The rousing finale and second single, The Horixon from Darien Dorsey’s self-released debut EP 19Seventy Free captures this mood perfectly.
“The horizon is shining, cause it’s gonna be alright come what may…” go the lyrics, sung by a heavenly choir over a flowery soundscape of flutes, Fender Rhodes & Wurlitzer keys with guiro percussion. Nostalgic yet fresh, like a new Instagram post in a sepia tinted filter. It’s a work of beauty that recalls the mellow-sunshine music of yesteryear - of groups such as The 5th Dimension, Rotary Connection, Spiritual Concept & Force of Nature.
“I remember the day I wrote The Horixon,” says Darien, on a Zoom call from his home pad in Los Angeles. “It was just after Edwin Hawkins had passed away. He was like the godfather of contemporary gospel music in the sixties and his Oh Happy Day changed everything that came out afterwards. I really wanted to write something in that spirit.”
Darien returned from a gig down under, to tape all of the instrumental parts himself, except for the flute - played by childhood friend & jazz musician Brent Birckhead – and to record the esteemed KLJH Community Choir on the chorus, Stevie Wonder’s opening act who got their name from his radio station. “I kept on tuning it up in Australia,” Darien explains, “I refined the lyrics and took out the verses, making it loose. Then when I returned, I called up Brent and said ‘Hey man, I’ve got this idea … I want you to lay down some flute, kinda like Hubert Laws or Bobbi Humphrey, and just do your thing’. I had three weeks to map it all out, write the whole score, add the Rhodes & Wurli (sic) and teach it (to the choir) before the session,” he says, adding in an unassuming manner, “It was a complicated piece.”
Completed at Raphael Saadiq’s Blakeslee Recording complex, the session was cut in studio A, under a mural depicting black music legends Graham Central Station, serving as creative inspiration to whomever should walk through the door.
“I believe that we’re entering a new black renaissance,” says Dorsey, who spells the word horizon with an “x” on the EP. “There’s a resurgence of interest in the cultural themes and social injustices that have affected black people in America and the “x” represents the crossing over into another dimension of hope, consciousness, and progress.”
A dimension that might be associated with the dawning of the age of Aquarius, apt considering there’s a promo shot that finds Darien sat on the Hollywood Hills at twilight, looking meditative, whilst wearing Aztec-psychedelic trousers with classic Converse style shoes. Not that he’s ever tuned in and copped out, dropped some acid, or gone all out hippie.
“Nah, I’ve never taken it that far,” he admits. “Its just imagination. Music is the ultimate vibe, there’s so much music that influences me I just let that be the thing that takes me there.”
The title of the EP was suggested to him by songwriter & friend Taura Stinson, who was working with Dorsey (& Saadiq) on the music for the 2017 feature length documentary Step, a film about a girl’s high school dance team, based in his home city of Baltimore.
“It was a fairly quick turnaround, like in a week we ended up completing five or six songs. I’d work out, eat and show up to the studio every day. So we were recording, getting the visual and I did a track which kinda felt like it came from the ‘70s; I asked them both ‘What should we call it?’ and Taura just straightaway went, “Nineteen Seventy Free”. Like a play on words. The “free” to denote freedom of expression, freedom of the arts. At the end of the Vietnam war, that era of the early ‘70s was just one of the peaks of creativity (historically) and I just thought that it would be a great title to represent the music I had been working on.”
Born in a suburb of Baltimore in the mid-eighties, Darien was raised in a family that loved music. Growing up to the soundtrack of his dad’s vinyl record collection of mostly soul, gospel & disco, he also heard bands like Three Dog Night, Steppenwolf, The Mamas & the Papas along with Sly & The Family Stone. His aunt was into jazz and kept those sturdy old 78 rpm record sets of Sarah Vaughan & Dizzy Gillespie. His dad splashed out on a piano to practice at home with the church choir, and by the time Darien was five years old he had mastered every note of The Lion Sleeps Tonight. He dug doo-wop and in his bedroom he used to listen to Boyz II Men - had a poster of them on his wall.
“It was Wanya all day! I used to sing along, waving my hands in the air. Shawn Stockman was my guy though … very smooth.”
He’d cane the music of Mint Condition as well, before getting into the classics, the Temptations, Earth, Wind & Fire, Minnie Riperton and the likes. Piano was his first instrument, but he soon picked up guitar and bass.
After attending Berklee College of Music, Dorsey relocated to the Big Apple before eventually settling in the City of Angels. There his production work included tracks by Gordon Chambers, Lalah Hathaway, Candace Coles (aka CJ Legacy) & Artpeace, contributing to numerous television shows, commercials, films, and recordings; most notably as a multi-instrumentalist & string arranger on Mary J. Blige's Golden Globe & Oscar nominated song Mighty River.
“I went to the festivities prior to and after the Oscars, a little bit of everybody was there. From Drake to Gwyneth Paltrow to Viola Davis & Chad Boseman, it was a real cool hang. There were no real in depth conversations, but I’d pass by people and say, ‘Hey how you doin’?’ I was pretty casual.” He laughs.
It was another L.A. Based luminary, Super producer Ali Shaheed Muhammad - former member of A Tribe Called Quest & Lucy Pearl – who, after hearing the late ‘60s west coast harmony vibe of Think To Myself echoed Stinson’s opinion that Darien should save the music for his own project.
“I played them a ton of stuff and Ali picked out Think To Myself and said to me, ‘You should do something with this.’ So it felt like the right time. I had always been composing but I started to really write more lyrics for the concept, to give a nod to that era which had influenced me so much.”
Focusing on 19Seventy Free the first idea Darien officially conceived for the EP-stroke-mini album was Half, a song he co-wrote with his brother Kevin after a conversation they’d had about trying to make ends meet in San Francisco. A song which is also reported to have brought Brooklyn based singer/songwriter Gordon Chambers to tears the first time he heard it.
“My brother Kevin is like my best friend, he’s 15 years older, works in tech, and he was telling me how back in the ‘90s rent used to only be around 20% of your income but now its closer to 50% and he said, ‘Like, man, how you gonna live on half?!’ So I pulled out a keyboard and said, ‘Wait … give me one second!’” Darien laughs, adding “I gave it a real Bill Withers treatment, just a man and his instrument. That song was a special turning point, I knew then that I wanted to do an entire project.”
The EP begins with Signs and a solitary keyboard, like he’s playing alone in the cavernous surrounds of the New Temple Missionary Baptist Church.
“With the piano I wanted to have an old school gospel vibe, like Valerie Simpson or Billy Preston, that’s the kind of texture I was looking for.” He nods, adding an “Mm-hmm” as confirmation.
With it’s stacked vocals, and sombre tone, Signs is the most personal song on the project says Darien.
“It’s a story about when you love someone and they don’t quite give you the attention, it’s like ‘Listen I told you I was here for you, but you didn’t follow the signs’ but there’s a bit of imagination to it as well. You can do that in song writing, exaggerate it to paint a vivid picture. It came about by humming the tune, improvising the recurring melody…” - Darien begins to sing the ‘buh buh buh’ hook - “… until I’m just re-harmonizing different chords. I put it together and I’m very proud of that piece, and the way it has that cool build at the end.”
Behind him, hanging on the wall in view of the camera, is a handsome deep blue Epiphone ES 355 guitar, a gift from Raphael Saadiq after Darien gravitated towards the instrument at the Blakeslee sessions. To show his gratitude, Darien has recorded a piece of music in tribute, Charlie Jones is a homage to both Raphael (whose real name is Charlie Ray) and his other favourite producer Quincy Jones (with, he says, an uncredited doth of the cap to British string arranger Simon Hale). It’s a jazzy-trip into the sublime. Crissy J’s strings are lush and the electric bass tight n’ cute, like Saadiq’s gospeldelic masterworks of the early to mid-noughties. Originally slated for the EP, Darien decided to hold it back at the last minute, to release as a single with his mate Brent Birckhead in April. You have the freedom to do that when it’s your label and your music.
“Getting to this point in my career required a ton of reflection,” says Darien. “Of understanding who I am and what I want to contribute to the world. To create something new, create something unique and create something that represents who you are. I think that’s what 19Seventy Free is, it’s the spirit of the ‘70s but my interpretation of it. It’s my purest and truest self.”