Canadian indie-folk singer Dan Mangan has been afforded a great life and has traveled to many great places around the world thanks to his music and the success he has seen in the last 10 years or so. Mangan burst into the music scene in his early 20’s and released his first album in 2005 called Postcards & Daydreaming. But it wasn’t until the release of his second album, Nice, Nice, Very Nice in 2009, Mangan’s life changed for the better.
Mangan was able to quit his serving job to concentrate on his music career. That same year Mangan was awarded “Artist of the Year” at the Verge Music Awards in September 2009 and with that came a $25,000 cheque which he used to pay off his recording debt and to buy himself a van. Shortly after, Mangan signed to the Arts & Crafts label and Nice, Nice, Very Nice was short-listed for the Polaris Music Prize.
In 2011, Mangan released his third studio album, Oh Fortune, which earned him a pair of Juno Awards and was long-listed for the Polaris Music Prize. 2009 through 2012 was a booming period of growth for Mangan.
“It was a very, very exciting time to go from playing in the corner of coffee shops to filling theaters and seeing my mug looking back at me from newspaper boxes as we showed up in various towns, it was really cool,” Mangan said during a phone interview from his Western Canadian home earlier this month.
Music has allowed Mangan to travel to different parts of the globe. Besides Canada and U.S., Mangan has toured the UK, Australia, Germany, Netherlands and Croatia. He said he has traveled to places he otherwise would not have been able to go to had it not been for his music.
“I’ve been over to Europe 15 or 20 times over the years and all through the States and Australia and it’s incredible! We’ve had lots of moments where we ended up in some crazy mountainscape in the Alps somewhere in Switzerland or something. And they are types of places that we could never afford to go to for vacation,” said Mangan, adding, “but you end up in these amazing little enclaves around the world and you realize, yeah, music brought us here!”
When asked where his favourite place is that he has visited, Mangan replies, “There’s this one spot in Austria that we’ve been able to stop at twice now called Badgastein and it’s way up in the mountains and it’s this kind of crazy old resort town that really had a boom about a hundred years ago. And it was where all the sort of wealthy Austrians would go. But now it’s almost entirely abandoned.”
Mangan says there is still a handful of businesses in Badgastein along with a natural hot springs.
“It’s crazy old. It’s like a Wes Anderson film with all these amazing old buildings, old architecture built to the side of mountains. But it’s weird because it wreaks of this certain old money and yet at the same time, half the buildings are completely abandoned and it sort of has this nostalgic yesteryear feeling to it. I can’t even really explain how beautiful this place is, it’s like a fairy tale. And it feels like something out of a movie. And so there were a couple of times we’ve had a day off in the right part of the tour and we’d been able to make a detour and go and stay there for a night to wander around and go to the hot springs and stuff. Those moments are just really special.”
In addition to his first three albums, Mangan has also released Club Meds in 2015 and More or Less in 2018. This past year has been busy for Mangan. Since last November, Mangan released five cover tunes including Losing My Religion by R.E.M., Have A Little Faith In Me by John Hiatt, Ex-Factor by Lauryn Hill, In the Aeroplane Over the Sea by Neutral Milk Hotel and the latest Love You Madly by Cake which came out in April.
Mangan recently returned to the road after a nearly three-year hiatus to help raise his kids and score a few films and TV shows along with other projects. He appeared on Jimmy Kimmel back in April where he performed Troubled Mind and Just Fear off of More or Less.
“We did a big tour earlier this year after the album (More or Less) came out. We did a January, February tour and then festivals in Europe and bounced around,” Mangan said.
Mangan is currently on tour in Ontario which began Nov. 19 in London and will continue Nov. 20 in St. Catharines and on to other cities including Peterborough, Kingston, Barrie, Bayfield, and Creemore.
“We’re kind of going back and just playing smaller markets in Ontario. I’m looking forward to some nice little theaters and just a good batch of rooms.”
And just in time for the tour, on Nov. 15 Mangan re-released a 10th anniversary edition of Nice, Nice, Very Nice.
“That’s the record that really changed my life back in 2009 and we dug up a bunch of old demos, previous recordings of songs that ended up on the album or the songs that I wrote back then that we never recorded or released and you know, sort of walked down memory lane and got nostalgic looking into all this old material and so we’re re-releasing it with a whole second LPs worth of material that has never seen the light of day,” Mangan explained.
When asked if he will be playing any of the material that just came out on the re-release Mangan said, “It’s hard to say, actually, I mean, I might pick one sort of song from that batch later. I’m not sure. There’s a lot of material that we want to get to. You know, the thing about having five records is no matter what songs you play, there’s going to be somebody who’s a little bit disappointed. They didn’t hear this one particular song they were hoping to hear. So, you know, it’s tricky, but in general, I would say that the songs we are playing are going to be a very diverse mix of all of the catalog.”
Although Mangan has played in Niagara in the past (he played Jackson-Triggs in Niagara-on-the-Lake three times and headlined the Cicada Music & Arts Festival last year in Port Dalhousie) he said he’s never played in St. Catharines and is looking forward to playing FIrstOntario Performing Arts Centre.
“I’ve heard great things about it!”
Opening the show at FirstOntario Performing Arts Centre will be Ocean Potion.
Connect with Dan Mangan online: Facebook
Connect with Arts & Crafts online: Facebook
Connect with Ocean Potion online: Facebook
Connect with FirstOntario Performing Arts Centre online: Facebook
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_2Q9ywHgWxg
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