Dana & Alden at El Club (Detroit)
Reposted on cjam.ca from shft field notes, a Substack Newsletter written by CJAM’s Music Director, Austin Di Pietro, which features long-form essays, reflections, photography and field notes exploring borders, music, culture and creative practice. Subscribe to shft here.
If you’ve tuned in to shft on CJAM FM in the last few months, you’ve likely heard the band I’m about to tell you about. I’ve been a fan of Dana & Alden since hearing the lead single from their new album back in May of this year—the same month I started as music director at CJAM. As I began the new job and started to dig through the seemingly endless stream of new music submissions in my inbox, their song “Lee’s Greenhouse” stood out immediately as something worth remembering. In addition to the Oregon-born, Brooklyn-based brother duo of Dana and Alden McWayne, the Brazilian-tinged track features genre-bending savant, Mei Semones (an Ann Arbor native) on vocals and guitar.
I had the track on repeat in the following days, and was hungry for more from this new group I had just stumbled upon. Thankfully, I didn’t have to wait long—their new album Papa’s Boat dropped on August 14th. Since then, the album’s sun soaked anthem “Summer Nights” has become somewhat of a theme song for shft, opening each week’s show. The opening bars include a shoutout to college radio that feels so fitting…
Their cross-country tour passed through Detroit last week and I was fortunate to be in the audience to see the groovy magic in action.
It was my first time at the iconic Mexicantown venue, El Club. I’d heard about it for years, usually in the same breath as some great show that I had to miss, but this time the stars had aligned.
The all-ages room in Southwest Detroit boasts such esteemed alumni as Daniel Caesar, H.E.R., Idles, The Gories, Lizzo, Billie Eilish among many others. Having finally experienced it myself, it’s no wonder why it’s such a popular stop on many bands’ regular touring circuits. The room was clean, intimate, sounded great, and if you’re not tempted by the pizza-by-the-slice offered at the bar, being in the heart of Mexicantown has its advantages as far as food goes… The opening act was a few minutes late to the stage because he lost track of time having a taco across the street.
The soft glow of the pink neon ‘El Club’ sign just inside the doors also makes for a great photo op for the more photographically inclined… I have a face for radio myself so I kept my mug out of it in favour of a more journalistic approach.
Supporting Dana & Alden for a large portion of their North American tour, singer-songwriter Alex Amen took the stage shortly after 8pm sporting an acoustic guitar, cowboy boots and all denim. For those of us in the crowd who neglected to do our research on the opening act, this was a bit of an unexpected sight at a pseudo-jazz/indie show. But this crowd came prepared with open minds and ears.
The audience fell silent with Amen’s first notes. There were a few muffled chuckles at the thought of a lanky, soft-spoken country boy opening for a groovy nu-jazz group from Oregon, but they quickly dissipated under the intensity of his gaze and the unpretentious ‘heart on the sleeve’ storytelling of his songs.
Still, it was difficult to keep a smirk off your face – this shaggy-haired, mustache-sporting, baby face 26 year old sounded like he could be a John Denver impersonator and dressed like he was Matthew McConaughey in Dazed and Confused.
After a few songs, someone shouted out “Are you John Denver reincarnated?” To which he replied “No, I’m Alex Amen reincarnated; I’m stuck here.” For those who didn’t initially connect with the classic country aesthetic in his music, he quickly won over with a quick wit and great stage banter.
Amen’s songs sounded well beyond their years – no doubt a product of the free-spirited drifting of his early life. Born and raised in Texas, he moved to California at eighteen to study filmmaking, but he dropped out after one semester and moved onto a commune with historic ties to the counterculture movements of the mid-1960s. He later moved to an island in the Puget Sound of Washington State where he spent a few isolated years, and has toured across the continent.
Listen to Alex Amen’s music here.
After a brief intermission, Dana and Alden took the stage with their ragtag group of bandmates – five in total, including the two brothers. Anyone with a TikTok account would recognize drummer Alden, who goes by the moniker @gucci_pineapple and posts videos featuring his characteristic off-the-wall sense of humour. He came out donning a plaid beret and thrifted bear sweatshirt with embroidered tagline “My Grandchildren are the Apples of my Eye”. The other band members were also dressed in the most hipster, mismatched attire.
It was also a mismatched crowd. We managed to find and chat with another couple our age, but us thirty-something jazz fans were the minority. We were outnumbered by the much younger Gen Z crowd who’d likely heard about the show on TikTok or Instagram via Alden’s @gucci_pineapple videos. Dana and Alden’s music is often cited as attracting a new, younger audience to jazz via social media.
From the first tune, the band’s chemistry was undeniable. This was a group of friends who’d built a solid rapport and group sound through years of performing together. The brothers were born and raised in Eugene, Oregon, and most of their other musical collaborators are graduates of Berklee College of Music in Boston, where Alden recently completed his studies. They’re now based in Brooklyn, New York.
On keyboard and vocals, EBBA (a songwriter and artist in her own right) lent her understated, sweet voice to several songs during the set, mostly in unison with the tenor saxophone or flute, adding a beautiful airy texture. She was the featured vocalist on two songs, and it was a real treat to hear her soaring above the band with perfectly executed riffs.
In the back corner, surrounded by a variety of synthesizers, pedals, woodwind instruments and samplers was the curly-haired Salim Charvet – also a member of the Brooklyn-based acid jazz quartet ‘cows’. His soprano sax and flute solos were a personal highlight, showing a command of both instruments and strong harmonic sense.
Rounding out the rhythm section was the seriously funky Andrew Mitchell on bass whose chill demeanour and laid back feel cemented the groove across every shift in style.
Dana is the outlier – described as the ‘elder statesman’ of the group by younger brother Alden, he has a separate career as an organic farm inspector, but by the refined tone of his tenor saxophone and facility on the horn, you wouldn’t know he wasn’t also a Berklee grad. The brothers’ shared musical upbringing and love for everything from Weather Report and Pharaoh Sanders to Bonnie Raitt and Joan Baez comes through in the music.
The whole crew plays on Papa’s Boat, along with a long list of heavy-hitting guests. It’s a deeply personal record for the brothers, named in honour of their late grandfather. Their whole set was brimming with personal anecdotes about their family – from descriptions of their grandfather to a heartfelt tribute to their mother during the song “Family Garden” (off their 2024 album Coyote, You’re My Star), which included a sample of their mother’s voice at the end.
One particularly memorable anecdote came just before they plunged into “Lee’s Greenhouse” – Dana provided a profile of the character who inspired the track; an eccentric, kombucha-fueled farmer named Lee that he met while working as an organic farm inspector in Oregon. He described the many afternoons he would spend together talking about life and music as Lee blasted loud spiritual jazz from his stereo.
That willingness to let us in, to wear their hearts on their sleeve is a big part of what made this show memorable. As audience members, we bought into the story they were telling with their music through these more vulnerable moments. It made for a listening experience far beyond what you can get at home through a set of speakers, pair of headphones, or a screen.
Listen to Dana and Alden’s music here.
My one disappointment was not hearing “Summer Nights” on the set list, but it is October so I’ll cut them some slack. Always leave the crowd wanting more, I guess? I’ll keep spinning it on shft to get my fix.
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