Dani Erin

Danierinmusic.com has become a evolution of the first idea I had steaming from Dani & The Mad Men.    It starts from an idea and starts to change and evolve always keeping the fundamental core love for really great classic music.  The footage is live and I couldn't be more happy and excited for it.

The real fact remains that there was 3 months where I didn't write, in those dark times I wanted to give up most days.  The real truth is that I still had an amber in my heart, it wasnt completely dead. The fire was still there just had to evolve the next idea.  Its in those times that many do call it quits and then you never see where it may have gone.  You will always wonder.  The train slowly gets back on track and I am excited to represent original art.  My ideas, my voice, my music and I only hope to inspire in others a bravery I hold close to my heart.

So go to danierinmusic.com, support art and take it for what it is.  Sometimes the greatest gifts are simple, not mass-produced.  No smoke and mirrors.  Just honest, what I have been saying all along.

The New Chapter

Want to see what this gal has been up to?

Then go to danierinmusic.com

Hope u enjoy..

5 months.

Its the longest road.  5 months of my new world, a world stripped of most familiarity.  I miss my family.  Admitting it most surly feels like I swallowed an acorn.  I swell with rain in my eyes. I went too long.  You shut it off long enough to not feel what missing someone feels like, the more intense the love the pipe begins to rust.  The water erodes and wears, overlook it too long and the pipe breaks and lets out such a intense gush.  In order to continue on in this journey I have learned that one gets good at this turning off process because when you truly love someone and are away from them, on most days it kills you.   When you love 10 people intensely, it gives such an ache in your soul when you cant physically kiss them.  Hug them just sit with them...just be with them.

You miss birthdays, events.  Life events, sometimes just the day to day which is exciting enough.  5 months was too long.  Some days you feel forgotten, that they are moving on without you.  Its too long to go without the ones that protect you, love you not because they have to but because they are a part of you.  Without even one of them there is always a piece missing, I cant imagine how it feels for them.  The missing is like a black cloud over my entire days leading up to when I go home.  Because what matters is beyond anything I could ever have here.  The hometown isn't much, but its perfect.  The food isn't that great but its not what feeds you.  The laughter of hearing my brothers kids is just just.... I cant really put that one in words.  When I wake up I see everyone around me and know I am home and thats a feeling New York could never give unless all 10 of them were here.

7 days to make up for a long 5 months.  

The Wonder

My heart swells with an intense love for I again am doing what I love.  My clouds came in the moment the music stopped playing.  Sometimes I feel like my soul is one giant record player.  But it stopped.  The needle didn't follow the grind of the record.  I heard nothing just people talking.  I write often about when you fall out of love with the one thing that feeds you.  I ate but was starving.  I loved but was always searching.  It has been a long road.  Confronted by all the fears you never realized you had.  New York brings things to you at a more intense rate.  Your strength is always tested, your weaknesses are always exposed.  The learning curve sometimes wrecks my brain.  But then you think of your story and know so far deep down that this happened to you for some odd reason and if you gave up now you still would wonder.  This wonder would most certainly take my last breath from me.  This wonder would make me search for the rest of my life.  It would kill me.

I am on my second journey of creating music.  Its the only thing that actually makes sense to me at this point.   The music is the best I have done to date.  If I would have given up, if you gave up during the process you will always wonder.  You will sit there with a half written book, pages tore and thrown away.  You will always paint your ending instead of living it out.  The doors are more open now, the instinct sharper.  I said before that I was in round 35 and had one swing left in me, I was actually in round 10 with much more to go.  Your reality seems much harsher then it actually is.

Here's to my new love affair with music..and in whatever you are doing just remember you are probably not done yet.  Keep going and remember its round 10 not 35 and you always one more punch.

Hurricane Sandy

I live 15 minutes away from Manhattan literally a 4 stop subway ride away.  If I didn't move about a month ago I would have been caught right in it without electricity and flooded streets.  This poem doesn't discredit the damage that many suffered in the mist of the storm.  Having said that I spend about 2 hours within nature a day if one was to quiet themselves for long enough you would hear her discontent, you would understand that she isn't done yet.

Right before the storm I thought it would be a good idea to go to the supermarket and that was a mistake.  I watched people scrambling to grab the last milk, fighting over the last loaf of bread. I was no joke the 75th person in line. The mood was daunting and everyone guarded their place in line as if they were entering the pearly gates of heaven.  Panic, frustration and selfishness..the hurricane didn't bring the brighter side of humanity to light perhaps the aftermath has.

Hurricane Sandy

Your mad at us
I see your frustration
Im not the only one that can sense your fury
That knows of our neglect
I walk into you everyday
From your invisible hush
Your kiss of a summers end to my cheeks
To your incredible silence
I hear that you could destroy us
And it saddens me to say that one day you most certainly will
You hold a grudge
You will sob the biggest tears
Until your hurt is known
You are keeping score
The biggest is yet to come
And we will all be
SHOCKED when it does
We will blame you as the destructive one
Even though I will know it was us all along
You whom takes and gives nothing back
Will be on channel 5 news
Talking about the home you lost
As if mother nature wasn't home enough for you
We will clear shelves in panic
Everyone for themselves
Every last crumb not one left for the mouse
Greedy
Arrogant
You may look the other way
However she always makes herself known
We shall only be so lucky
To walk away with nothing more then a bruise

The Red Stairs.

I think there is a hard truth that seems to slap you dead in the face.  That truth is somewhat of a hard pill to swallow and when you wake to its realization you wonder how you got there all along.  What road did I stumble down.  How did I at the crossing of right and wrong choose this?  Fuck, can I go back?  Am I here for a lesson..I found myself on my birthdays eve on the red stairs in Times Square.  That's where I wanted to go, so I went.

I remember the feeling New York gave me when I first arrived.  It was so shiny and filled with opportunity.  Flying into it used to give me butterflies and I swear the streets looked gold to me.  I went to red stairs in remembrance of this feeling.  I like watching people that come to NYC and go to Times Square for the first time.  Their eyes big and wondrous, they have been watching this place on TV every New Years from the time they've been in diapers.  I sat and I cried.  I truly have a heartbeat for New York but overtime it not only shows you what it can do but also what it cant do..for some.  It shows you what your capable of and what you still need to learn.  And it all happens at an intense rate.

I watched as little girls painted the massive big screens with hopeful envy.  I saw cameras as if they were fireflies in the dead of a forest.  No one looks down, everyone looks up to the high heavens.  So much light your almost blinded.  If Times Square turned all the lights off for 5 minutes I believe it could save enough energy to light a small village in Africa for a week.  I sat and I cried and then I prayed because I know I'm losing faith but more importantly I am the wall that blocks me. This truth is for everyone.  You are your own roadblock. You are the gatekeeper and you hold the key to EVERYTHING.  I sat and I smiled.  When your quiet enough you can hear your own fury.  You can see the storm that isn't settled.  Your not content, yet.  There is a beautiful thing that happens in that moment.  You want more.  Tears streamed beautiful streaks of black liner down the apples of my cheeks and I listened.  I sat in the dead of hopeful and losing faith and on those red stairs I chose hope.

There is nothing more daunting then when you lose faith in yourself because then you lose faith in everything else.

BKL=BROOKLYN

Brooklyn is the most populous of New York City's five boroughs, with approximately 2.5 million residents, and the second-largest in area. Since 1896, Brooklyn has had the same boundaries as Kings County, which is now the most populous county in New York State and the second-most densely populated county in the United States, after New York County (Manhattan). It is also the westernmost county on Long Island.


There was a moment that I felt it was all going to disappear, a time when I actually saw myself sitting on the edge of my parents lake.  Crying.  I want to remember this chapter, and its called Brooklyn.  Having moved into my own place I want to relish in this moment because I have never been so exhausted, so broke and yet so capable of anything in my life.  If you can move in Manhattan, you can do anything because moving in general is hard but moving in Manhattan is like pulling teeth with a tweezers.  Like painting a mansion with a toothbrush.  Like climbing a mountain in a wheelchair.  You jump through so many hoops I feel as if in my past life I was in the circus.  You get so high you feel like methamphetamine is childsplay and so low that the weight of it all makes you feel 2 inches tall.
But in turn do you know what it gives you? OWNERSHIP.

Up until days ago I lived in a part of Manhattan called the Lower East Side (LES).  I rented a room in a place that never felt like my own.  This little hood is one of the best in the city.  Its heavy, grungy, dirty, hip, bustling and nothing shy of attitude and an I don't give a fuck disposition.  Anything goes and no one will look twice at anything really. This hood taught me to dissolve judgement, to not be shocked by much.  The differences I saw become beautiful lessons about individuality and creating your own self.  This hood taught me to let my creative being shine.  To let my 1950's image grow and develop.  I had free will, I got to play into my inner self and have it reflect on the outside.  The only problem was that I didn't have space to turn off all the madness of New York.  This is a tricky subject to address because in order to relate to this one would have to understand what its like to live in Manhattan.

I rented a room and it was a perfect little room but it wasn't my own and the apartment wasn't mine either.  This always made me feel a little homeless even though I had a roof over my head.  The place was governed by someone else.  Their rules, their stuff and their space.   I went through my longest creative/writers block, a darkness so deep I couldn't see any light.  Most days I felt completely drained and every day I had to leave the LES (lower east side) and sit by the water just to feel normal.  I wasn't loving it anymore and perhaps my time spent there was done.  I went back into the hood that made me fall in love with NYC to begin with.  I reclaimed it, I owned it and now I needed a beautiful  environment that harvested my creative being.  Nothing is more stifling then a environment that doesn't bring sunlight after the rain, that doesn't hug you when you enter your home, I needed my own place.  The timing couldn't have been any more spot on.   I learned a lot and for that I am grateful and for someone to open their home to me that I will never forget.  

Approaching my 1 year, I got word that I needed to move and the panic resulted in countless sleepless nights and 6 gray hairs.  What the fuck am I going to do?  I cried but something inside said this is for the best and you are always taken care of.  That's the only thing I held onto for the next 2 weeks.  If I let go of that then I would be on a one way flight back to Minnesota, as I wrote prior that wasn't really an option.  Its interesting what one considers when your up in the air but its even more important to remember what isn't an option at all.  So then your not even tempted to flirt with it.  The weight of it all should of sent me on the next flight back to Minnesota, but it didn't.  I knew there was frustrating days to come and there was.

This whole time I have been thinking I could never leave Manhattan but now that I have a beautiful space in BKL (Brooklyn) I wonder how I lived, worked and played right in the center of the madness.  When I go back into Manhattan I now appreciate it.  I see how beautiful it is when I'm away from it.  I almost wasn't used to how quiet and peaceful my place was at first.  With a farmers market right around the corner and stores that would blow your mind I can finally say that for the first time I feel like I am home.