Five Fun Facts with Vacances
Vacances
Electro Post-Punk For The Soul.
Meet singer Danny Lannon who created Vacances in 2015 out of the ashes of his previous West Coast electro-indie project, The Frail. Danny was kind enough to send us facts about himself, and as you'll come to learn, The Frail was pretty successful in his 20s. But, like most good things, it came to an end, and Danny didn't let that stop him from continuing to make music. Instead, he attained production and songwriting partners featuring musicians from notable acts Montreal, Rubyhorse, Cheerleader, Geographer, and The Kickdrums. As the saying goes: Teamwork makes the dream work - and the result was them helping the singer establish his musical shape into the 80s indie-pop songs and alt-rock music tracks you hear today.
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Vacances latest song, "We Need You", is the perfect example of the 80s danceable, indie-pop catchiness that was aforementioned. This newest track is the second single released by Vacances this year which only leads us to believe and hope that more is on the way. After all, it doesn't seem like Danny has any plans to pursue anything but musical greatness, as he shared with us that he's always wanted to sing and follow in his father's footsteps of touring and being on stage. Read for yourself below as he revealed funny stories from his childhood and his time on tour with The Frail.
I was born three months early and had a 50/50 chance of living, but that didn't stop me from being a ham at a young age. Growing up in SF, I would sing all the time and desperately wanted to be on Star Search of the Mickey Mouse Club. My mom actually took me to one of those kid modeling castings when I was young, but you needed to pay for all of the headshots and fly out for auditions, and with my young growing family, that wasn't an option. So I opted for singing in the elementary school cafeteria instead.
I wrote my first few songs in preschool with my friend Kellen. We would bang on all the pots and pans in the kitchen area, and the two tracks (unreleased lol) were called "79 Drums 79 Bombs" & "Elf Tiger in the Sky." Needless to say, they were chart-toppers.
I grew up in a very musical household. Both my parents growing up in the 70s/80s, were really into all the metal (hair metal too), rock classics, punk, and hip hop coming out those days. My dad used to listen to NWA a lot, and he's told me this story a few times about me going up to a police officer in San Francisco and saying, "Fuck the Police". Of course, the cop wasn't happy, but I'm pretty sure I got a high five and some ice cream from my dad afterward or something.
My dad was hugely influential for me growing up. He played in all kinds of bands as a drummer, was voted best drummer in the SF Weekly, and toured a fair amount across Europe and Japan. I grew up going to see him play and always wanted to be on stage too. So I did. My first band was called Prophet. It was some weird mash of hip hop, rock, reggae, and I had no idea what I was doing. It was fun, and we played at the YMCA & Jewish Community Centers pretty often.
After all the above, I was really into punk/pop-punk/emo and later synth-pop and New Wave. My old band, The Frail, which had a really solid run throughout my 20s (about ten years), played major festivals, did some MTV stuff, toured, and all that. But one memory I have is playing the Exotic Erotic Ball at the Cow Palace (I'm pretty sure they still owe us $5,000 or whatever, so hey, if you see this, my Venmo is...) Unfortunately, the stage setup was only prepared for a vocal performance because Coolio was playing after us. So I had to sing by myself onstage with some gogo dancers and DJ Skribble playing my songs on a Pioneer CDJ set. That was hilarious.
- Danny Lannon (Vacances)
Written by Piera Lolandes