Danny Ayala ‘Stepping Into The Light’

There’s no need to alert the readers of Shindig! – arguably the birthplace of Lemon Twigsmania – to the fact that the group is at the peak of its powers. But it’s worth pointing out that such a golden moment doesn’t just manifest itself through canonical releases and unforgettable live dates. The Lemon Twigs are currently producing their finest music while simultaneously multiplying into side projects, solo adventures and offshoots. If you’ve seen them onstage  you will have noticed Danny Ayala and Reza Matin, too, swapping instruments with the D’Addario brothers and growing into explosive rockers in their own right. Matin’s other group, Uni Boys, is already known to Shindiggers. Now it’s Ayala’s turn making a foray into centre-stage.

Danny Ayala’s first approach to playing music was typical of many a childhood. “I was forced into piano lessons by my grandmother when I was six years old,” he says. Unlike many children sitting in front of a piano, he started showing both talent and persistence. Soon he was performing classical music at his elementary school’s talent show, where he caught the attention of a few fellow students. Brian and Michael D’Addario were attending the same school. “They already had a band by the third grade,” Ayala notes. Together with their friend Thomas Murphy, they asked Ayala to join them. “I didn’t really know anything about rock ’n’ roll,” he points out. “At a young age, my mother introduced me to The Backstreet Boys, My Chemical Romance and groups like that. So when I joined the brothers’ band and started learning about The Rolling Stones and The Who, it was all very new to me.”  This spontaneous pre-teenage alliance would prove a fruitful one. “I quite literally joined their group in the fourth grade and we’ve been musical partners ever since.”

Only Fools Love Again has all the feel of a debut album but this is not Danny Ayala’s first time focusing on his own songs. For a while, he was releasing music under the pseudonym of Dr. Danny. “I just wanted to start off fresh. I felt like I was in a new state of mind at this point, and I hadn’t really released anything that I was super into or super proud of since COVID. It felt like a new beginning, so I started going by my name and I got a great group of guys who I pretty much just met this year to play in my band.” Tours with The Lemon Twigs and Sunflower Beam, as well as the first recordings as Dr. Danny, have allowed Ayala to come a long way. The resulting collection of songs is eclectic and full of surprises. “I have a lot of different friends showing me a lot of different things. I cling onto quite a bit of it,” he considers. “I obviously love The Beach Boys and Beatles, as well as the powerpop that Brian and Michael have showed me along the way.” But true to the free-minded, omnivorous tastes of a generation that grew up in the streaming era, Only Fools Love Again is wide and curious in its inspirations. “I started writing down the records from the past 25 years that have influenced this album, or that I’ve been listening to while making it,” Ayala tells Shindig!. “It’s interesting: I can’t say that these were a direct influence, because some of the stuff that I wrote and recorded doesn’t quite coincide with my music taste, but somehow I still got here. It’s ultimately this clash of the powerpop that I’ve taken from touring with the Lemon Twigs and what I listened to for other reasons”. His list of inspirations includes Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots by The Flaming Lips and Congratulations by MGMT, Beach House’s Depression Cherry and Radiohead’s In Rainbows, Foxygen and Cigarettes After Sex, indie electro-pop duo Oh Wonder and the hugely successful Hall & Oates. “These are the extras of constantly listening to The Beatles, The Beach Boys and Raspberries. You listen to these artists and you’re like, well, who were they listening to? And then you find out that it all boils back to the two Bs,” he laughs.

A classically trained pianist, Ayala spent a year practicing every day for hours on end after he was asked to become The Lemon Twigs’ bass player. When working on his own songs, he’s come to appreciate the different possibilities offered by each of the instruments he’s played on stage. “I went to school for music composition,” he reflects, “there were juries and I had to play some jazz and really hard classical pieces for professors. Throughout that I learned a lot of music theory and the best way you can showcase that is usually the piano. I’m definitely not as well-versed on the guitar and bass and it’s easiest for me to write songs on the piano. But because I’m limited in what I can do on the guitar, it simplifies the songs and doesn’t make them over complicated. It makes the songwriting poppier. On the piano I tend to write a lot of ballads, whereas on the guitar it’s a little rockier.”

The first seeds of Only Fools Love Again were planted in East Williamsburg, at the D’Addario Brothers’ studio. The pair produced and played on two of the album’s eventual singles, ‘Something With You’ and ‘I Don’t Like Her’. Then, Ayala was off to the West Coast, visiting Fernando Perdomo (“a fantastic guitar player and musician”) in Sherman Oaks, California. “We were in the studio for five eight-hour days and I tracked eight songs right away. I came home with a finished record”, he enthuses. “Then I went back to the Lemon Twigs’ studio. Their neighbour Paul Millar, who has an incredible ear and an incredible mind, mixed and mastered the record. I’m very grateful to be surrounded by such talent to help this release. Yes, I wrote all the songs, but I don’t think it would’ve ever been the same without them”.

 Only Fools Love Again is out now on Reminder