Dan Mangan shares “All My People”, the re-imagined track is off his JUNO Award nominated/Polaris Music Prize shortlisted album Being Somewhere. is about dreaming of being near loved ones during the height of the pandemic. While the original album version explores the sonic scope of percussion, this new “elsewhere version” focuses more on hypnotic acoustic guitar, evoking an increased feeling of melancholy and intimacy. “I didn’t start with any particular plan,” Dan reflects on the song. “I just started deconstructing the song and exploring where else it might like to be constructed. I wrote this song in the depths of lockdown, wandering around my home, annoying my kids,” he continues. “It took forever to get the chords right. The lyrics right. I wrote several different choruses and bridges. Before it was even a real thing, it had lived several lives. My 40th birthday was looming in the distance. I pictured a party. This same home, full of people laughing. I pictured a huge pileup of shoes by the front door. Coats laid on the bed. It was one weird dream away.”

“I wanted this album to feel like the inside crook of a familiar elbow on the nape of your neck, a comforting embrace” says Mangan, “These songs are tenderhearted and unfurl like an overdue conversation with a dear friend. They essentially lay out where we’re at, how I’m doing, and how I think I can help.”

This is how Dan Mangan and collaborator/producer Drew Brown (Radiohead, Beck) manifested Being Somewhere. All components were recorded in isolation and beamed up to the mothership. No piece of the puzzle ended up as expected, and each moment is the fruition of separate, yet conjoined, rabbit holes.

“The hard part was waiting,” Mangan says of the long-distance process, “sometimes it took six weeks to resolve an issue that could have taken twenty minutes had we been together in a room. But Drew’s dedication and talent cannot be understated, and this music doesn’t sound like anything else I’m hearing these days.”

Helming the project from Chicago, Brown sourced musical contributions from all over North America, the UK and Japan, including work from Joey Waronker (Beck, Atoms for Peace), Jason Falkner (Beck, St. Vincent), Thomas Bartlett (The National, Taylor Swift), Dave Okumu (Arlo Parks, Adele), Mary Lattimore (Kurt Vile, Sharon Van Etten), and Broken Social Scene frontman Kevin Drew.

Dan Mangan
2023-2034 tour dates

Dec 9. Vancouver, BC – Vogue Theatre
Feb 22. Graz, AT – Orpheum
Feb 24. Prague, CZ – Café v Lese
Feb 25. Warsaw, PL – Hydrozagadka
Feb 26. Berlin, DE – Frannz Club
Feb 28. Copenhagen, DK – Hotel Cecil
Mar 1. Stockholm, SE – Nalen Klubb
Mar 3. Hamburg, DE – Nachtasyl
Mar 4. Amsterdam, NL – Paradiso
Mar 5. Antwerp, BE – Trix
Mar 6. London, UK – Omeara

Order Being Somewhere by Dan Mangan HERE