{"id":17083,"date":"2019-02-06T09:00:18","date_gmt":"2019-02-06T17:00:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/?p=17083"},"modified":"2019-02-04T12:39:53","modified_gmt":"2019-02-04T20:39:53","slug":"dan-mangan-looks-at-art-through-a-different-lens","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/2019\/02\/06\/dan-mangan-looks-at-art-through-a-different-lens\/","title":{"rendered":"Dan Mangan looks at art through a different lens"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\u201cI don\u2019t want to say I don\u2019t give a shit anymore, but I give less shit.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is Juno-winning Canadian singer\/songwriter Dan Mangan, who, when we chat, is about to launch a Canada-wide tour in support of his latest album, More or Less<\/em>. Although I am the sixth of seven back-to-back interviews for him, I am graced with friendly laughter, gentle warmth, and vulnerable honesty from the 35-year-old Vancouverite. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI\u2019ve always felt sort of on the outside of what was cool, and somewhere along the way I started to feel more and more okay with that,\u201d says Mangan about what it means to return to touring after taking time off to welcome his two children into the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s been six years since Mangan\u2019s days of performing 100 to 250 shows in a year. In fact, it\u2019s been four years since his last album tour and, for Mangan, this feels \u201clike a little bit of a comeback.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI\u2019ve sort of recoiled and been out of the public space and I\u2019m ready to take the wheel again and get in front of people,\u201d says Mangan. \u201cI mean, there\u2019s nothing really as special as feeling totally, kind of cosmically connected to a big room full of people. It sort of recalibrates the metaphysical making up of your soul and body and it can re-energize you. You feel understood and you feel that you understand other people and that\u2019s really what creates joy, and what creates contentment and happiness is just, you know, to feel understood and to feel heard.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a>
Singer\/songwriter Dan Mangan is coming back to town this month (photo by Vanessa Heins).<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Contrary to expectation, Mangan isn\u2019t hoping for flawless sets; in fact, he describes his favourite moments of the show as those accidental incidents when something goes a little bit wrong.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHopefully, at some point in the set, there\u2019s this sort of, like, great exhalation and then it\u2019s just people, and when we\u2019re all just people, then that opens up the door for this super-duper magical thing, which is where you supersede the presumption of the event and get into just living inside of it,\u201d he says. \u201cIt\u2019s when you fail that you learn the most.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fatherhood and the domestic experience away from the spotlight seem to have stretched and tested Mangan\u2019s learning in many ways. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe stakes are higher on life,\u201d he says. \u201cAll of the things that we do to protect ourselves, all these sort of veils and walls that we put up around us to try to keep ourselves from being too vulnerable to the world, kids just rip all of that away. They kind of just tear you open from the inside.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was in that new vulnerability that Mangan created More or Less<\/em>. He describes it in relation to his previous album, Club Meds<\/em>, as \u201cmore personal, more earnest, more tender-hearted, and, ultimately, more accessible.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI think there\u2019s a lot of people kind of my age,\u201d he says, \u201cwho are feeling the same thing I\u2019m feeling in terms of, like, \u2018How do you raise kids in the Trump era?\u2019 You know? Where do we instil our hope for the future, for our kids?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For Mangan, the answer is simple.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI want warmth, I want tenderness, I want kindness,\u201d he says. \u201cThat\u2019s the shit that makes me feel good, so that\u2019s what I want to put out in the world and, you know, whether it\u2019s cool or not\u2014well, I wasn\u2019t all that cool before, so, you know, what do I have to lose?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dan Mangan
7 pm Thursday, February 14
$34.50, Alix Goolden Hall (sold out)
vcm.bc.ca\/alix-goolden-hall<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cI don\u2019t want to say I don\u2019t give a shit anymore, but I give less shit.\u201d This is Juno-winning Canadian singer\/songwriter Dan Mangan, who, when we chat, is about to launch a Canada-wide tour in support of his latest album, More or Less. Although I am the sixth of seven back-to-back interviews for him, I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":17084,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,226],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17083","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arts","category-february-6-2019"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17083","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17083"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17083\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17085,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17083\/revisions\/17085"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17084"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17083"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17083"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17083"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}