This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2017, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
It took a little while for longtime best friends Danny Miller and Max Harwood to figure out exactly how they wanted their band, Lewis Del Mar, to sound, to the point that they scrapped a full album's worth of material.
Once they finally got it figured out and self-produced and -released the track "Loud(y)," it took considerably less time for other people to become enamored of the duo's music.
"I mean, I was washing dishes at a restaurant, and within two weeks of that song coming out, Max and I met with Adele's manager at the restaurant next door to where I was working," Miller told the Tribune in a phone interview. "So in that sense, and in terms of the outside involvement of people, [change] was pretty much instantaneous."
For anyone too unfamiliar with Lewis Del Mar to have instantaneously known they opened for Miike Snow last August and Young the Giant this past February, you get another chance to see them live this coming Thursday at their headlining show at In The Venue in Salt Lake City.
This show will amount to "a more holistic experience," Harwood said in the interview, including a touring lineup expanded to five members, as well as playing every track from what wound up being the band's self-titled debut album, released this past October.
As for the album-that-wasn't that came before, Harwood said the simple fact is that it sounded too much like the duo's influences, and not enough like a distinctive product of them.
"I think the core of what wasn't working about it was it still wasn't a sound that was totally uniquely us. I could still listen to the record we scrapped and say, 'Oh yeah, this track sounds like a B-side for such and such a band, and this track sounds like a B-side from another band,' " he said. "I don't think that we had found something that was unique to us, and that was our goal when we first set out, to create a sound that was very true to us and that, in essence, only the two of us could make together."
Still, it must have been difficult to just throw out that much work.
"How hard was it? I think the answer was, 'Not very hard.' It sort of was intuitive," Miller said. "The reason for it was we just approached making music, and this record in particular, under the guise of the fact that we weren't about anything that wasn't really relevant and well-made. We had this feeling that there was so much music coming out at that time that was sort of half-baked, and there were a lot of people releasing music for the sake of releasing it. We were really vehemently opposed to that. That's probably why we only have 10 tracks on our record — we stand behind the ideology that we're not gonna release anything that's not worth listening to."
No one can argue that what they wound up with isn't unique.
Miller is the vocalist, lyricist and acoustic guitarist. Harwood is the drummer and producer. They share songwriting responsibilities. And the songs they write touch upon garage rock, electronica, acoustic folk and hip-hop, with some Caribbean flavor to top it off.
"There's really no formula. We try to keep it that way intentionally. We like to keep it, I guess I'd say, almost cosmic in our ideas and interactions," Miller said. "I do write all the lyrics, but we definitely both come up with different ideas and thoughts that inspire all of those things. I think a lot of our music stems from the conversations and just the day-to-day existence of being best friends that Max and I have."
Inspiration can come from anywhere for the two, who met as 9-year-olds at school in Washington, D.C., and who now share a place in Rockaway Beach in Queens, N.Y. One morning, Harwood was idly crafting a beat in their recording studio, which anyone else would call a "living room." Miller looked up from cooking breakfast in the kitchen and instructed his friend, "Send that to me immediately."
"And he went back in his room and an hour later had written all the lyrics to that song," Harwood recalled. "And it was just done. Beats plus lyrics, and that was mostly it. So it happens in a lot of different ways."
How — and why — though, do they work so well together? After all, it's one thing to share a friendship, it's quite another to manage to translate that into a tangible, successful chemistry.
Miller, ever the wordsmith, said the two "share an artistic conscience" and noted that they "know what the other one looks like when they're operating at their best and … try to hold each other accountable to that." Harwood, on the other hand, simply chalked it up to "just the magic of the universe!"
Perhaps. Some might argue that to be exposed to overnight success and come away with perspective unscathed is nothing less than a supernatural experience these days.
"Not a lot has changed for Max and I, personally," Miller said. "We're definitely closer to realizing some of the bigger dreams we've ever had for ourselves in what we do, but we're very much the same individuals, and our friendship is stronger than ever, and our day-to-day lives and our passion for music and what we do is very much still the same."
Twitter: @esotericwalden —
With Anna Wise, Blaenavon
When • Thursday, June 8; 7 p.m.
Where • In The Venue, 219 S. 600 West, Salt Lake City
Tickets • $15; Ticketfly