Reports of the guitar’s demise are nearly as old as widespread popularity of the instrument itself. Whether it be because of perceived threats by an upstart genre like Hip-Hop or EDM, perceived cultural shifts away from the instrument, or technological innovations elsewhere in the industry, there’s a never-ending dialogue surrounding the instrument’s supposed demise. While such conversations are popular, they are often off base. While the pop charts aren’t dominated by guitar-centric acts, there are still scenes where the instrument remains front and center. In a development that should shock no one, the jam scene is one of those scenes. For several decades now, the jam scene has given rise produced some of rock’s best guitarists. From rock-era inspirations like Duane Allman and Jerry Garcia to jammy blues titans Derek Trucks and Warren Haynes to modern flamethrowers like Billy Strings and so many more, the jam world has long been a haven for great guitar players, regardless of what’s trending in the music world at large. In 2025, that’s as true as ever. With a mix of upstarts, longtime stalwarts, and living legends, the jam scene remains a bastion of diverse guitar virtuosity. Of all the great young players on the scene today, few have a musical perspective quite like Daniel Donato. Donato, a prodigiously talented guitarist, blends serious, Nashville-honed country chops with a psychedelic lean more closely associated with the jam scene. While psychedelia and americana have certainly intersected before, Donato and his likeminded band (Appropriately dubbed “Daniel Donato’s Cosmic Country”) have a decidedly fresh and substantive perspective on that musical discourse. That unique and resonant musicality, combined with their road-warrior ethic (Like many jam bands, Cosmic Country tours relentlessly) has brought the group to increasingly larger venues over the last several years (In the Twin Cities market, they’ve gone from playing The Turf Club to the First Avenue Mainroom, where they’ll be playing Thursday night). With a strong new album that features some of Donato’s finest playing, singing and songwriting to date (the reliably eclectic Horizons), and a great new single (The americana tinged ballad “Another Dimension,” a collaboration with Elle King), Donato’s musical future looks as bright as anyone’s. Daniel Donato and Cosmic Country return to First Avenue on Thursday night for what should be another fantastic show. Fans can expect elite country guitar picking alongside the deep, psychedelic improvisation that the band has made their trademark.
Below is an Interview with Daniel Donato. The following has been edited for consistency.
Music in Minnesota: I first want to ask about the country side of cosmic country. You’re a very talented guitar player who is very much rooted in real country music, among other things. I’m curious who some of your earliest inspirations were on the country side of things?
Daniel Donato: Danny Gatton, Don Rich, Hank Garland, Chet Atkins, Grady Martin, Leon Rhoades, who played with Ernest Tubb. All of those players, they’re not very acclaimed publicly, unlike rock’n’roll, where guitar players can really be stars. On a musical level, all of those musicians were absolute stars. Maybe James Burton was the most famous one because of the time he had with Elvis. But for one reason or another, those players really spoke to me. On another level that’s very real too, the reason I really discovered any of those players was because of players that I met in Nashville who told me to go and listen to those guys. No one knows who those guys are really at all (laughs). So the group of people that really turned me on to the music I really love were very local to Nashville. They’re Nashville session musicians that play down on broadway, and play in the studio. When they go out on the stage, no one really knows who they are but theyre so fantastic.
MIM: I want to ask a little bit about Nashville. It’s a town that means a lot of things to a lot of different people in music, especially around country music. I know you got your start there. Even if what you guys now isn’t the stereotypical “Nashville country show,” I’m curious about your upbringing there, and how it inspired you musically.
DD: When I started playing, pretty much right away, doors and opportunities started opening themselves up. And I worked Incessantly hard at playing. The way all of this really started was my father’s idea. I was fourteen and he saw I was really taking to a liking to guitar after I had been playing for about two years. He saw that I had found something that I could really apply myself to and also receive a lot from. He had this idea that maybe I could go downtown and try and make some money playing during the summer before my freshman year of high school. What happened was I went down there and started playing, and I discovered what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. He supported me wholeheartedly but made me very aware that going down that road would command a lot of discipline, a lot of vision, and a lot of organization. Imagination, ownership of belief, and all of the mature things that anything entrepreneurial and singular does. I picked up on that, and I just started practicing really hard. For one reason or another, all of these doors and opportunities started opening up. Getting to play and sit in with bands and meet musicians that were so fantastic, these absolute legends. At that time in Nashville, a lot of these session players who played with George Jones, Hank Williams Jr. and Merle Haggard, and even more modern guys, all of those guys played downtown when they weren’t on the road, and I got to meet all of these guys. I just became obsessed. Basically, the idea in Nashville, more or less, is people specialize in one domain. I guess in Nashville, technically they would technically now qualify me as an “artist,” but at the time I would have probably been classified as a guitarist. I tried my hand at songwriting, I tried my hand at bandleading, and just played and took every opportunity I could-I played incessant amounts of gigs. There were summer’s where I’d play Wednesday through Friday with the Don Kelley band four nights a week. I would take other gigs when I could as well. There were days when I’d play ten to two, two to six, six to ten, then ten to two (laughs). I remember doing that several times, not just one or two or three. I’m talking about playing and playing and playing. Almost like in an eastern sense, when somebody goes to a monastery on retreat or sabbatical, I was just gone and working. I was just dialed in on my craft of being a guitar player. I played downtown for probably about six years. That was the last chapter of my upbringing in Nashville, when that ended, another part of the hero’s journey began, which was the call to adventure. When that ended, another archetypal part of the journey began.
MIM: That ties in to something else I wanted to ask about. At that time, you have all this going on-working hard, developing your craft, but you mentioned being entrepreneurial and having a vision. When and how does the vision for Cosmic Country come about?
DD: It was kind of always in there. It just wasn’t able to be qualified. When you name something, when you put a word symbol in front of a feeling or idea, it does activate a new part of it’s identity. I think the same concept applies to us as humans. We’re already somebody before we’re born. We already have a soul and personality. Even though we’re not named yet, we don’t have a social security number or credit score, all of these things that qualify us. So Cosmic Country was like that, alive in my soul. When I was probably eighteen or nineteen when I started writing songs, that’s when I wanted to “do my own thing”-which is a loose colloquialism. The thing was, just as who I am, I’ve never been straight down the middle Nashville guy, for one reason or another. I knew I loved country music, but I was writing songs and bringing in songs to publishers that were Cosmic Country songs, but I didn’t know it. They weren’t radio country songs. These publishers were telling me “We know these are great songs, but there’s really nothing we can do with this right now.” For a minute there, I knew that I made country music, because I love country music, and it felt like country music to me. I just didn’t know what kind of country music it was. I knew it wasn’t Nashville, it wasn’t radio country, but it was country in that it was coming from that spirit. So what happened was, I’d go on the road with any band that would give me a gig. That ended up being a great chapter of a collective experience that was very unveiling of a lot of potential of what a career in music could look like. It also increased my capacity to see that there really are no rules. I guess if there was a rule, it’s that whatever you do, you’re better off if it’s true and authentic to who you are. That was the main thing that I learned over all this time. I did that for about three years, and all the while I’m still writing songs. I’m not really playing gigs at that time. I go on the road with folks and do the while “Hired gun” thing-I do this and I pay you this-here’s a bus (or van), here’s when rehearsal is, that whole thing. Once I was done with that, what happened after was I ended up going back to Robert’s. I tried booking my own gigs down there. I asked if Robert’s would give me a gig. And they did, they let me play on Wednesday’s from two to six PM, when there was never anybody in there. But on one fabled day in Nashville at Robert’s on Broadway there was a fellow named Donnie, who was always at Robert’s-it was like he came with the place- he would come in with a Styrofoam cup from jack’s barbecue next door. He would pay for red wine in exact change. He was a pseudo homeless traveler-always a sweet guy. One day I finished up a gig there, and there was really no one there. It might have really only been twenty people in the building including the staff and the band. I was leaving the gig and I went to the back door and Donnie came up to talk to me. He said “Danny, I don’t know what you were playing in there, but it was cosmic country!” Right there, I was like “that’s what I make, that’s what I’m aiming at.” That right there is a platform, it is a philosophy, it is a story, it is a philosophy, it is a vessel for expression that can take the form of many things. Importantly, it’s also a great name for a sound. It hit me then and there and I got another download, more or less, of another chapter of the adventure. There was the busking chapter, the practicing eight to twelve hours a day. There was the second chapter, the call to leave the garden and go see the lands. Then when I came back home for a season, the third chapter opened with this cosmic country chapter. On some level, that is still happening.
MIM: I’ve seen you guys several times, the first time I saw you guys was at our local Turf Club in Saint Paul several years ago, which probably holds three or four hundred people. The most recent time I caught you guys was at this year’s Bonnaroo, which holds significantly more than that. You mentioned the chapters still unfolding. You guys are playing bigger rooms and the sound is evolving, how has the meaning of Cosmic Country evolved and how have things changed from the early days to where you guys are at now?
DD: That’s a fantastic question. I think there’s a trinity of qualification of what’s happening in any given moment in life. In regards to anything, there’s a fact of something, that’s more material-like the fact of the room’s sizes. That’s very transient and kinetic. Then there’s a meaning of something and then under that meaning there is something unchanging and eternal. I look at it as facts, meaning, and values. The values have really have stayed the same, from busking on the street to our sold-out headlining debut at the Ryman. They have remained. That is such a great blessing, because I really just need to keep drawing from the same well even as the material environment around what I’m doing has changed dramatically. I like that, because it means I don’t have to reinvent the wheel. I think the values have really stayed the same. The facts have definitely changed. I think the meaning of all of this, I think the whole point of what I’ve been called to do with my life and band is service. I think We’ve been given talents and work ethics to achieve the ability to transport and be transformative with music. I think we’ve been called to do that in order to bring people with us. I think what we’re called to do is achieve a felling of this great unity that happens at these shows. It’s all service, that’s how I look at it. There are obviously dividends-the people off the stage in the audience get something and we get something too-there is reciprocity. But that meaning of Cosmic Country wasn’t obvious to me probably eighteen months ago. Around the start of last year, I began to realize that all of this is service. I’d really love to suggest that’s the ultimate explanation for any of this, Service to the people and service to God-Vox Populi, Vox Dei- “The voice of the people is the voice of god.” So if the people are telling us we’re doing a good job, I think on the most infinite and intelligent and benevolent level it’s service to that as well. That was not obvious to me when I was 14 (Laughs).
