Dan Zlotnick of Somers has Room to Spare with his Music

Photo by Tom Bush IV

As a young Rock n Roller, Dan Zlotnick wore a pony tail but insists that the locks didn’t make him cool. He also dismisses the myth that musicians in high school get all the girls. The Somers native side stepped the perceived benefits anyway with several long term girlfriends. Now, five years into his professional career, Zlotnick still puts aside the fringe benefits of the lifestyle, and the personal choice, suffices for the subject of his latest single.

Room to Spare was written in the tone of an email or voice mail to his future wife and had a simple message. “I don’t know what it’s going to be like. I don’t know how much space we are going to have. But we will figure it out, because we love each other,” Zlotnick said.

His appearance at Rockwood Music Hall on January 3 also deals with limited space, and Zlotnick loves how the venue has the logistics figured out. Rockwood making the most of the super intimate stage,” he said, “It forces the audience to be right in front of you and grabs their attention.”

The arrival to this point as a professional musician wasn’t quite so direct, though. Zlotnick played baseball on scholarship at Marist for three years and kept the music to a minimum with sporadic coffee house appearances. On the other hand, the change in scenery from high school did alter how he saw himself as a musician. “That’s when I started looking at songwriting instead of just being a lead guitarist,” said the strummer.

So now out front, Zlotnick’s transfer to the University of Tampa had him playing on the street for tips and making enough money to buy a speaker system. “I started playing gigs in restaurants and brunch spots,” he remembers.

Still, baseball was his thing and several years of minor league baseball followed. Of course, the major league dream eventually died and was difficult to give up. But his time on the mound did have a crossover for the career that followed. “There’s an acceptance of the spotlight that you need to have as pitcher,” Zlotnick said. “You have to figure that out so you can settle down to do your thing.”

The lessons and many miles on the road in tow, he returned to Somers and set his sights on music. He did so by continuing to meld the divergent Rock n’ Roll influence of his parents. Hard Rock from his father and folksy, soft rock from his mother, and an acoustic twang provides the middle ground.

But his songwriting mindset is more spread out. “It’s kind of a hunter/gatherer approach,” said Zlotnick, who coaches baseball on an individual basis.

So the singer/songwriter is constantly looking for phrases and jotting down notes, while keeping attuned to the different chord progressions and riffs he’s playing. “I’m almost playing a matching game,” said Zlotnick.

Eventually words and music come together, and the 2017 title track called Bumpers coalesced in the hope he could cushion the pain of woman who was crying in traffic. No means to do so, Zlotnick took the opportunity in song.

Bumper to bumper, moving so damn slow

Girl pulls up in a beat up Ford, tears pouring down like rain

Don’t know what has her but I wish I could wish away the pain

Remind her that she's not alone, We all hurt the same

Traffic clears up and she’s gone off through another lane

The aspiration did not fall on deaf ears, though. “The tune is earnest and raw, featuring Zlotnick’s jubilant-sounding guitar plucking juxtaposed with his deep, twangy vocals,” said Paste Magazine

But the trick, according to Zlotnick, is not to get too hung up on exacting the sound in studio. “You want to get it right without getting it perfect, because a lot of music we hear today is perfect,” he asserted.

Making things too generic, he tries to strike a balance between letting some of the mistakes go and getting rid of those that make you cringe. The same equalization applies to leveraging his future. “Once you’re at that next level, there’s another level above that. So again it’s finding that balance between what I really want to be doing, and what’s the lifestyle it affords me to live,” Zlotnick posed.

Either way, music is a must, and if he’s not playing, the feeling is unsettling enough to send him in search of some mates. “It’s just one of those things where it just has to be my life,” he concludes. “I don’t really know how or why, but I’m cool with it.”

For more info : https://www.danzlotnick.com

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