Daniel Donato stares across the prairie, eyes fixed on the release of Cosmic Country's latest album, "Horizons". This is the 2nd release with his current lineup including Nathan "Sugar Leg" Aronowitz (keys), Will "Bronco" Clark (drums), and Will "Mustang" Mcgee (bass). On August 22, 2025, Daniel Donato's Cosmic Country played its first marquee show at the Ryman Auditorium in his home city Nashville, TN.
Daniel moved to Nashville from New Jersey at an early age and it and its deeply rooted music history have served as backdrop and source of inspiration for his traditional country blend with jam music. This show is one of many during a very busy year for the band, touring extensively all over the country and in Mexico.
Following this landmark record debut, I was able to chat with Daniel to discuss the new album and all the cosmic horizons.
Hey, Daniel, how ya doing (dern)?
I'm well, Chris, thank you.
I bet you're tired. You’ve been really busy.
Yes, I have been busy, not so tired, I don't know why or how.
To begin, can you remind us about what the music and sound of your Cosmic Country is like?
Cosmic Country is a vehicle that unifies what is most cosmic and most simple. What is most complex and what is most simple? We do that through music. Country music is a simple form of music and it's truthful. There are also complex forms of music that are truthful. Just like life, there are complex days and simple days. It’s all life and we try to replicate life experience through music.
You recently celebrated the release of DDCC’s new album, “Horizons” at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville, TN. What was it like celebrating that accomplishment in your hometown?
Always a very beautiful gift, that whole day, it was very beautiful. There was just a lot of love in that room, at the Ryman. It is the singular, most primary room for country music, and country music is an American genre, so, it's one of the most important rooms that our country has ever had to create music within. To have the opportunity to go into that room and fill it with all that love and music is a blessing.
So, you felt really connected to your musical roots?
Yeah, oh yeah, in a deep way. I started busking out on those stairs. Right outside of the Ryman when I was 14, it doesn't get any more root-connected than that.
Is that the first time that you performed at the Ryman?
I had performed a couple other times before as a guest. In other capacities over the years there, but this was our debut headlining show there, which is… it's a completely different experience.
Congratulations. You also did a honky-tonk show close by afterwards?
Yeah, Broadway used to be a lot of honky-tonks, but now it's mainly just a lot of bars and there's a huge difference there. Even with some people not really holding on to that difference and being able to really comprehend that difference has been created. The phenomenon of what Nashville is now, which is there’s not a lot of country music going on. Despite this, Robert’s Western World is the home of traditional country music. It's 24 feet away from the Ryman. It's the room where the pedal steel guitar was invented, it's where Willie Nelson bought his famous trigger guitar. It’s the only place down on Broadway now that has stood its ground and not traded its values for financial return. It’s really important that a place like that and the team that operates it gets some sort of a spotlight based off their faith to the art that they love and are inspired by so much. And that's the place too, where I discovered honky-tonk music and country music, and it's where I discovered bluegrass and western swing and everything that inspires Cosmic Country, I discovered it in that room. I started playing there when I was a young teenager, I played 464 shows there that were 4 hours long each night. I did the math the other day, and that equates to 7.3 days, of just constant music there. It was such a blessing to be able to bring in the Cosmic Country community into that room.
How many notes played was that?
(Laughs) I don't know, there must be some sort of intelligent mind out there that knows.
Can you talk about recording your newest album?
The process was really great because of my band and my producer. My band with Bronco, Mustang and Sugar Leg. They are all just righteous musicians and it's a thrill to be able to create music with them, because they'll go anywhere that I want to go, and they'll tell me the truth. That's hard to find. Then our producer, Vance Powell is one-of-kind, he is a Nashville legend. Everyone that knows anything about Nashville, that works in Nashville knows that Vance is who he is, and that he is singular in his talent and in his artistic abstraction. We wanted to have a through-line between the last album that we made with Vance and this one, so we can create our own sound that is consistent and ties through over a what we hope for to be a long period of time.
What is that through-line?
I think part of the sound. Just the physical actual sound of the record. Vance has his own way of engineering, recording, and producing that no one else can really replicate. People try to do it all the time. It just doesn't work. It's like people that try to sound like Stevie Ray Vaughn on guitar. They might love him, and I love Stevie, but you'll never sound like Stevie. You gotta sound like you. Any artist in any form. Whether it be journalism, visual creation or sonic creation, that is the goal, for someone to able to interface with your work and right away know it's you, like Van Gogh. That’s always been my goal. I've always tried to work with people that have that proprietary essence to them. My band has that, so when we get into a room together it can be very interesting.
The last time we talked, you were excited about going into the studio to just let it go. Were you able to capture a more live improved play style recording “Horizons”?
We didn't really improvise at all on this record, but letting go isn’t always improvisation, a lot of the time they get equated to each other. You can let go, at least the way I see it, within a form, or you can let go without form because you can surrender all the time to whatever it is. That was really fun to do, and we were a lot better at it this time than we were last time.
What is the experience comparatively, Cosmic County live verses Cosmic County in the studio?
I don't even compare them. They're… I can see why people want to compare them, because of the idea that a record comes from an artist, and that a live show that comes from an artist or a band. They come from the same source. But they really are… just so different, I can't even compare them. It's almost like trying to use a lawnmower to go fishing. It just doesn't work, you know? It's a different pool, even if It's still the Earth! It's still the terrain, but they're not. They're different, one’s dry, one's wet. That's how the live show really is in relation to the albums. We think differently and play differently. We know why, and to some degree we're inspired by that difference, because each of them has their own strengths and their own weaknesses. A lot of the moves that we make live can inform us of the moves we make in the studio, and vice versa. But we… we definitely, collectively, choose to not treat them the same.
I noticed track progression specifically listening to “Horizons”. It starts with the traditional country sound and shifts cosmic later. Was that on purpose?
It’s very purposeful. Any hero's journey must start in a place that is known. In a place that is explored already. Tradition is something that you relate with. A place that is already explored. There's not a lot of surprises there. It's not that it's not a beautiful place to rest and enjoy, but it’s different than a place of adventure. All my favorite Quentin Tarantino and Clint Eastwood movies, and stories fall into that Joseph Campbell Hero's Journey form. They all start in a place. That is known, and then they go to a place that is a stage of discovery. And there's usually darkness, and there's a change of subject matter that usually hits in a more trying way, morally and value-wise for the character. Then once the character goes through that place, walked through the fire of all that, then they get to return home, and so I tried to relate to that story structure, via the track listing of “Horizons”.
I love Joseph Campbell; his theories represent the foundation of storytelling and mythology.
Everything ultimately becomes collaborative when you're making a record. I think there's humble wisdom behind it.
That rings true in my life and is a great segway for my next question. Your lyrics are very visual and profound; can you discuss your songwriting process? Is this a solo effort or is it collaborative?
It's all collaborative, ultimately, because there's no way unless you're making a record in your bedroom and playing every instrument, mixing and mastering everything, funding everything, creating the artwork… unless you're doing every single part of the experience solely yourself then it becomes a collaborative process. It makes sense to collaborate because I feel the greater powers that transcend the transient desire to say that. You made a record fully on your own. Those greater powers want to serve you, and they want to work with you. I think it's kind of delusional to think that a record can be fully DIY.
When I write a song, I write that song, for sure, but by the time it gets to a record, everyone's hearing that song, and has an idea about that song. People's reactions, even when they don't give suggestions to that song can inform the way that the song gets recorded, you know? It is always a collaborative process. Talking a little about songwriting too, I've always had a photographic memory, since I can just recall cognition. It is unique to my personal lens of life experience. I love… I do love the integration of dense visual content into songs because just the sound of music often inspires people's own memories of things. If you can add lyrics to it then you can give people words that can guide them in their lives or that can be of value to them, it can be truthful to them. I'd rather say that. I think the songwriting process just kind of happens by me using my mind and using my life experience and my… creation, creative desire. That's like, 50%, the other 50%, that’s personality… it gets expressed in different words by different artists. Steven Pressfield calls it the muse. Some people call it the universe; some people call it God. Some people call it karma, some people call it setting themselves up for success, some people call it getting lucky. All these different words…to qualify what is collaborative, benevolent, wise, and invisible that fulfills the other 50% of what I can bring to the table to try to write a song.
Some call it escaping the end of a rope at the hangman’s gallows…
Yes, they do.
I just love how visual and how vibrant all your imagery is. When I go back and write about your shows it's my all-time favorite writing exercise, because I can create my own narrative, my own story living and breathing inside your music.
Well, thank you, Chris. Thank you, brother.
DDCC has been busy this year, what are some of your 2025 highlights so far besides the new album?
Playing Red Rocks was fun, doing that with the String Cheese Incident was a great blast. Plus, all the tours that we've been on. There's been a steady trend towards growth on material levels and spiritual levels. Spiritually, through our community growing and everyone trusting each other more, we're starting to get into a place where there's people that have seen us 10 times, some 40, some over 100 times, so there's a lot of trust that comes with that, which is really beautiful. It creates a really strong foundation for an enduring community to live and compound on itself. And then materially, it's really great to see everything that we're doing. Have reciprocity with us like, we're in a bus now, we're able to get some nicer gear and it gives us time to bring out new songs and try out new material and take more chances, just because our lives are more in order now on the road. Back in the day, when we first started touring, we were in the van, with no green rooms and no rider and a couple of hotel rooms to share with everybody. We're just trying to simulate survival on some level. Now we're able to design our time a lot more, which is fantastic, we can use that design to be a means of sacrifice or investment for our music.
Throughout the start of the summer, DDCC toured with both Railroad Earth and Yonder Mountain String Band. What has the experience been like and how did this collaborative tour come about?
That's been a beautiful part of this year that I would love to mention. That collaboration with those two groups and the individuals that make up those groups, is transformative. They have a lot more time under their belts than we do, so whenever I get a chance to work with somebody who has a lot more time under their belt, the thing I always try to blatantly ask and just observe what it is that they focus on and perceive to be most valuable. What ideas inspire their aim. Ben Kaufman from Yonder said something very nice to me, that was a dividend from his own personal philosophy, which is, every night on stage, all he asks for is one genuine moment of pure connection that is very slippery, very fast, and very unifying. I've never heard anybody tell me that they go on stage with that direct of a goal, so it was nice to meet somebody who also thought the same way, and he phrased it so well. It really is a spiritual experience getting to do that with those folks. Also, on a more material level, it’s really fun for their communities to trust us to be on tour with their band and I hope, from what I can tell, I think we are doing this. They can trust us now to come and see Cosmic Country shows when this tour eventually wraps itself up in about 4 more shows. It's great because we get to expand our network of listeners, our community, and we also get to have all these great collaborative moments, both in dialogue and in sharing philosophy, and in sharing music on stage.
And you get paid for it, that’s amazing. What was it like working with SCI? Also, another collaborative highlight of DDCC’s summer is performing with NJ natives Dogs in a Pile at High Sierra Music Festival and you both were two of the bands that actually got to play at Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival.
Bonnaroo, that was a very important part of 2025. That was insane, there was a great hand in the design of how all that went down. Really, for us, and I'm sure most people would agree that it was not a great design, but for us, it was amazing. Huge on every level possible, materially and spiritually. It is so much excitement and so much potential with the amount of people that we got to play for that are on the Cosmic Country frequency. Really righteous to be given that opportunity to fulfill that. Playing with Dogs in a Pile is very fun, really great band. We share New Jersey blood. SCI is insightful, to spend time with Bill Nershey and talk with him a little. I got to see how they design a show for an audience that is large, 9,500 people. It's like getting to fly in the cockpit with somebody that's an experienced pilot because their reflexes are informed by experiences that I have not yet had so I can kind of simulate some of the wisdom that they've been able to accumulate over their time. Being a Colorado-based fan and playing at Red Rocks. That's priceless to be in a setting that intimate with someone who's that experienced and so gracious and giving. There’s a bunch of other friends that we've gotten to play with this year that are so righteous. The Kitchen Dwellers, Green Sky Bluegrass, Mountain Grass Unit, and Shadowgrass. It's just great to share it all with all our friends, my friends Phil, my friend, Graham Lesh and his band. It all adds up to this beautiful network of friends and experience that I'm just so grateful for.
It creates a whole new sound that exists within each artist that becomes even more vibrant collectively together.
Yeah!
In September DDCC returns to the Northeast for a 3-night residency at the Ardmore Music Hall near Philadelphia, PA. How does a multiple night run differ from just playing one show at a venue?
Yeah, Cosmic Country starts the “Horizons” fall tour at Ardmore with a 3-night residency. There's just a lot of trust being given to us by our community that comes to see us in that part of the country. It's 3 times different than playing there for one night. They're really giving us a lot of room to tell a story.
As an artist do you feel like you get room to peel the onion as the nights go on?
I certainly do and I'm really excited to know that there are people coming to the show that know I do.
That's awesome, you guys are also playing in Camden, New Jersey that Sunday at the XPoNential Music Festival so you really have four shows for the same, overlap fan base, so I feel like you're going to get as cosmic as you ever could, having so many shows lined up.
Yes, I would absolutely love that!
Wrapping this up, DDCC is now crisscrossing all over the United States. Your whole tour seems pretty set for the rest of 2025, you just added a whole bunch of new dates including October appearances at the Stone Pony in Asbury Park, NJ and the Capitol Theater in Port Chester, NY. You are also performing internationally in Jamaica in 2026. With all of this, fueled by the popularity of the band across the nation. What does that really mean for you?
It means that perhaps visions are delivered to you, not created by you. In that if you can serve them, truthfully, the yield will be beautiful and good.
Well put.
Following an appearance at Lotus’ Summerdance Music Festival in Garrettsville, OH over Labor Day weekend, DDCC resumes its collaboration with RRE and YMSB. DDCC will also perform at the Bender Jamboree hosted by SCI in Las Vegas, NV on September 12, 2025. The “Horizons” fall tour begins at the Ardmore Music Hall on September 18, 19, & 20, 2025 followed by XPoNential Music Festival on the Camden, NJ waterfront Sunday, September 21, 2025. Fall tour includes stops in New England, the South, the Midwest, and West. In 2026, DDCC will perform in Montego Bay, Jamaica for Jam in the Sand XIII and in Falmouth, Jamaica for Gov’t Mule’s Island of Exodus 16. DDCC will also host its annual Cosmic Camp at the Caverns in Pelham, TN May 8 & 9, 2026. For more information about DDCC, their summer, fall, and 2026 dates, and their latest release “Horizons” please visit https://danieldonato.com.
PHOTOS BY CHRIS PAUL
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