Music: Treehouses by Dan Heidt – Columbus, OH

Check out this great interview with iMoveiLive / Forge Columbus first performing at the biweekly market in Columbus Ohio.

Why did you select this song as your current single? 

It was a song long in the making and has a lot of meaning to me

How does this single relate to the rest of the Album?

It sets the stage by telling stories, but also by using imagination as a positive and constructive thing.  I like to say that the album is a collection of stories, most true, some not, all with meaning. This one takes the listener back to a place of simpler times, with pine cone hand grenades and damsels in distress.  The rest of the album also tells stories of real life things that people can relate with:* The hope and optimism of a first married spring together;

* A statement of support and encouragement for someone in the midst of a storm;

* A fitting and refreshing tribute to a longtime companion whose early years gave him a rough start;

* The bittersweet taste of sacrificial love;

* Dreams of adventures we never had but kinda wish we did;

* An opportunity to look back and find that part of us that may have disappeared when we grew up;

* The sometimes difficult task of pulling someone away from their own mind-junk;

* The universal feeling of panic when you’re stuck on the other side of an accidentally locked door;

In the CD description on CD Baby, I write:  “Nothing about this collection of songs was thrown together. Each song has a story to tell, and this is their chance to tell it. I hope that you enjoy them, but even more than that, I hope that they resonate with you, and that these can be our stories.”

What was the writing process for the song?

Well, it was built from two schools of thought that had followed me around for years, one of which was the idea that ‘youth is wasted on the young’. I was reminded of this on more than one occasion by an older friend of mine, who may or may not have accomplished everything he had wanted to accomplish.  The other school of thought is that ‘the day that I stop playing is the day that I get old’, which is almost verbatim taken from an episode of the Twilight Zone, in which a man discovers the way to stay young, which is to play.  He convinces the rest home he is living in to go out and play a game of kick the can, at which point they all become children again.  These two conflicting schools of thought were the place from which this song was born.  That and an awesome coffee table book of photos my dad gave me of very well designed and built tree houses from around the world.

What does this song’s lyric mean to you?

It’s playful. It has a lovely, simple, wistful imagination to it; “Well, this morning, I thought I’d…” It’s visual, it’s kinesthetic, it’s emotional. It’s a very sensual song, which is part of the reason I included the additional environmental sounds in the recording.. It’s all intended to be a part of the imagination.  I also love how it culminates into this decision of living in the present reality (as opposed to talking about comic books with squirrels and galloping into a castle), but taking those moments with you, like inventing constellations with the one you love (but also keeping pirates at bay with your sailboat’s on-board cannon)

What would it be like to see you in person performing this song?  

I love this song so much that to watch me sing it is to see me become those characters.  I would love to build a treehouse and live in it.  It would be awesome to ride in gallantly into my castle.  These are images that are exciting to me, and I’m genuinely considering them each time I sing it.  I also fully believe in the message of the song.  I would hope that it would sound believable. So often an artist will perform a song in which he or she has no investment whatsoever. John Denver was good at convincing you that he believed everything he sang about with his whole heart.  The songs meant something to him, which is why, in turn, they meant so much to us — well, at least to me.  This was a big lesson I learned from him, and I hope I can convey that message to my listeners.

Could your fans summarize who you are as an artist by this song?

I hope they could. I try to remain an optimist.  You won’t find angst or politics in any of my songs.  If there’s ever anger in a song of mine, it won’t be an angry song. There’s a difference.  My twitter handle is @HopefullyDan.  I figured it’s a good way to describe the way I look at things.  Treehouses is a hopeful look at staying young as we get older.  And the idea that we are never too old to play.  Musically, I’m a finger style guitarist, and love to write memorable melodies. 

Is there a video planned and or completed and if so, what was the idea behind the video?

There is no video, nor is there any plans of making a video.  This one is about imagination…  If I make a video, I will tell the listener what they should be seeing when they listen to this song, which will make their own imagination irrelevant.

One last question, what is your motivation behind your music?

At the risk of sounding repetitive, I like just telling stories.  I like having a perspective on things that folks may or may not relate to.  I like to offer something to people to help put into words the things we all deal with.  The bare bones of it, though, is that I just love playing music on my porch, just making stuff up in the moment.  If it turns into something worth giving some extra structure to, then all the better.

Social Media:
Web Page: www.danheidt.com
Facebook: www.facebook.com/danheidtmusic
Twitter: www.twitter.com/hopefullydan
Youtube: www.youtube.com/huparcho
Reverbnation: www.reverbnation.com/danheidt
CD Baby: http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/danheidt