Cover art for Daniel Holdridge's EP, Humor Grotto: Imagine a Place Where Everyone Gets Better Every Day.
Daniel Holdridge, a Covenant College senior known by most for his bright orange beanie, released his EP “Imagine a Place Where Everyone Gets Better Every Day” on Tuesday, October 17, 2023. Holdridge started creating music about a year ago, but he has been playing guitar for three years. Holdridge’s artistic process varies greatly, but when it comes to music, what he enjoys most is playing with other people.
Holdridge said that “the EP was a weird process, two thirds of it was written and recorded within the span of two days.” His creative process usually comes in spurts, and it depends greatly on what the project at hand requires. He continued, “it felt good to make something stylistically self-consistent because I hadn’t done that a lot.”
When asked more generally about his artistic process, he said that “my artistic process is 15 years in the making, so it’s natural to me. I think of my artistic process as something essential to me—something that I use to develop ideas. If we think about my process as a hammer, it has been surgically attached to my hand,” which is especially apparent in his visual art. He continued: “I view making art as analogous to making kids and raising a child. With my visual art kids, they’re very well behaved, but my music kids are stinkers…. They don’t listen to me ever, and they frankly have totally different interests and just want to do their own thing…. It’s a battle.”
As far as his musical artistic process goes, it takes different forms depending on the project he is working on. For his earlier projects, he said that “I had a looping pedal with my guitar, so I’d make one minute songs with my guitar and a [synthesizer]. Those you can find on soundcloud. I like them quite a bit.” As for his EP, he used a drum machine and an electric guitar. Interestingly enough, rather than using a bass guitar for the EP, he dropped down his guitar an octave for the bass on his EP.
Holdridge elaborated that “music is like pulling teeth a lot of the time,” and when creating music, he likes to create an arrangement of riffs and then develop the ones which seem to stand out. “There’s so many things that I start and leave on the cutting room floor, even though I’ve worked on it for four hours… it’s a nightmare.” Holdridge, like many musicians, has a large pool of music which he has created but only pulls the especially impressive ones to develop further into songs.
When asked about future goals, Holdridge said, “I want to go to grad school and keep making music. My goal originally was for it to be an ulterior and alternative practice but that trivializes it. It’s pertinent to my artistic and writing practice and what it means to create things well and create meaning from art,” Holdridge said. “The goal is to get to a point with technical and compositional ability that music is integrated as much as possible in the rest of my artistic practice. I view the EP as an extension to a lot of the things I do as an artist and a writer.”
Holdridge’s biggest music group inspiration is El Ten Eleven, a post-rock group whose inspiration shines through in his EP. He is also a fan of Clever Girl (a math-rock group) and The Grateful Dead. “I have only listened to [the Dead] for a year, but when I fell, I fell hard. They are definitely my prime inspiration in terms of improv.”
He is also greatly influenced by guitarists John Fruciante, J. Mascis and Nels Cline. “A lot of Frusciante’s solo work I actually prefer over the Chili Peppers songs, but I know more Chili Peppers songs on guitar than I should.”
Concerning the art of improvisation, Holdridge said that improvisation is the highest form of music because it requires the most skill. “A composer can take ten years to compose something and it can be beautiful, but an improviser can do the same thing only with the time that is given to them in the moment,” Holdridge said.
Holdridge’s goals are to become a skilled improviser and to continue to play music with the people he enjoys. He enjoys playing music at church at New City East Lake and playing with friends when he can. He intends on further developing his artistic skills in visual art, music and writing, and to continue to produce music. Be sure to check out this phenomenal locally produced EP on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube!