On Sunday evening, the people of Sibiu had the opportunity to participate in the band’s live concert byron. It was a club event, held in Oldies, part of a spring tour that took the artists all over the country. On this occasion, byron released the music video for the song “Gift” from the album ephemeridaereleased last year in October, and produced by the band’s bass player.
Lazslo Demeter used a 360-degree camera that distorts the image grotesquely and comically at the same time, while the band members had fun moving, dancing, even running, holding the camera filmed in the mouth. The video for the song “Gift” can be viewed here.
The dissonance between who we want to be and who we actually are
After the concert, I interviewed Dan Byron over coffee, in the morning, and learned more about what it’s like to be on the road, on tour, how the band with a new guitarist was chosen, what it means to be a Romanian artist in this moment (2024), and which are some of Byron’s subjects of inspiration when it comes to lyrics.
“Last night I dreamed that I was a refugee/ And people smiled politely at me and then accused me/ That I was preparing an attack in a city around Banat/ And I’m going to cause a war, shouldn’t I go back?” are part of the lyrics of the song “Consumatori de vise”, from the album Nine, appeared in 2019. We invited Dan Byron to comment on the circumstances in which he wrote them, and he clarified that he was trying to explain “this kindness we show on the surface” and the “back talking” when we show what we really believe; the dissonance between who we want to be and who we actually are.
In Romania there are as many types of public as there are cities
Asked if concert audiences differ from city to city, Dan Byron says there are as many kinds of audiences as there are cities. “I sometimes joke when I say that Romania lives in several years, in parallel. There are areas that are in a different decade, there are areas that are adapted as much as possible to the official calendar year. I don’t think there is any city in Romania that is still in 2024, considering that the exact time is given in London or Berlin or New York. But efforts are being made”.
At the concert on Sunday night, people sang and danced to the alternative-progressive rock sound, proving that they knew a good part of the lyrics by heart. We wanted to know what Dan Byron thinks about the purpose of the artist in society, precisely from the perspective of the lyrics he writes. “The artist’s mission seems to me to be a very simple one: he must not make any effort to write or appear to be something other than what he is. Because he is a reflection of the times he lives in. If we read a book from 1900 we will understand what life was like in 1900”, he declared.
Byron recently added a new member to the team, a young Spanish guitarist, Dany, who plays acoustic guitar, replacing the veteran Dan Georgescu. An occasion that triggered a new thought, this time on the topic of when it’s good to stop when making music. “I don’t know what else to do. And I don’t want to do anything else,” said Dan Byron, even if he admits that showbiz “is a job that has no stability, it’s very uncertain, from day to day, and it’s very demanding.”
We invite you to watch the interview conducted on Monday morning. Thanks to the band byron for the “Gift” video he made available to illustrate this report video.
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