Kansas City, Missouri’s, Danielle Nicole Band returns to The Cotillion Ballroom on Saturday, Nov. 25. Katy Guillen & The Drive will open the show.
The performance will be Nicole’s last show for 2023 and comes just two months before the release of her new album “The Love You Bleed” on Forty Below Records.
The LP features her trademark blend of blues and soul and boasts an impressive 12 songs that spotlight not only her singular voice but also her remarkable band, including guitarist Brandon Miller, keyboardist Damon Parker and drummer Go-Go Ray (Stevie Blacke adds violin and cello).
Nicole said during a recent interview with KMUW that fans attending Saturday’s show can expect to hear some of the new material as well as old favorites. She also spoke about the record’s recording and some of her fondest memories of Wichita.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity
Tell me a little bit about the making of the record “The Love You Bleed.”
Like a lot of musicians, we did some recording when the world was shut down. I had all the material, and I was ready to start recording. We ended up bringing our producer [Tony Braunagel], who I’ve worked with for several records, the last two Trampled Under Foot records and “Cry No More.” We flew him in from L.A. to Kansas City and used a Kansas City studio with Kansas City musicians and ended up recording it to tape. We did two one-week sessions, and we recorded 12 songs, 11 of those are original. Brandon and I wrote a lot of the songs together. It’s been unlike any other record or recording process I’d done before, too. It was really challenging and really cool. There was an electricity about it.
Was this material that you’d had around for some time, or did it build up during the lockdown?
Some of the songs I had written and demoed in early 2020. It wasn’t until that fall that we started getting into writing and recording. It’s definitely not a period record where it’s easy to tell what’s going on in the world at the time. It was more about personal relationships and stuff like that. It wasn’t like we were sitting on a bunch of songs, but we were at the same time. We’ve been creeping them out here and there during the live shows but not saying too much about it until real recently, after we knew what label was going to release it and that it had a home and a definite date. The more you talk about it the more it doesn’t happen. So, I just quit talking about it and, finally, the pieces fell together.
Tell us a little bit about this show at The Cotillion. It seems like it’ll be really special with your band and Katy Guillen & The Drive there, too.
Absolutely. I love Katy. I love all of the projects that she’s had over the years. I met her a long time ago at [Kansas City music venue and restaurant] B.B.’s Lawnside. She’d come out and jam, so to see her develop as an artist over the last decade, basically, has been really cool. I love every project she’s done, but the KG & The Drive that she’s been doing as a three-piece is so cool. When I decided to come back to The Cotillion for the Thanksgiving Throwdown weekend, I thought, “That would be so great to have Katy!”
The band I’m bringing is Brandon and Go-Go Ray, and we’re also having our organ player [Damon Parker] with us. He doesn’t tour with us because he’s got his own life; he’s going to school and all kinds of stuff. But, since we’re not too far from home, we’re going to bring him out to Wichita as well. Katy and [Stephanie Williams] are going to be joining us for a few songs. We’re going to be playing a lot off of the new record as well as some of our oldies but goodies from the last [few] Danielle Nicole Band records. It’s going to be a really, really great night. I’m looking so forward to it. It’s our last show of the year, too, so it’s going to be extra electric. [Laughs.]
When new songs come into the set, others fall away. How did you figure out which ones to add and which ones to drop?
That’s a good point: You can just keep adding songs to the set because then you end up having a three-hour show. How I decided was, “What do I think would connect to people [when they’re] hearing a song for the first time from an artist that they might not expect that kind of song from? While the album itself is not a huge sonic departure -- I don’t feel like it is, from myself as an artist -- I just try to pick songs that I think the people that come to our shows would connect to. Melodies that might grab them. That’s kind of how I look at it: What the consumer be least [jarred] listening to.
When you’re playing a song for an audience for the first time, especially one they haven’t heard before, is there a moment where you think, “I really hope they like this”?
That’s the main thing: I hope that they dig it. I write from a very personal perspective, so a lot of people might not identify with it. But I think the more common theme out of this album has been celebrating the joys of being in love, whether it’s with life or relationships or your career, just finding the positive in really crazy situations and really just celebrating being together and having gratitude for being alive and making it through all of this mess. Life has gotten hard. Even before COVID and then everybody is walking around trying to pretend the last three years didn’t happen. [This is about trying to find] togetherness.
I saw [your former band] Trampled Under Foot at a Thanksgiving Day Throwdown at The Cotillion a long time ago.
We did our first one with Moreland & Arbuckle. Long, long, long time ago. They started destroying their stuff on stage, so I went ahead and broke one of my guitars and everybody was, like, “Oh my God!” It was nuts.
Wichita isn’t too far from Kansas City, and I wonder if it’s important to have another place close by you can play and where people get what you’re doing?
Once you get west of St. Louis, the towns aren’t super close. Des Moines is pretty close to Kansas City but to be able to have Wichita [nearby is great]. It’s a really awesome community, and we’ve always loved coming down there and playing. We did so many shows with [promoter] Don Bean and the Blues Society. We’ve always had a really great time there and it does feel like a second home.
