Daisy The Great step into the ring with Tony Visconti for their fourth EP

Words by Matt Keenan 

Photos by Olivia Stabile

Daisy The Great are a band that have seemingly traversed the vast landscape of the indie genre, and the same rings true in their latest EP: Spectacle: Daisy the Great vs. Tony Visconti. Meeting as acting majors at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, Kelley Dugan and Mina Walker soon realized the fictional band they were co-writing a musical about could very well become a reality, and so they set off as Daisy the Great. 

I had the chance to chat with the band after their EP release show at Our Wicked Lady in Brooklyn while my partner in crime Olivia took these lovely photos you can see throughout this page. Check out our interview below, as well as Daisy The Great’s latest EP: Spectacle: Daisy the Great vs. Tony Visconti, out now on all streaming platforms. 

Best Left Magazine: Hi! Thank you for taking the time to chat with us, and congratulations on the EP, I loved getting to listen to it and seeing it live was incredible. I have not been able to get enough of you guys and am so happy my partner Olivia and I got to come out to the show. How are we feeling now that the EP is out? 

Kelley: Thank you so much! That’s so kind of you, we’re really excited the EP is out. It was such a dream to be able to work with Tony and we’re very grateful to have been able to make this music. 

Mina: It feels special to have this music out. The songs were very playful and fun to make and I’m very happy to be able to share it with everyone.

How was it to share the EP live for the first time in New York, after working on it for about a year with Tony? What does it mean to you to be from somewhere like New York with such a rich music scene? 

Kelley: The show was awesome. We’ve been in writing and recording mode recently, our last tour was in the Spring with The Kooks and it felt good to be back on the stage with our band. New York is unbeatable, it’s the best. I feel really lucky to have grown up in a city that is filled with music and art. It’s inspiring to be surrounded by such skilled, creative, and loving people. 

Mina: It was wild to play these songs live. I was playing all of Tony’s bass parts and it felt very cool to play them and sing at the same time. Usually, when we have new music, we secretly play some of it before it’s out, but that wasn’t the case with these songs. That aspect was scary but exciting and it felt good to perform them in New York for the first time with people we love in the audience. 

Now of course we have to mention Tony Visconti, a legend if there ever was one. Obviously you both mention David Bowie being one of your prime influences, what are your top three records Tony has worked on? 

Kelley: This is such a hard question! We do love Bowie. His music has had a huge effect on us. It was such an insane situation to be in Tony’s studio recording in the booth Bowie sang in and sitting on the same couch listening to Tony’s stories. The records Tony and Bowie made together are so stunning and creative and it meant so much to us to be invited into that world. My favorites shift all the time, but I’ll tell you some of the records of Tony’s that I’ve been really loving listening to recently: Blackstar by Bowie, Electric Warrior by T. Rex, and Earth Song/Ocean Song by Mary Hopkin.

Mina: Gonna echo Kel here. We were definitely geeked to be working with Tony. I’m obsessed with Blackstar and Electric Warrior. I think Tony is so good at making things sound epic without changing the natural sound of the thing he’s recording. 

How would you say Tony’s influence and collaborating with him on this project helped this project transcend genre norms, what were each of your favorite parts about getting to work with him? 

Kelley: When we started writing with Tony we didn’t really have any big plans in mind, we were writing with him for fun because we were just excited to collaborate. I think that type of low-pressure situation really makes for some interesting music sometimes because you feel free to try weird stuff and follow whatever feels fun. Tony led us towards choices that were, in all moments, beautiful and strange and epic and delicate. I loved the chord progressions he would dream up. I loved writing and recording. I especially loved adding in harmonies to the music with him there, it was really fun to collaborate on building the vocal stacks together. Beyond the actual project, I also loved hearing his stories and having our own funny times together in the studio. 

Mina: This process of writing was very fluid and lawless. We had a great time just sitting and jamming until something interesting came to us and didn’t think much about genre or anything like that. It felt very freeing. 

Speaking of defying genre norms, you have been one of the great proponents of experimentation in the indie space, how do you think your experimentation and creativity makes Daisy The Great continue to stick out in the indie space? 

Mina: We’ve never really thought about genre much when writing. Most of our music is melody and lyric-centered, and everything else is just building the world around the song. We always write with what’s best for the song in mind. I think that keeps us from being stuck in time and keeps writing fresh for us, just following our instincts over anything else. 

Kelley: Songwriting feels like uncovering something, to me. Like something is waiting somewhere, and I have to find it, and once I find it there’s generally no changing it or trying to mold it into something else. You really feel it viscerally when it’s right.

What was the inspiration for the visual aspects of Spectacle: Daisy the Great vs. Tony Visconti, Liv and I were discussing how the whole boxing motif looks very cool and definitely sticks out on its own. How did you come to choose that theme? 

Mina: Honestly, our manager was like I think the EP should be called Daisy the Great vs. Tony Visconti, and Kel and I were thinking of calling it Spectacle, and then we combined the two for fun, Spectacle: Daisy the Great vs. Tony Visconti, and that name sounded like an epic boxing match to me. It felt like a cool way to express a meeting of minds. Boxing is like dancing with a combination of choreography, tension, and spontaneity, and the music sounds like that to me. I based the art on old boxing posters but with a caricature-like sketchy cartoon style, and I think when you see it you go, “what is that?” which is a goal for me when making album art. 

Going back a bit to your beginnings, when you met in NYU and started thinking “Wait, this fictional band from our musical could become a reality” what drew you to that conclusion? I thought the idea of Daisy The Great coming off the pages and into reality was just so interesting, how did things go after the band came out of fiction and into reality? 

Kelley: It happened so naturally and quickly, we almost never had that moment. We were talking about writing music for the “band” and started to share music that we had written in the past on our own. We started singing on each other's music that day and it was really fun, so we just kept seeking out opportunities to sing after that. We played some parties and events and then quickly started booking proper shows, found our bandmates and the project kept growing and growing from there. The music has always been made with friends and we follow roads that feel fun, exciting, and creatively fulfilling. 

Fast forwarding back to the present, what were your favorite songs off the EP to make? Are there any in particular you enjoyed making the most? 

Mina: Oooo, hmmm. I think ‘Fireman!’ was so fun to make. It was the last song we wrote, so by that point we really hit a flow working together, and personally, I felt the most confident at that point, making choices un-selfconsciously. We knew with that one we wanted something that had some pep and fun in it. We started with the acoustic guitar part I wrote in an open tuning and Kel just started singing “half an hour to the subway station..” We wrote a very fun, matter-of-facty verse about your feet being stuck to the sidewalk, with a funny pre-chorus “oh the fireman doesn't wanna help me, it’s not his job it’s his day off, hey everyone won’t you crowd around me, I’ll put on a show. It’ll pay off.” By the time we hit the chorus, we got to the dark core of the song, with some pretty dissonant chord choices and an almost spoken melody, about what it feels like to be so stuck but still want everyone’s attention. ‘Butterfly, Stay Dry’ was also super fun. That one we kept teetering between classic beautiful feeling chords from Tony, with little moments of crunch, which led to a very interesting song with both feel-good energy and some ear-perking moments. 

Now that this EP is out in the world, what’s next for Daisy The Great? Can we expect to see you live anywhere coming up, or perhaps new music on the way? 

Kelley: We’re making music!!! I don’t want to say too much but I’m excited about it. If you follow us online we’ll fill you in soon :)

Mina: YAAAA. Very excited more soon. 

In your own words, what makes Daisy The Great so special? What does getting to play music and express yourselves together mean to you? 

Mina: Daisy the Great has always felt like making music with my best friends, and it still does. I’m very grateful that we’ve stayed curious and excited to make stuff and play live after being a band for almost 8 years. At this point, singing with Kel feels like singing with the other half of my voice. I hope we get to do it forever. 

Be sure to check out Daisy The Great’s fourth EP, Spectacle: Daisy the Great vs. Tony Visconti, wherever you find your music, and of course stay tuned for more from the one and only infectiously loveable Daisy The Great!