Daniel Donato: 2025

This  FUV Live session is also available as a podcast, "FUV Live Sessions." We're elevating WFUV's long history of live sessions and interviews via a podcast that you can find on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and Amazon Podcasts. New episodes drop every Monday.

It’s been a long time since Studio A saw the kind of fretboard frenzy that was going on when Daniel Donato paid us a visit. He tore it up on guitar while showing his deep roots in the deep roots of country music.

In performance, Donato is playful and animated. He brings the same spirit to conversation, stringing thoughts together like guitar runs. He touched upon his formative years absorbing music at the fabled Nashville honky-tonk, Robert's Western World, a place that Donato says "spoke to his soul."

He also chats about his admiration for the Grateful Dead and sitting in with Bobby Weir at the Orpheum Theatre in Memphis. ("It was like playing chess with Bobby Fisher," Donato says.)

Donato is an artist who has found his instrument — and a musician who has answered his calling. In town last fall for a three-night stand at Brooklyn Bowl, he also gifted us with a festive Tiny Vinyl single that I passed over to midday host Alisa Ali (who gave it an immediate spin on the air).

Once I settled into Studio A with Donato, he was completely focused on inhabiting songs from his most recent album, Reflector, recorded with his band, Cosmic Country. Enjoy his outstanding solo interpretations of “Half Moon Night,” “Lose Your Mind,” and “Dance in the Desert.”

[Recorded: 10/25/24; Engineered by Jim O'Hara with Erin Merriman,  Zack Tomassi, and Olivia Grant. Produced by Meghan Offtermatt. Videographers: Alena Godas, Anna Fahy, Louisa Schramm, Olivia Iannaccone and Sebastian Giugovaz.]