These Guys Are Not Your Grandma’s Horizon Wireless
This past weekend as we celebrated Catskill Chill Music Festival‘s last year at the beloved Camp Minglewood, I got the chance to sit down with Horizon Wireless, a group that has been with the festival since the early years. We got to chat with Harrison Waxenberg and Daniel Lyons about their influences, who they’d love to tour with, and some of their favorite things about Catskill Chill. You can listen to some of their tunes on Soundcloud.
So first of all, I heard you are huge fan of Nickelback.
HW: Anyone who says they’re not a fan of Nickleback has never been to the bottom of every bottle. Honestly, Nickelback is one of those things that when they came out you loved them and then later on you thought it was cool to hate them, but the fact of the matter is that they were good and they are still good and they speak from the heart. And how many times if you look at a photograph and you know it makes you laugh? People like to project their own insecurities onto people. But yeah, I’m a fan of Nickleback.
For those who haven’t heard Horizon Wireless before, how would you describe your sound?
DL: Universal appeal
HW: It takes you on a journey from everything from deep jazz lounge house all the way to psychedelic breakbeat tech from the future. It really incorporates samples from music and movies from all parts of time and generations. It can go from Frank Sinatra in a sigh break sort of song, then to Whitney Houston over gangsta house.
DL: We touch on everything in every genre… and each other.
How long have you guys been together?
DL: Just over a year the two of us.
HW: Well no, we first met at Bingamtronica, a festival in Binghamton where SOLARiS and Horizon Wireless were playing when Montey from Digital Frontier was our drummer, and that’s when Dan first started studying Horizon Wireless.
DL: Yeah, that’s when I first started getting jealous.
HW: When we started playing together was Mint Green Festival. I put Dan on our guest list because I thought that Montey might not be able to show up, since his work schedule was getting hectic. So I told Dan: just bring your drums and be ready to play, and Dan ended up stepping on stage, and we blended together quite well. Then we found out Electron was gonna do a tour, and they were doing B.B King’s and then The Westcott, and since he’s from Syracuse and I’m from New York, I was like, hmm, let’s just do those two dates. We did those two dates, and it was fuckin’ epic, so we decided to continue doing this together.
Who are your biggest influences?
HW: Oh man well, alright: Jim Carey, Elvis Presley, The Beach Boys, The Four Seasons, The Academy Is…, Taking Back Sunday, Brand New, Lotus, The Disco Biscuits, Shpongle, Infected Mushroom. And for some lesser-know artists Lucas Greenburg, Richy K, Alan Sax, Headflux, Band Tango, The Grateful Dead, Miles Davis, Lotus. My dad, who has played in Mountain, he played with Brian Setzer, The Stray Cats, he was the house saxophone player at Studio 54 and has played a set with us and Boombox. My uncle who had a gold record in the 60’s and toured with Rod Stewart, he was in a band called The Brooklyn Bridge and played on The Ed Sullivan Show. My grandfather who was the drummer for Rodney Dangerfield in The Catskills. My cousin who is the replacement bassist in Taking Back Sunday. Pretty much a lot of my family members are my biggest influences, and now Dan Lyons. Honestly, Horizon Wireless was kind of at a standstill; I was playing shows here and there because I had kind of lost inspiration and wanted to concentrate on other things in my life. Then when I got together with Dan and had someone who was that into it and gave that much energy, time and devotion to learning and was really adding to it, that inspired me more then anything has in my life.
Do you like playing festivals or shows better?
DL: I like festivals better, definitely. Festivals are like a community, vacation, it’s a way to feel that you’re doing something that has an effect on everybody around you instead of doing targeted events that you don’t know how people got there or if they really like live music. You have to win over the crowd at a venue sometimes; there’s no winning over a crowd at a festival unless you’re so bad that everyone leaves. If you start at a good place you know you can only go up at a festival, because everybody just wants to hear music. Catskill Chill is the ultimate for that; even from the staff, everybody wants to hear music, and everybody is involved in live music, so I just like the community aspect of it. At a bar sometimes you show up and you don’t know what the intentions of the people who own the place; you don’t know what money needs to be made. Here at a festival it’s all out of my hands.
HW: But I do love the shows at a bar when you think it’s going to be something like, awful, you know, and it’s totally unexpectedly great. There was a show we played at Stella Blues, which is some little bar that fits 150 people, and there was a line out the door before we started. We thought there was no way all those people were there for us, so we went outside and told the crowd to make sure to stick around for Horizon Wireless, and they were all just like, “Yeah, duh, that’s why we’re here!” That’s when we realized people were starting to pay attention to us. So sometimes bar shows are really fun, because the outcome can be very telling of where you are and where you’re going.
Is there a fall tour in the works?
DL: We’re always looking; we’re keeping the ball rolling right now.
HW: Yeah, if people want to play just fucking hit us up. We’re here, and we have the weekend off and are willing to play. If people are willing to pay us money to play shows we’re there, and we’re not even asking for a lot of money. Like we just want to be able to the drive to the place, drive back and maybe make a couple hundred bucks. Our goal — all right this is our lifetime goal, and it may seem a little bizarre — but we would like to get a thousand dollars a show, which is not asking a lot. If we were able to get that maybe then we’d be able to play like 50-75 shows a year, and that would be a blessing for us.
DL: Right now we’re just taking it one at a time, and if it gets there it gets there, we’re very happy with what we’ve got right now.
HW: Yeah, we love playing. Coming up we have the official afterparty for The Disco Biscuits on Halloween in Syracuse, a Bernie Sanders benefit on October 2nd at The Delancey in New York.
Who’s your ideal artist to tour with?
HW: There’s a couple different answers I have. I would definitely say if money or business had no say, Dan’s other band SOLARiS. Honestly they are fucking incredible; they are up there with every single band you see up there on a main stage these days. If you just devote your life to just touring with one band, and you don’t give attention to these other bands who are all just as good and are working as hard as everyone else, you’re doing a disservice to the scene in my opinion. I feel like it has become like ‘oh, what band are you for?’ but we’re for every band. We are all in this together, and every band is good. Pigeons Playing Pingpong, Chromatropic, Teddy Midnight, the list goes on. Honestly I would love to do an entire Electron and Horizon Wireless tour; I think that would do very well.
DL: Break Science and Horizon Wireless. Prince is someone we would love to open for. Honestly there are lots of people that we would really like to open for, but they’re just not very popular. Producers and people that blow our minds like Alan Sax and stuff like that, who don’t have huge crowds but make such huge music. So it’s tough to figure out whether you want to take the gamble.
HW: You never really know, but to me it’s worth just to do it and see what happens, and these artists respect the fact that you’re bringing them on.
Your first set was incredible last night, anything special in store for tonight’s set?
HW: Wiley Griffin will be joining us; there’s going to be a very magical moment at the end of the set. At any point in time in one of our sets there can be something very special in store that neither of us know is going to happen. To an extent we plan things, but in reality nothing is planned at all. It’s very hard to explain. At this point we’ve been doing this for a year, and Dan has a bank of about 175 songs that he knows backwards and forwards even better than I know them. We have our first originals now that we started bleeding into the set like my vocals and Dan’s drumming and thousands of samples of movies, music and speeches. You just never know what’s going to happen; I don’t know and he doesn’t know. It’s all about the interaction with us and the crowd; it’s a very interactive experience. So yes, everything for tonight is going to be special.
How many years have you played here at Camp Minglewood?
HW: I first played in 2012 and 2013 with Montey in Club Chill and also did a DJ set at the Red Bull Truck and a late night DJ set at the ice cream truck. This is my third year doing two sets at the DC corner.
DL: This is my fourth year with SOLARiS and first year with Horizon Wireless.
So you’ve definitely grown with the festival. How has it been to see Catskill Chill grow?
HW: It’s awesome! I mean, we still have our OG bunk, One Bouffington Lane.
DL: You can walk through the history of all the times you’ve had here, all the cabins you’ve stayed in it’s like walking through a photo album. It’s really cool. I’m sad to see it leave Minglewood. It’s hard to reproduce that feeling, but it’s a good challenge, and hopefully we’ll be there next year to see what the end result will be.
HW: Yeah we’re excited to see where it goes.
What makes Catskill Chill different from other festivals you’ve played?
DL: Showers…
HW: Honestly, it’s very nostalgic of when you were a kid staying in bunks with your friends. It’s just awesome.
What’s your favorite memory at Camp Minglewood?
DL: Every time I get on stage, it’s just as good as the last. It’ll happen tonight again. The first time I played Club Chill was extremely amazing.
HW: Agreed, the first time I got on stage at Club Chill.
What do you want people to know about Horizon Wireless?
DL: We are not your Grandma’s Horizon Wireless, we are making new amazing music together, and we hopefully will be those guys that you see do the big things if we keep doing what we’re doing.
HW: Just come and see us, and, if you don’t, we love you anyways.
DL: Come see us, and tell us what you think.