INTERVIEW: D.K. Lyons talks performance, growth, motivations and more
WRITTEN BY: Maya Sade Eberlin
PHOTOS PROVIDED BY: GIOIA Communications
D.K. Lyons grew up in Cape Cod, Massachusetts, and chased his dreams of embedding himself in a music scene down the East Coast all the way to New York City. During his college years, he attended the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, graduating with a double major in sports management and psychology with a minor in film studies. Originally, the plan was to professionally shoot and produce ski videos– but, in his own words, “music was the thing that I was always itching to do, no matter if I was in class or had to do homework, or even out with my friends, I just wanted to get back and write songs.” On October 14th, I was able to sit down with him for an interview to dig deeper into his blossoming music career.
Following the decision to take music seriously, Lyons soon began tirelessly tinkering away at his desktop each night– a self-inflicted audio mixing boot camp. His most recent EP, “Darling Kiss Louder,” is almost entirely self-produced. Already having a strong skillset when it comes to visual storytelling has only served to aid Lyons’ music career: the singer-songwriter often uses music videos to aid in his lyrical storytelling, whether through enhancing a track’s existing story or taking it in a different direction that could not exist without a visual element. Darling Kiss Louder is accompanied by two self-written, directed and edited music videos for the tracks “stop” and “loveseeking.” These projects paid homage to Sabrina Carpenter’s “Espresso” and Chappell Roan’s “Red Wine Supernova,” respectively.
Lyons is unafraid to wear his influences on his sleeve: from the pop girls dominating the current music sphere, to specific directors, eras and bands of years past. Despite this, Darling Kiss Louder does not box itself in. Continuously challenging himself seems to be one of his greatest creative motivations.
During our interview, he said, “I’m always making music initially for mysel,f and I don’t ever want to get bored with what I’m making, so now when I sit down to make a song, I’m usually trying to make stuff that I haven’t made before.”
In pulling inspiration everywhere from disco to Hole to Taylor Swift’s Lover, Lyons makes himself at home in any genre he seeks to explore: “I feel that freedom to make whatever I want at any given time.”
For D.K. Lyons, it all started with lyricism: “I’ve been writing songs since I was 5 years old.” Developing his production, mixing and mastering abilities has changed his songwriting process, allowing him to go further with each track and ultimately leaving more room for experimentation. “loveseeking” started off as a challenge in sharpening his own production abilities and ultimately led to the creation of Darling Kiss Louder. Ultimately, he is most comfortable songwriting, saying “I’ve always intended on having my lyrics be the foundation for everything that I do.”
After finding his footing solo in the NYC live music circuit, Lyons pivoted– to meet a venue’s live performance requirements, he scraped together a band whose lineup has since shifted and solidified, changing the way he writes, produces and performs. His current band, consisting of Eddie Brandt on bass, Matt Sweeney on drums, Sophie Rey on backing vocals and Patrick Constant on keyboard, started out performing live with him and ended up playing integral roles in the development of “Darling Kiss Louder.” Eddie and Pat assisted with production, Matt played live drums on two tracks and Sophia sang backup on six of the seven tracks. Lyons anticipates that their involvement will only continue to deepen, adding layers of complexity to both his creative process and live performances.
Maya Sade Eberlin: Did that feel like another first show, when you invited [your band] to come play with you?
D.K. Lyons: Yeah, I remember that show really well, too, because our first rehearsal was really, really rough, because I had never rehearsed with a full band before and I had no idea what I was doing and everyone was just learning the material, and I was terrified. I was like, we are going to be awful, we have all these people coming. And then we started to pull it together, and we ended up selling out the Bowery Electric Map Room, and it was, the most electric night of my life. The mix was not great, and we sounded like a punk band, honestly, which was kind of cool. It was very rough around the edges, but the energy was incredible, and you could see the foundations of what we’ve kind of grown into since then.
MSE: Do you consider yourself a performer as well?
D.K.: I’m very honest with my own skill set. I am not a naturally gifted singer, I am not a naturally gifted guitar player– there’s 3 core things that I really have worked on, over a long period of time, and it’s the lyric writing, the songwriting, it’s the melody writing, making something that is really gonna get stuck in my head, so hopefully it’s the same for other people. [With] the performing aspect, I know that I’m not great in other areas, so I want to show up and put on the best show that people have ever seen. I really spend a lot of time, like, thinking about shows, and I have a little setup in my apartment here where, like, two months before a show, I’m in there rehearsing every single night by myself. The [shows] that stick with you are the ones where [artists] really take the time to build a theatrical performance. It’s not just showing up and playing songs back-to-back to back. So, I really take a lot of pride and work really hard at the performance aspect, and I think the results show that.
MSE: For sure. I mean, I can’t even, like, List how many artists have terrible voices, but so many fans, because they’re just that great [at performing]. How do you use your visual skill set to enhance your live shows?
D.K.: When we did our big, album release show last year, at The Delancey in New York City, they have a screen at the back. We built out some animations that play behind us during that show, which is really cool. And being able to edit together show content afterwards– I’m sitting on a lot of show content right now, from both our last electric show, and [a] really cool rooftop, intimate, acoustic unplug show [we played] for the EP release a couple months ago. Having that skill set has made it easy for me to edit my own music videos, edit cut-downs of those music videos and put together [social media] content. I can’t imagine the amount of money or time I would have had to spend if I didn’t have that in my back pocket.
Lyons’ closeness with his family is reflected in many aspects of his music career: for Christmas in 2018, his mom bought him five hours of studio time, pushing him to pursue music at a more refined level. The producer he worked with because of that gift ended up working with him to make his first two EPs, Blame My Astrology (2018) and Vandalism (2021), as well as showing him the ropes of audio production.
MSE: One of the first things [mentioned] in your About Me [section] on your website is you mentioned your mom, and I wanted to ask: how has your family supported you through your non-traditional musical journey?
D.K.: My mom [has] just always, always been there [encouraging me] since day one. I had written a flute part for one of my songs that was inspired by her, and I actually got her to come into the studio and play on it. I owe her literally everything. That’s a key motivation for me continuing on [and] seeing it through as far as I can take it for her, as much as it is for me.
MSE: That’s very sweet. Which song was it that she played flute on?
D.K.: “Paper Planes.” And “(She’s Got A Really) Good Heart” is very specifically about her. She’s referenced in a lot of other songs– she makes a cameo in “loveseeking,” the line about “I’m dating myself, that’s what I told my mom.” So yeah, she shows up a lot in my music.
MSE: So what is your– this is kind of a silly question– what is your pre-show routine?
D.K.: I’m gonna shout out my mom again. She told me this way back in the day before my first show, [that] if you go stand in the mirror and you put your arms up in a V formation, it helps calm you down and breeds confidence. So, like, about 30 minutes before we go on, I’ll go and do that in the bathroom and give myself a pep talk. Usually right after that, I’ll go and have a Johnny Walker Black for my dad, who passed away when I was a kid. [After that] is when I usually start to black out. 10 minutes before [going] on stage, 45 minutes on stage, and the 5 to 10 minutes after…it’s like [there’s] nothing else. Getting home [an] hour or two later and decompressing, everything kind finally hits you, and it’s just this amazing, cathartic feeling.
MSE: I’m sorry to hear about your dad. Is songwriting ever a cathartic process for you to kind of express emotions like that?
D.K.: Yeah, I mean, it’s where it started, honestly. I was writing my first song titles down, like, when I was 5 years old, and he passed away a year later, and I think most of my childhood was spent writing songs, trying to process that grief. I’m still writing songs about it. You know, looking back on my discography, “Paper Planes,” “Long Way Home,” a song called “VII XIV” off my last album, he shows up. Even on this new EP, the last song, “cause baby, that’s life” has some references to it. It’s just not something you ever really get over; you feel it in different ways, in different areas of your life. It’s still something I’m exploring and processing through music. Music has always been the place I’ve gone to express everything that comes with that.
When free from his day job in sports marketing and videography, Lyons spends his time watching baseball, exploring New York City, or skiing. For him, the journey of creation takes precedent over perfectionism: “I’m gonna make the best version of what I can make in the moment, and I’m gonna learn a lot from it, and then I’ll take that into the next thing that I make, and be better the next time, too.”
Following the release of Darling Kiss Louder, Lyons has taken time to focus on songwriting as he develops future projects. Currently, he is conceptualizing a companion piece to that EP: “I wrote all of Darling Kiss Louder in January 2024, when I was very single [and] very hopeless. As soon as I finished writing it, I met someone who changed my life. It was an interesting exercise, making these songs that I had written at a time where I really did feel these things very hardcore, [and] producing them at a time where I wasn’t feeling those things so intensely anymore. That’s when I started kind of coming up with this concept [out of wanting] to now honor what I’m feeling now and see where that takes me.”
Lyons doesn’t want to just add to the pile. In a musical climate with a lower-than-ever barrier of entry, he aims to make layered works that listeners can notice new musical motifs in after the hundredth listen. He is making music that feels like himself and urges you to get to know him through his discography.
Find D.K. Lyons on Instagram, YouTube and all music streaming platforms or catch a train to NYC to watch him perform live.
