Danny Kiranos, the heart, soul and singer-songwriter of Amigo the Devil, can’t wrap his head around the fact that he is part of the ASCAP Music Cafe’s lineup at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival.
“There are certain opportunities that pop up, and they don’t make sense in my mind until they happen,” he said. “I can explain to myself as much as I’d like about the gravity of this, how exciting it is and how honored I am to be a part of it. When it’s something like this that I’m so excited to be a part of, my brain goes, ‘Augh!’”
Kiranos’ solo and acoustic set will begin at 3:15 p.m. at the Park, 950 Iron Horse Drive, and the cafe is open to all Sundance Film Festival credential holders.
“I’m looking forward to playing, and it’s been awhile since I’ve played without a band,” he said. “I’m excited to go back to just the storytelling.”
Amigo the Devil emerged a decade ago, and Kiranos made a name for himself with his mix of folk, rock, blues and metal style that is splattered with existential-laden lyrics about life, death, crime and other morbid themes.
“I have always been fascinated by the horror and darker side of humanity,” he said. “I think at first it was the fear and absolute terror of it. I was a child who was scared of everything — the night, aliens, monsters and people.”
One of Kiranos’ biggest fears as a child was that a large and intimidating person would break into his house, grab him by the legs and smash him into the wall.
“I would dream about this over and over again,” he said. “And as I got older and started making peace that many of these thoughts came from my own neurotic behavior, I started realizing how absurd some of my fears were.”
The change in Kiranos’ perception still didn’t dim his attraction to the shock value of these macabre themes.
“A lot of kids in my age group fully immersed themselves in this world,” he said. “We would want to see how crazy a movie could get or how crazy someone’s song could get.”
After a while, however, Kiranos’ fascination with shock value took an educated turn.
“I started analyzing things more, because I wanted to understand and learn why I was so fascinated by it,” he said. “I wanted to know why these things could be an instant go-to for people who are reaching further than what is right in front of them.”
Although Kiranos’ songs can be disturbing, he wants the public to know that he doesn’t like the themes — including murderers, addiction and depression — he writes and sings about.
“When I sing a song about a serial killer, I don’t like the person I’m singing about, because I think they are horrible,” he said. “I’m just curious how somebody’s mind could derail and deviate so far from empathy and so far from wanting the betterment of humanity.”
Still, Kiranos’ songs come from a personal place, even though he may or may not have experienced the subject firsthand.
“I’m writing from the perception of how I would think I would feel in a certain position,” he said. “If I were to pretend to be Henry Lee Lucas, I try to understand the devastating upbringing he went through,” Kiranos said. “I don’t excuse the crimes he did, but I know there is an absolute sway of how things go when you are being brutalized your whole life like he was. So, I wonder how I would feel, not what I would do, in this situation. And it ends up being personal, because these are my actual emotions, incorrect or not, that are attached to it.”
Kiranos confessed there have been times when he’s had to stop writing a song because the emotions have gotten too dire.
“I have felt my mind shut itself down when I write some songs, and I’m not sure if that’s out of self-preservation or stupidity,” he said. “I’ve also gotten to moments when I didn’t want to feel what I was feeling. I just didn’t want to dive deeper into what I was experiencing, because it was too much for me.”
Other times Kiranos would stop writing a song because the lyrics felt too contrived.
“There is already so much aggression and violence from the human side that I didn’t want to add to it for the sake of adding to it,” he said.
Kiranos craft for songwriting developed over his 36 years of existence.
“As a kid growing up, I was fascinated by sounds in general,” he said. “Not just music, but noises and sounds.”
Kiranos didn’t start playing instruments until he was in his first band while a preteenager in a new school.
“It wasn’t a choice I made in terms of finding instruments that I enjoyed playing,” he said. “I just wanted to be cool with the kids who I thought were cool.”
Kiranos had met some kids who had a band and told them he played guitar, even though he didn’t.
“I think this was the first time I realized if you lie about things, people will find out,” he said with a laugh. “So, I ended up learning how to play guitar, not well, by any means, over the next week. And it turned out it was an instrument that made sense to me.”
The idea to create what some critics call acoustic “folk horror” came after Kiranos becamean adult.
“There were a lot of heavier genres I listened to and played while I was growing up, and, instinctively, I was used to writing songs about dark things,” he said. “But I was living in San Francisco, and didn’t know anyone at the time. So, I decided to make acoustic songs, because I could play those myself. I thought I would sing something familiar while playing unfamiliar styles of music.”
Kiranos also knows some songs he writes won’t impact people the way others do, and that’s why he has a large pile of discarded tunes.
“The main emotion I enjoy getting from a finished song on the writing side is whether or not it tells a complete story, and if it does, is it a story worth telling,” he said. “And if it isn’t a story, I ask if the lyrics support the core value of what I’m trying to get across. So, I’ll sit with a song like that and try to identify what lyrics are filler and which are punchy. Then I’ll try to rework those lyrics until they satisfy my personal itch. There are some stories I finish and realize they’re boring. So I’ll scap it.”
Kiranos is OK with throwing away songs, because his initial intention for Amigo the Devil wasn’t to go on tour or play shows.
“It was just a hobby to play songs at home, and it surprised me when my songs resonated with people,” he said. “Every day is a spiral that is hard to wrap my head around.”