Flowers On The Moon

It didn't take much more than Tom Petty blasting some telecasters along with his Heartbreakers to get then 15-year-old Daniel Dias hooked. "It was at some awards show on TV", he remembers. "And they just dove right into this amazing guitar solo." It was the mid-90s, also the time Britpop was making its way in the charts. "I started writing songs around that time; and from very early on, they were somehow the result of those two universes combined."

Dias grew up in São Paulo, Brazil, the son of a classical pianist and an engineer who used to play guitar all over the place. "My father didn't go on to play professionally, but he was always strumming something on his acoustic guitar - still is. As a kid, I'd think his own material was right there with The Beatles, The Byrds and The Eagles, his favorite bands, as I would listen to him play all of that together. I grew up with the notion that playing a guitar around the house is something that you just oughta do, so I did. And here I am."

Such musical background came in handy when the singer/songwriter moved to Los Angeles right after he graduated college, in the early 2000s, to work in the film industry. He didn't stop writing, though. "Some of the songs on this album date from that time, like 'If You Go' and one of the intermediate versions of 'Outside Looking In', which was one of the first songs I wrote in my life." Living in California didn't hurt the nature of Dias' sound, even though he believes the album is a mixture of "L.A., New York, London and São Paulo", the places where most of the songwriting took place. "it is a true universal album", he explains. "And it's about feeling misplaced; doesn't matter where you are or who you're with. You're never completely satisfied, looking around and thinking 'these are not my people'. So I just called the album that."

Flowers On The Moon, Daniel's current solo project, came along in 2008, when his previous band imploded after a turbulent period. "I figured, I'm just gonna do what I want and see how it goes". After a long pre-production period recording with guitarist and friend Louis Daher, "These Are Not My People" was finally laid down in 2011 at Rocklab Studios, in Brazil, produced by Dias himself and producer Gustavo Vazquez. Released in 2012, it's now available online and on a limited CD edition. "I want people to realize that any previous notions they might have about music made in particular places are not always true. In that sense, I like to think that Flowers On The Moon could be from anywhere in the world."