Q&A: Exploring Identity Through Music: A Conversation with Gabi Gamberg of Daffo
INTERVIEW
INTERVIEW
☆ BY NOA JAMIR ☆
Photo by Nolan Knight
THE LIFE OF A TOURING MUSICIAN — is often glamorized, though there’s so much heart, grit, and effort that goes into it behind the scenes. It’s a life of constant change, in-betweens, and sweaty, hard work. Gabi Gamberg, lead singer of LA-based band Daffo, knows this intimately.
For the past six years of their young life, the singer-songwriter has been on the go, moving from one city to the next and making their presence known on stages across the country. From dropping out of NYU to tour with beloved rock band Sir Chloe, to hitting the road in the fall of 2024 with Illuminati Hotties, and now opening for Blondshell’s 2025 summer tour, Gabi Gamberg is pressing their foot on the gas, speeding 80 miles per hour down the highway, and it doesn’t look like they’re slowing down any time soon.
With a fire in their heart and new music on the horizon, Gabi Gamberg is blazing a trail and leaving an indelible mark wherever they go. In an in-depth conversation with Luna, Gamberg opens up about navigating the joys and challenges of life on the road, the stories behind their new music, and the role their identity plays in it all.
LUNA: How are you today, and just in general?
GAMBERG: I’m doing well today! I just moved into a new sublet. I kind of temporarily don't have a permanent place to live. I’m going on tour in May and June, and then when I come back to LA, I gotta find a new place. So that’s been a little stressful. But other than that, I’m happy. It’s really sunny here, I’m stoked about it.
LUNA: What inspired the cross-country move from New York to LA?
GAMBERG: To be totally honest, it was mostly due to my health and my mental health. I feel like where I am in my career in terms of needing to be in a community of other musicians, my two options were New York or LA. I moved to New York originally for school. But then, my health got really bad. I have every single environmental allergy. I’m allergic to dust, I’m allergic to cockroaches, and then I also just have horrible seasonal depression, so winter was just not happening for me. I like to drive, and I don’t really have much of a problem with traffic. So, why not move to LA?
LUNA: For some reason I thought you were from New York! You have such a New York energy about you.
GAMBERG: [laughs] I’m from Philly, but I went to NYU for a year and a half, and then I dropped out when I got offered the Sir Chloe tour. It feels strange to be in LA. I don’t feel like I’m an LA person, but I kind of am. I’ve just been on the East Coast my whole life, so I feel like I definitely have that vibe.
LUNA: It sounds like you’re in a transitional but exciting place. You seem so full of life and possibility, which is so beautiful to see. I would love to talk about the new music, which is another exciting thing happening. What’s the headspace you’re in right now musically and what’s the direction you’re heading towards with the new music you’re releasing this year?
GAMBERG: I feel like I’m still figuring myself out. I’m still at the beginning of everything. I feel like I’ve written a million songs, but this is my debut record. All of the songs are about me, you know? I’m not really telling many other stories other than the ones about my life. Maybe it’s all a little selfish. But it’s all confessional. It’s like my diary. It’s how I process my life. It’s all music I’ve written for myself in the past year.
LUNA: I don’t think it’s at all selfish to talk about your life and your feelings! Your lyrics often explore themes of morality and shame, which is something I think so many people can relate to because it’s something we all experience but try to bury deep down. I feel like writing about it is just a way of healing and understanding yourself, and therefore ultimately becoming a better person and loving other people better.
GAMBERG: Definitely. The new music is kind of continuing those themes. It’s gonna be a lot of things, it has a lot of different emotions in it. I feel like with these singles I’ve been putting out, I’ve been trying to showcase the range of the project. I haven’t really put out a slower, ballady kind of song in a while, so that’s what I’m doing with the next song “Quick Fix”. It’s a very simple track. It’s just me, upright bass, a little cello and some mellotron, and that’s about it. Oh, and guitar!
LUNA: That sounds amazing. Who is the producer you’re working with?
GAMBERG: I’m working with this guy called Rob Schnapf. He worked on all of the Elliot Smith stuff on Either/Or. He’s worked with Beck also. Oh, and he works with Kurt Vile as well!
LUNA: That’s incredible!
GAMBERG: It’s honestly such a dream come true, and I’ve become so close to him and the engineer as well that’s working on the record with us. I feel like the music feels more like myself, like the production really serves the songs.
LUNA: That’s wonderful. I can absolutely hear the Elliot Smith influence in your music, especially with the newer songs like “Winter Hat” and “Absence Makes the Heart Grow” I hear Elliot breathing through those tracks. It’s really cool that you’re working with someone who got to work with him in such an intimate way.
GAMBERG: It’s honestly incredible. A lot of the guitars that I’m playing on these tracks are also guitars that have been on Figure 8 and Either/Or.
LUNA: Oh my god, wow!
GAMBERG: I feel like it’s all been very magical.
LUNA: Speaking on that, do you have a memory of connecting to any specific artists growing up? Who are some of the people that shaped you into who you are today?
GAMBERG: I would say Nick Drake. The sound of his guitar on the record Pink Moon is one of the most grounding things for me. You don’t listen to it and think, “These are chords I’ve heard before.” It’s all very capturing in a way that takes your focus, and brings it down. It’s all very calm, and he’s not overdoing it at all. I just think Nick Drake reminds me of being at the house I grew up in and my mom playing music on the radio or on her stereo. I listened to him a lot as a child. And then when I was about 15, I have this memory of being in a basement with my new band. It was the first time I had ever played with a band. We were all lying down, and we were all high. We were just listening to Nick Drake, lying on the carpet, and we all just had this moment where we were like, “Oh, this is so good!” [laughs]. I don’t know how to explain this, and sorry if I’m rambling–
LUNA: No, please do!
GAMBERG: I use all of these alternate tunings because I taught myself how to play guitar. As someone who’s mastered guitar a little bit more, I’ve come back to Nick Drake and Elliot Smith and tried to see how far I could go with it. I feel like they play more intentionally than I have in the past, so it’s been cool to just continue exploring with alternate tunings.
Photo by Nolan Knight
LUNA: That’s so awesome. Speaking of your band, how did you guys meet? What’s your relationship like?
GAMBERG: It’s funny, I had a little bit of a switch up from my last tour [with Illuminati Hotties]. None of my band members are able to come back for this next tour. But the band I have now have all been band members before, and what’s very funny is that two of them, Ben my guitarist, and Gavin my drummer, were there when I was 15, listening to Nick Drake in the basement.
LUNA: No way, that’s so awesome!
GAMBERG: It’s very full circle. They were both in the band when it was the “Gabi Gamberg Band” And then my bassist Sam was my first bassist when I moved to New York, who was also in the Gabi Gamberg Band, just at a different time in life. They’re all people that mean so much to me and are really dear friends and have been in my life for a long time. I’m really excited to take it all into the Daffo realm and go on tour with them.
LUNA: Oh, that’s so exciting! So when did the Gabi Gamberg Band officially become Daffo?
GAMBERG: I had always wanted it to be a band name. I never wanted to be “Gabi Gamberg”, but I just never came up with a band name in time for putting my name on a bill. I was just playing so many shows for a few years, and I was Gabi Gamberg, and it worked. But I would always introduce the band by saying, “We’re Gabi Gamberg cause I just always wanted it to be a project name. And then I was at a point where my first EP had come out, but I wrote all that when I was 15 or 16. And I was like, “I think I’m ready for a change, I’m ready for this music to be something.” I wanted to have a career. I had been brainstorming names for a long time, and then I eventually came up with Daffo, and it felt right. It stuck.
LUNA: And Daffo is short for “daffodil”? I read that somewhere on the internet, so I hope it’s true.
GAMBERG: Yes, It’s short for “daffodil”. Daffodils mean a lot to me. Growing up, they were always in my front yard, and my mom would say, “Can you hear the daffodils singing? They’re singing for you. It’s about to be spring. It’s about to be your birthday.” And then also, either my parents or my sister wanted to name me Daffodil when my mom was pregnant, but they just didn’t want me to be called Daffy. When I first started writing songs and wanting to put out music, I was 13, and I wanted to be called “Dear Daffodil”. It’s just always been a constant. Daffodils are just special to me. I wanted it to be a band name kind of without meaning. I didn’t want the name to have too much meaning, you know? I didn’t want to take away from the music. I feel like when a band is a person’s name, it becomes more person-focused, whereas I wanted Daffo to be more music-focused.
LUNA: That’s a really interesting point. I think it’s true. When the band’s name is the lead singer’s name, it becomes kind of all about them, which in a way, it is about them, but it’s not at the same time. It’s about the music.
GAMBERG: Yes, it’s hard to say. I liked being “Gabi Gamberg”, but I also wanted to be separate. It felt all too consuming, I didn’t want it to be so much about me. Oh, and I also totally didn’t answer your question. The band officially became Daffo when I was in college.
LUNA: [laughs] Okay cool, cool, I love that story, thank you! One thing I’ve been wanting to ask you is identity and how it plays into your music. I feel like something that makes you so special as an artist is your ability to bring so many different kinds of people together. When I went to your show with Illuminati Hotties in New Orleans this past October, I remember looking out at the crowd and noticing how everyone looked so different. You know how when you go to some shows, the crowd looks almost identical to the artist and everyone kind of looks the same and dresses the same? In a way, that is its own beautiful and special thing. But I just thought it was really cool how everyone looked so different at your show, and I think it speaks to your versatility as an artist, and your ability to shapeshift. I was wondering, what does identity mean to you and how does it play a role in your art, if at all?
GAMBERG: That’s a really great question, and it definitely does. I struggle with my identity a lot. I think the ego and the self gets in the way of being present and enjoying life. I think I struggle with my identity in a lot of ways. I struggle with my identity within a group of friends. I struggle with my identity as a musician. I struggle with my gender identity. I struggle with my identity in any of my relationships within my family. I struggle with my identity in terms of shame, like wondering am I a good person, or am I a bad person. Because my songs are all about myself, they’re all kind of about my life. “Get a Life” is a really good example of where I’m actually having frustration with my identity. A lot of people don’t realize that that song is about me— I’m telling myself to slow down and get a life and think about what’s around me and less about myself. I think “The Experiment” is another song where I just want to be free of my identity and kind of lose myself. I want to be connected, I want to be a part of a community. When I struggle the most is when I’m concerned with myself and my identity and what’s good or bad morally.
LUNA: I definitely get that sense from your music, and with “The Experiment” in particular. I’m gonna be honest, the first time I heard that song, I was like, “What is Gabi trying to say here?” But I get it now. You have this ability of shapeshifting into all these different things, but it’s all still you. There isn’t one Gabi.
GAMBERG: That’s really hard for me to pinpoint. Every time I look in the mirror, I’m like, “What the f*ck?” [laughs]. I am a shapeshifter. With ADHD, and just in general, I’m like a sponge. I really take on the emotions of the people around me. It’s tough to pin down who you are, and you also have to wonder how much of it really matters. I feel boxed in with my identity, and I think it’s my own doing. And t’s also just capitalism and individualism and the world we live in isolating us and keeping us separate. I’m really bad at explaining my ideas. I feel like I’m just throwing out words now.
LUNA: No, I’m right there with you! I totally understand where you’re coming from, and to add on to it, I think where a person is geographically plays such a big role. The place you live in can be a make or break for mental health and even someone’s identity, I think. Do you feel like LA has welcomed you with open arms?
GAMBERG: Yes, definitely, I’ve met some really wonderful people here. But at the same time, I’m very lonely, and I think I have been for the past year. I’ve been in a transitional period for the past six years of my life. I feel like, you know, I’m always moving, and then I’m on tour. And then my friends are often in their exchange programs and move to a different country. I have a community, but I don’t really know my people yet. I don’t really have my community of friends, or just a living community in general because I’ve been moving around so much. I think that’s also played a role in what I’m writing about in terms of what the music has been like. I spend a lot of time in my head, and a lot of time alone. I tend to think about myself and my identity a lot. I think I just need to commune with nature a little bit more. I spend a little too much time inside thinking.
LUNA: You’re not alone in that, I think it happens to the best of us. Thank you for opening up about it. What, if anything, do you think you learned from the Illuminati Hotties tour last year that you are going to bring into the tour with Blondshell this summer?
GAMBERG: That I need to take it easy! Tour is wild. The Illuminati Hotties tour specifically was shows almost every day back to back. I think I just need to spend more time taking care of myself and making sure that I’m not giving too much of myself away. And at the same time, I would like to be more present. The best moments of the tour were when I was hanging out with Illuminati Hotties and hanging out with my band and exploring the places that we were in, versus when I spent time in the van just thinking and thinking and thinking. There’s so much life to be lived on tour, and I really want to tap into that more. But I also need to make sure that I’m taking care of myself at the same time, or else I’m gonna burn out really quickly.
LUNA: You have a song coming out April 3rd called “Quick Fix”– What does this song mean to you? What was the feeling you were trying to capture or perhaps free yourself of when you wrote it?
GAMBERG: I started writing that song when I was having really horrible writer’s block. I hadn’t really written a song in six months. I wrote the first verse during that writer’s block. I was just kind of doing anything to make myself feel better. I was smoking a lot, and I wasn’t eating. I was sleeping with random people. Just doing things to make myself feel better that weren’t actually what I needed to be doing to take care of myself. I wasn’t focusing on the root of what was bothering me and what I was going through. It’s about feeling stuck and just taking care of the problem with temporary solutions.
LUNA: I love the promotional way you’re going about it, like posting infomercials for cleaning products on Instagram. It’s really creative and funny, but also makes such a good point. So often, we try to “spot clean” our problems to make them look shiny again, without getting to the root of them.
GAMBERG: It’s like cleaning mold with bleach. It doesn’t really kill it, you’re not getting into the cracks.
LUNA: Right, exactly.
GAMBERG: The music video for the song is basically a 2000s infomercial. It’s really weird and really funny, and it’s like a complete juxtaposition to the song. But I’m really excited about it.
LUNA: That’s gonna be so awesome, I’m so excited too! Just to wrap up, I wanted to wish you a happy belated Trans Day of Visibility! Did you get to celebrate at all?
GAMBERG: Thank you! And no, I didn’t. But you know, I existed [laughs].
LUNA: Yes, you existed and that’s more than enough! Thank you so much for making the time to talk with us today. This was a little dream come true for me personally. I’m really excited for you, and I’m really excited for the new music!
GAMBERG: Anytime, I love talking with you. I feel very lucky to be interviewed by you.
LUNA: Thank you so much! Ditto. I can’t wait for people to read about you and your music!
