Q&A: From Viral TikTok Song to Touring with half•alive, Daisy the Great Have Made a Name for Themselves in the Indie Music Scene (Live from Wonderbus)
GROWING AN AUDIENCE IN A GLOBAL PANDEMIC - Mina Walker and Kelley Nicole Dugan, of Daisy the Great, have found success amidst challenging times. After meeting in an acting class at NYU, Mina and Kelley decided to write a musical together and the rest is history.
Forming as an indie pop band with a couple of friends in 2016, Daisy the Great was born.
The band put out their first EP titled “I’ve Got a Few Friends & I Wish They Were Mine” in 2018 featuring “The Record Player Song” which took on a life of its own during the pandemic. With the help of TikTok, this song became an over night sensation and even landed them a collab with, the American pop trio, AJR.
What started off as two friends making music together in college quickly turned into a career and something neither of them could of ever imagined. Since the release of their first EP they have gone on to put out a full-length album, open for Indigo Girls and Half-Alive on tour as well as gain over a million monthly listeners on Spotify.
Read below to hear what Mina and Kelley from Daisy the Great have been listening to on the road and what they have coming next.
LUNA: What are some of your favorite songs right now?
MINA: Our friends Modern Diet released an album recently, and I’ve been listening to their song “Smaller” which is the first song on the record with another artist named Margaux.
KELLEY: I have been listening to a song called “Coming Back to me Now” by Leith Rossa that song is really really lovely.
LUNA: Who are some artists that have been inspiring you? What do you listen to before your shows?
KELLEY: A lot of Remi Wolf. We’ve been on really long drives, so we’ve been playing a lot of music. I do listen to podcasts sometimes.
MINA: Yeah, I think we listen to music more. I think that the band gets too distracted to follow podcasts. Like we have to all really commit to something.
KELLEY: I’ve listened to a podcast with Matti while you and Nardo (drummer and guitarist) were sleeping in the backseat; it’s like when half of the group is doing something and we’re not all together then we can be like “Oh, let’s listen to a podcast.”
MINA: Something we did the other day that’s crazy is that we decided to put of the “Wicked” soundtrack, and we looked up the whole synopsis of the musical. And before every song, we would read the synopsis up until the song. But I wouldn’t say that that’s the thing inspiring us.
KELLEY: But it works its magic in mysterious ways; I was about to wear like a see-through, mesh cloak thing yesterday that I was eventually like “eh it’s too hot.” And then Nardo, who plays our guitar for us, was like “It’s like Wicked! Like, you look like a witch!” And I was like “Wow, maybe it is inspiring us subconsciously.”
LUNA: Maybe it will come out in your lyrics somewhere. Do you have a most memorable show this year or a show that really stands out to you?
KELLEY: Definitely. We were on tour with “Half Alive” for like a month and a half, which was really really fun.
MINA: I think the New York Half Alive Show.
KELLEY: Yeah, that’s what I was gonna say; either Urban Plaza or the Lalapalooza show I think are the standouts.
MINA: Urban Plaza was so fun because it was the first time we played New York in so long.
KELLEY: And like, we’re from New York; we used to play New York like every month. We went to NYU, so I used to live in a dorm nearby Urban Plaza.
MINA: It was nice to see like a little pocket of friends in like a sea of strangers; it was like you could check in and be like “okay there’s like a little home base.”
LUNA: You guys are going on tour with the Happy Fits this fall. Are you excited for that tour?
KELLEY: We’re so excited. It starts November 8th in South Burlington, Vermont.
LUNA: That’s so awesome! Do you have a spot you’re looking forward to going to on that tour?
KELLEY: I’m excited to go back; some of the rooms are rooms that we’ve played before on other support tours, so I’m excited to just go back to some of them and be like “We know this.” I don’t know, it’s nice I think, especially since tour is so many different places all the time that it’s nice to see a room you know and be like “I’ve gotten so far.”
LUNA: It’s crazy, I feel like every artist plays so many different venues a year. Do you remember the places you play at or do all shows feel new?
KELLEY: I think going back to them helps you remember.
MINA: I remember every venue but I don’t remember where every venue is.
KELLEY: We’re are gonna play Webster Hall and The Fonda, which I’m really excited to play as well.
LUNA: Whenever you go to a new city or a city you’ve been to in the past, what are your go-to spots? Coffee shops, vintage shops, record stores?
KELLEY: Honestly, most of the time we’re driving so much that sometimes we’ll just see the road to the hotel and the venue. But if we have time, we’ll go on little walks.
MINA: We try our best to make pit stops to just see nature. We found some dunes in Idaho. We were driving from Salt Lake City to Portland, and Nardo saw a little sign in Idaho that said “dunes.” And we just followed the signs to get there.
KELLEY: It was like giant 200-foot dunes, and people were renting like essentially a snowboard. It was funny though because it wasn't working; people were on the sand surfing boards and they were stuck.
LUNA: With the success of your song “Record Player,” how do you guys feel like your career has changed and evolved?
KELLEY: It was a really big song for us, and it happened most during the pandemic, so it was pretty weird to be alone in our house while there was a lot going on on the internet.
MINA: It was the first song we ever put out; we put the original one out in 2017 and had made an album and a couple of EPs since then, and it’s so fun for it to have a new life and just get its own moment.
KELLEY: But it’s been really amazing; We’ve been really fortunate to be able to tour with some amazing bands and play crazy rooms that are really exciting.
MINA: And it was sick to make a new version of it with AJR. Since then, we recorded our next album, and it’s coming out in the fall, October 28th.
LUNA: Do you feel like there’s any pressure releasing a sophomore album now that you have a growing fanbase?
KELLEY: Honestly, we’re so excited about the songs and have been playing a lot of them live for like forever.
MINA: It honestly feels like our first album.
KELLEY: That’s what I was gonna say, like Mina and I always did music, but we weren’t planning anything when we started the band. So I think the first album, we were like “This is awesome and so fun, but we’re kind of still learning.”
MINA: We didn’t really feel like real band while we were releasing all of our music. I mean, I love the first album; I relistened to it, and I was like “This is so special”, and it has so many elements that I don't even think we could recreate or rewrite now just because of how creative our minds were and where we were at in life. I’m really excited because I feel like the next album is the next level. I recently listened to the first album and the new album back to back, and you can really hear the evolution and find leads into other songs.
KELLEY: It feels like with the first album, it’s been a long time since it came out, so it kind of feels like a version of us wrote it that’s younger, and I think this album feels like us now.
MINA: And it’s what we perform live, so it definitely feels very true to where we’re at and what people know of us already.
LUNA: Do you have any goals for this album?
KELLEY: I hope that the album gets heard by people (laughs).
MINA: I hope we have a pretty sold out tour. I think we just want to grow the band to the next level and keep making other albums.
You can catch Daisy the Great on tour with the Happy Fits this fall and presave their new album, All You Need is Time, coming out October 28th.
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