In 2010, upon the release of Down Wires, an album described as gritty, soulful and startlingly Dylanesque, Anthony D’Amato exploded onto a revitalized folk music scene. While his brethren were busy cashing in on a highly produced, four-on-the-floor-driven sound (think the throbbing undercurrent of Mumford & Sons’ 2009 Billboard-topper Sigh No More), D’Amato was stripping down his compositions, shooting for a raw, more organic and personal connection. “There’s something cathartic about capturing a certain moment or emotion with a song,” says D’Amato. “You’re able to take ownership of it and share it with people in a way that’s hopefully rewarding for them too.”
Pursuing this concept to an extreme, D’Amato recorded Down Wires in his Princeton dorm room with only a single mic, a handful of musical contributors and “a broken laptop that was missing any number of keys.” Asked why he made this atypical (and seemingly professionally suicidal) decision, D’Amato said that it had much to do with the fact that F. Scott Fitzgerald was rumored to have stayed in the very same room that the then-22-year-old was occupying.
“When Fitzgerald wrote about his time at Princeton [This Side of Paradise], he wrote about the ghosts of all the great men that had been there for hundreds of years,” D’Amato told Paste Magazine in 2010. “[He wrote] about becom[ing] one of those ghosts that left a mark for centuries to come. So it made sense to stay in my dorm and record there—to try to leave some of my ghost when the album was done, to leave my mark.”
While talk like this tends to come off as sort of offputtingly cocksure (especially when it comes from the mouth of a 22-year-old), D’Amato’s ambition was unquestionable. Down Wires is by no means the recreational endeavor of a gifted hobbyist, but the result and culmination of D’Amato’s entire course of Princeton undergraduate work. During his tenure at the Ivy League behemoth, en route to earning a degree in English literature, D’Amato studied under Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Paul Muldoon. Guided by the mentorship of Muldoon, D’Amato undertook an independent study in songwriting and wound up penning a thesis titled, “Deliver Me from Nowhere: Bruce Springsteen & The Literature of American Alienation,” in which the precocious young man traced “the evolution of the particularly American sense of alienation in Bruce Springsteen’s songwriting back through a literary tradition to Puritan sermons in the 1600s.”
For a folksinger to attend one of the nation’s most prestigious institutions to intellectually pursue his craft? That seems to cut rather fantastically against the mold.
In the five years since releasing Down Wires, D’Amato’s ambitions and somewhat presumptive swagger have proven warranted. He’s released another two albums, each to critical acclaim. With 2012’s Paper Back Bones winning him enough clout to get picked up by New West Records (home of icons such as Steve Earle and Patty Griffin), D’Amato’s latest outing, 2014’s The Shipwreck from the Shore, benefited from an all-star cast of contributing musicians, including members of Bon Iver, Megafaun and Josh Ritter’s band. The album generated tremendous buzz and was covered by the likes of NPR’s “Weekend Edition,” the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times and many more.
“Prior to [Shipwreck], I’d self-recorded and produced everything on my own,” says D’Amato. “So it’s hands-down the most collaborative project I’ve ever been a part of. Producer Sam Kassirer (Josh Ritter, Langhorne Slim) really pushed me into new musical territory, which I’m extremely grateful for. In addition to playing keyboards on the album, Sam also helped put together an incredible rhythm section including Matt McCaughan (Bon Iver) and Brad Cook (Megafaun).”
Beyond the sudden wave of big-name collaborations, D’Amato’s efforts have earned him spots on the bill with acts such as Mumford & Sons, Rhett Miller, Justin Townes Earle, Ben Kweller, Mary Gauthier and Shawn Colvin.
To say D’Amato’s star has risen would be a gross understatement. And yet, despite the ever escalating success, he remains down-to-earth, fundamentally committed to the hard work of nurturing and growing his artistic powers.
“What I love about writing music is the sense of creating something from nothing, of imagining something into being,” says D’Amato. “My favorite songwriters are the ones who can make you recognize something about yourself in their music that you may not have understood before. And I’m seeking to hone my ability to bring about that effect.”
–Eric J. Wallace