Dani & Lizzi headline pair of weekend shows
Afather named Paul gave some pointed advice to his daughters Danielle and Elizabeth. It was the right advice. It was a correct assessment. From his insider experience, the music business could be brutally difficult and achingly hollow. They didn’t follow that advice. But it was still in their minds, years later, as Dani and Lizzy were sitting on a plane last week from their hometown of Vancouver on their way to Nashville to meet up with a film crew from The Today Show. The segment was a profile of a palliative care nurse who sang an elderly patient’s favourite song to her. It was a frequent comfort in the elder’s final days. The elder’s loved ones filmed this routine and the video of it went viral.
The Today Show was honouring the nurse, and thought to bring in the actual singers of that comforting song, to sing it back to her. The song was a swaying ballad of missing someone who had passed on. It was called Dancing In The Sky and the singers-songwriters were Dani & Lizzy.
“We met Margaret, too, the daughter of the woman who died, and Margaret’s best friend. It was really emotional. There were tears. It was crazy,” said Lizzy, who knows a little something about viral videos. It was her solo interpretation of Dancing In The Sky, just singing straight into a webcam, no effects, no band, that first brought the duo to public attention. So many people watched it they made an official video and released it to Vevo and other worldwide platforms. Between the two, more than 30 million views have been gathered.
“It is amazing, the longevity. This is the five-year anniversary of the song and it keeps continuing to touch people, which is amazing,” said Dani.
Five years hence from the song that grabbed hearts by the million, and dad’s advice to his daughters doesn’t sound so smart, but Dani & Lizzy actually kept it close to heart. They knew when Dancing In The Sky was popping YouTube circuits that they were experiencing an extraordinary moment and now they had to follow up smartly. And what’s a hiphop duo to do when their first big hit is a pop song?
“Dancing In The Sky was definitely a different genre for us,” said Lizzy. “It was something I was experimenting with just on my own. As Dani & Lizzy we weren’t doing that very much. So when it took off, we had to take into account there was this fan base who connected with that song and that style, so as a group we decided to make an album for anyone who came across Dancing In The Sky and went looking for more of that.”
“We just knew that there were children, there were elders, there were people from all walks of life that connected with that song. We wanted to make it accessible to everybody,” Dani said.
So the rappers became pop stars, with subsequent melodic hits like Keep Her Love, We Were Built To Last and the crunchy dance punch Toxic.
They didn’t turn their backs on the street beats, though. Breathless is a machine gun joint. Coca is smooth rap flow. Strong Enough has an R&B bounce.
Sometimes it’s hard to know if one of their songs has one classification over another because even their hiphop material is sung. They have built their act on a schooled music basis. That’s what comes of a household where your mother is Myriam Nelson, a noted singer-songwriter, and your father is Paul freakin’ Hyde of The Payola$.
“He’s so talented and such an inspiration to us. He taught us a lot. We grew up around music constantly,” said Dani.
Lizzy added, “I found that in my later years, when dad was doing more of his solo stuff, his singer-songwriter genre folk stuff, I really connected with his music. I started to analyze his lyrics and learn from his songwriting.”
They also have an older brother David, known in the deejay-hiphop biz as Emotionz. He led the way ahead of his twin sisters by also keeping dad’s cautionary advice in a side pocket.
Hyde wasn’t trying to dissuade his kids, in the end, just prepare them. When he released his own new album this year, a package called No Gods, Just Men, his first since 2009, it was a signal that the family business was doing just fine on all fronts. And the kids are in on the backtrack action.
“He’s never written for us, but we bounce songs off him all the time. And he’s very honest,” Dani said.
“We were working on a country project, writing for a country artist, and he helped us a lot on that because he has that country folky style. He did a lot of editing with us. That was cool,” Lizzy said.
Yes, they write for other acts as well as their own, diversifying their own creative economies. Even The Offspring do a Dani & Lizzy tune, on which they also got to sing. Cruising California (Bumpin’ In My Trunk) had composition contributions and guest vocals by the sisters.
How do a couple of Vancouver up-andcomers get their creative work in the same room as multi-million-sellers like Offspring?
They were introduced by the band’s studio producer. A guy named Bob Rock. Dani and Lizzi (and David) might well call him “uncle Bob” for all the years of being with dad in The Payola$.
That’s just introductions, though. There can be handshakes for Danielle and Elizabeth and David just by virtue of musical lineage, but there cannot be a Dani & Lizzy or an Emotionz without hard-earned, longpracticed, carefully curated mad skills.
They all bring that talent with special guest DJ Kookum to the Prince George Golf and Curling Club on Saturday (note: the show was originally slated for Cowboy Ranch but has been moved to golf club). Also on the bill are opening acts Tyler West feat. Inspire, MC Equality and Kristal Jem, DJ Nige, Monks of Funk, PapaLung + Mobb the Village and Rhythm Dogma.
There is an all-ages segment between 5-9 p.m. then a 19-plus segment at 10 p.m.
Advance tickets are $20 while supplies last, available online at the showpass.com website.