Junior Danny Humbarger sat on the edge of his couch in his apartment living room and remembered when he opened for twenty | one | pilots two years ago at Howard’s Club H.
“There were like seven people there and they got everybody interested,” the solo guitarist said. “It was my second or third show and it was just awesome. That made me want to keep doing it.”
Even though Humbarger realized performing and writing music was something he knew he wanted to pursue as a career after the performance, he already had a steady mindset on the subject as a kid.
He started writing songs as a senior in high school and began to play shows during his freshman year at the University because he “wanted to be outgoing.”
The junior musician took the first step in making his first album “Summer Air” after he attended the University’s Summer Institute for Recording and met recording engineer and videographer Tim Foster.
Foster helped record, mix and master Humbarger’s first few EP’s in the University’s music studio and spent more than 35 hours of just mixing and editing down tracks.
“He has a natural music ability,” Foster said. “He is a fantastic musician and has a natural ear for music.”
Humbarger met videographer Alex Hiner at the recording institute that same summer and decided he wanted to have a few of his songs made into music videos.
“Danny is a good friend of mine through music so when I started doing videos he hit me up interested in one and I was looking for any video work at the time so he came up and we did our first video,” Hiner said.
After a few years of getting his own material out to the public, the musician is getting ready to digitally release his second album consisting of nine songs, all of which were recorded, mixed and mastered without any help, but his own. The songwriter also documented the entire recording process and published it to his YouTube page, MusicFromDanny, which is where people can download or stream the album in its entirety on Feb. 1.
One of the song’s featured on the album is called “Kiss Me Goodnight,” which Humbarger recorded himself playing guitar and singing at the same time without any editing, ultimately contributing feeling of the record.
“I thought that song was really important and even if I messed up on guitar or messed up on vocal a little bit that’s not the point the song,” Humbarger said. “That song is about expressing a feeling that I have.”
Now, leaning back on the couch smiling after reliving the memory of opening for a mainstream band in his head, he knows why he makes music.
“If someone can hear these songs that makes them feel good and brings any positivity to their life that’s what I want,” Humbarger said. “I want them to really feel that song and feel that energy and feed off of that together.”
