News/Thoughts

Chicago’s Dan Cimaglio

Although Dan Cimaglio has been a musician a large part of his life, it’s only been in recent years that he began to pursue it professionally. This Chicago native moved away for a while when his wife’s job relocated. While in Oregon, and then Vermont, Dan began collecting bits and pieces of original song material. Eventually, they returned home to Chicago, about three years ago, and Dan felt the time was right to see if he had enough material for a full fledged recording project. Sure enough, he did, and set out to record his debut album.

Dan began his interest in music as a bass player using a borrowed bass and amp in middle school. He remembers lamenting this to his dad as a school battle of the bands approached. “I came home one day from school and there were these boxes sitting in my front porch,” Dan recalled. “Dad had gone out and bought me a fender bass guitar and amp – I was practically in tears; to get that kind of support meant everything.”

Dan continued to play in various school bands and then as a young adult in the Chicago area. “But there comes a time where the rubber meets the road, and things change,” Dan said. Adult life took over. Dan’s trade became carpentry and construction, but music was always near by. “Even though my day career sidetracked my music from time to time, I was always writing,” Dan shared.

So when he and his wife returned to Chicago, he knew it was probably now if he ever wanted to see where these song pieces he’d been collecting would go anywhere. He shared them with a good friend and producer who immediately encouraged him to see it through.

The result was, Let the Light Shine. “These songs are about love, loss, hope and family,” Dan said. “While growing up in a city can give you an urban perspective, living and working in a rural environment gives you an appreciation for the land and the people trying to make something out of it. Though I may have grown up in Chicago, I feel that I’ve absorbed some of that rural DNA into my life, and it shows up here in my music.”

Visit Dan here! Check out the full interview here!