Dan + Shay: How They Got Started and the Songs You Love

Dan + Shay is visiting Backstage Country this week to bring you the latest country music hits, entertain you with their origin story and answer the question of whether they have "too many songs."

The pair discussed with Kelly Ford whether they think they have too many songs. Dan said, “People give us crap for this now. But when we first hit the scene, I think we had a demo tape of like 28 songs. Everybody was like, ‘They've got 28 songs that they think are good enough to play for country radio.’ And we didn't know any better.” He added, “We were just writing songs. We weren't even a band at that point when we wrote those tunes. We were just kind of having fun as two songwriters.”  

Dan admitted he still has a treasure trove of demos. “I still have a Dropbox folder called 'Demos.' There was an artist, Anderson Paak who got a tattoo. It was like, ‘When I die, do not release my unreleased demos.’ I need to get that because there's definitely some on that demo tape that probably should not be released to the world. Like good on my estate, hopefully, they make a couple of bucks after I pass away on the unreleased songs, but there's definitely a few that don't need to see the light of day, but there are some good ones there.”  

Ford asked the duo about their origin story. Dan admitted telling their origin story felt like reciting something he memorized and had to remind himself it indeed happened. “It was December 7th, 2012. I had been invited to a house party, and it was at Dan's house. We met at 5 or 7 Morton Avenue. I walked in there and met this guy named Dan Smyers our buddy Andy Albert and Justin Richards, our guitar player. Still to this day, there are a lot of people that were in the original crew of Patrick Tracy, who's done all of our videos, and there was just a group of these people that I walked in and met for the very first time.”  

He continued, “And little did I know that was going to change the trajectory of both of our lives, which is just crazy that I can look back and pinpoint a moment that truly changed my life forever. And that's why I loved telling the story because I remember exactly where I was. But you know, we met and ended up writing. We stayed up until probably 3 a.m. that night singing and kind of passing around the guitar.”   

So, what’s next for Dan + Shay? Follow their Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and TikTok page for more hits, more music and more social media posts of them rollerblading while wearing Santa costumes.