Facts About Max and Danny

• Max Harwood and Danny Miller both worked at a Domino’s Pizza together when they were teenagers. They told Billboard in an interview that their collective first time trying psychedelic mushrooms took place at the Domino’s where they worked – they ate the mushrooms off of cheesy bread.
• Max’s favorite TV show of all time is The Sopranos. He told Billboard, “I swear it really only gets better. It’s so good that it actually becomes hard to imagine that Tony Soprano isn’t a real person.” Danny’s favorite movie is Days of Heaven, directed by Terrence Malick.
• The band told Atwood magazine that they spent their quiet period between 2016 and 2020 hard at work on music. After returning from tour, they began writing daily, producing far more content than was released on AUGUST, their sophomore album. They told Atwood’s Urooj Ali Rizvi, “We essentially made two albums, and one of them probably won’t ever see the light of day.”
• The members of Lewis Del Mar have cited their home of New York City as a major inspiration for their music. The duo moved to the city to focus on art, and they described it to Best New Bands as having “serious teeth, and the gravity grit and shining diversity of it has heavily influenced our sound and songwriting.”
• In their interview with Best New Bands, the duo said that the most important thing to them as musicians is patience. This attribute was demonstrated by Max and Danny during their hiatus from releasing music in the late 2010s, a time that they spent focusing on writing new content.
• Every release in the band’s discography – except their Live At The El Rey album, was recorded in New York City.
• Danny Miller told Guitar World in an interview that his guitar of choice is an Alvarez Parlor acoustic. This relatively inexpensive guitar is often used by classical and flamenco players, but it fits the band’s eclectic sound perfectly.
• Miller’s earliest musical inspiration was Latin folk, a genre he was introduced to by his Nicaraguan family. Miller has shared in interviews that his first guitar teacher, Amilcar Cruz, was Nicaraguan as well. Miller has said that he appreciates the emphasis on poetry and storytelling in traditional Nicaraguan folk music. He went on to tell Guitar World, “My first guitar was my father’s first guitar. It’s a no-name classical guitar from the late ‘70s, purchased somewhere along the Caribbean coast of Nicaragua. I still play it all the time. It is probably my most prized possession.“

Lewis Del Mar: The Music

Below are descriptions of the band’s two studio albums, Lewis Del Mar and AUGUST.

2016: Lewis Del Mar

• In October 2016, Lewis Del Mar released their debut full-length album via Columbia Records. The album features some of their most successful tracks, including “Malt Liquor,” “Islands,” “Painting (Masterpiece,) and more.
• The album received positive reviews and support from The New York Times, Vice, NPR, and several other outlets. The lead single “Loud(y)” was described by Rolling Stone Magazine as the perfect fit for fans of bands like Foals, Alt-J, and Vampire Weekend. The outlet also described the track “Malt Liquor” as “thick and intoxicating.”
• Rolling Stone called “Loud(y)” “a beachside dreamscape with acoustic guitars and electronic drums washing up on shore.”
• After the release of the record, the duo went on to perform on Conan and The Late Show with James Corden, along with appearances at Austin City Limits, Lollapalooza, and more.
• The radio station KCRW described “Loud(y)” as “one of the best tunes to come out [in 2016].”

2020: AUGUST

• After flying under the radar for several years, Max and Danny returned with the single “The Ceiling” in early 2020. The track was called one of the best songs of May 2020 by Time, and the band premiered it on Zane Lowe’s Beats Radio 1 show.
• Before dropping their second full-length album, Lewis Del Mar released two more singles, “Border (CH. III)” and “Rosalie (CH. II.).”
• Tuned Up described the album cut “Sewers” as carrying “a sincere and honest energy, with a delivery we have not quite heard from the Del Mar boys.”
• Themes of trials and loss punctuate the record, inspired by the life and death of Miller’s father, who was Half-black and half Latinx. His experiences were part of the inspiration for the track “Border.”