Hailing from Portland, Maine, Dan Cluchey has been writing music since the age of thirteen – a year after he bought his first guitar (a heavily used Epiphone electric), which he taught himself to play by fumbling along to the songs of Bob Dylan. More recently, Dan has performed at venues in Boston, Washington D.C., and his adopted home of Amherst, Massachusetts, where he was a fixture on the Amherst College radio station while earning his bachelor’s degree in political science. Dan’s music has been heavily influenced by his time spent growing up among spectacular natural surroundings on the coast of Maine and among the bowers of the Pioneer Valley, as well as by his own favorite songwriters and poets: Will Oldham, William Butler Yeats, John Darnielle, Sam Beam, Dan Chiasson, and Jeff Tweedy, among others. A veteran home studio recorder, Dan’s second full-length album, 2010’s ‘What We Need Is Here,’ was written, recorded, mastered, and produced entirely by Dan in Amherst and Somerville, MA. To that end, Dan employed a Martin Acoustic 000-15, a Deering Goodtime Banjo, a Fender Mandolin, a Lanikai LU-21 Ukulele, an Aquarion Pentatonic Glass Xylophone, a Hohner Marine Band Harmonica, a Wurlitzer Upright Piano, a synthesizer, hardcover books (for drumming), saltshakers, an AKG Perception 400 microphone, and a Tascam US-122 mixer. When not playing music, Dan is a student at Harvard Law School and a contributing political columnist for the Huffington Post.