'Wanted to accomplish again': Augustana, back with new disc after a decade, set to play Musikfest

BETHLEHEM, Pa. — It had been a decade since Dan Layus, singer, composer and frontman for the hit 2000s band Augustana — best known for its hit "Boston" — had released an album under the group's name.

Layus had released a solo disc, "Dangerous Things," under his own name in 2016, but it failed to chart, and he since has toured with new musicians under the Augustana name.

And when it came time to record another album, Layus said, he found himself in the same mindset as when, as a teenage college student, he composed those early Augustana discs.

So the result, last year's "Something Beautiful," was again released under the band's name.

And Layus again is touring as Augustana — with a group of musicians, he notes in a call from his Nashville home, who have been together longer than the original Augustana lineup was.

That Augustana at 9:30 p.m. today, Aug. 9, plays a show on Musikfest's Americaplatz stage at Levitt Pavilion SteelStacks may be the free-stage highlight of the massive festival.

"One of the things I was most conscious of was trying to go back a little bit to the idea of [the 2008 album] “Can’t Love Can’t Hurt” and [2011] self-titled album," Layus said in the call.

"When I wrote ‘Can’t Love Can’t Hurt,' I was very inspired on that particular record … you know, I would go up on the apartment rooftop in West Hollywood and write the song! I would sit there and write a song on my own.

"I think over time, a lot of our listeners have really identified with ‘Can’t Love Can’t Hurt’ maybe as their favorite, and a lot of that might be because of the process being the process.

"And I think that was something I really wanted to accomplish again."

Brian E. Hineline

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Special to LehighValleyNews.com

'10 years in a three-day expression'

Much as that early formula with Augustana resulted in the band seeing its song "Boston" hit Top 10 in 2006, "Sweet and Low" hit Top 5 in 2008, and four more Top 20 hits in the mid-2000s to the mid-2010s, Layus said he looked to capture lightening in a bottle with "Something Beautiful."

"Instead of spending an entire year of overdoing the recipe," he said with a laugh, "I thought, ‘I’m going to go in, I’m going to deal with how I feel today and I’m going to express it and it’s going to be that.’

“And to me, that is more accomplished creatively, and I think that that is a big reason why it feels to me … important and durable and enduring. At least I will always feel that way about this album."

"Something Beautiful" is “one of those albums that took 10 years to make but only like 10 months to write, produce and release," Layus said with a laugh.

He said the disc's 10 tracks were “drummed up" with close musician friend Andy Skib, and "we went into the studio in the summer of 2023, and we wrote each one in the order that they are tracklisted — it's the order they were written, produced, mastered on the record.

“So those 10 tracks, one through 10, they have a throughline, they have a theme, that were very much in real time that the emotional, physical ups-and-downs of those 10 years in a three-day expression," he said.

'The lesson of my days'

That was particularly true with the title track of “Something Beautiful," Layus said.

"That song met me at a time where I was searching for those words for the better part of a decade," Layus said. "And they kinda came to me in the same way ‘Boston’ did when I was just a young guy in my late teens.

"It was just a 20-, 30-minute burst of capturing something that had been brewing for many, many years.

“And I was just sort of able to ‘get it.’ And it just happened, it was fantastic and I’m so proud of that tune and the things that it says."

When it comes to the meaning behind the words, Layus said, "I’ll leave enough mystery for our listeners. But, you know, I will say at the very least it’s my love letter to music.

"And it’s something that some day I’ll have to leave behind, and someday I’ll have to say goodbye to it one way or another, and I just don’t want to.

“I just never want to lose my — and I don’t mean career, I don’t mean shows, necessarily. I mean my music. Like, it took me many decades to really understand how strong and deep my love for music is.

“I’ve been fortunate in my life to have been successful in a commercial and career sense from a very young age, and so I think the battle for me is to try to untie that from music.

"Because they are, of course, two edges of the same sword. So I have worked very hard to try to untie the two things and say maybe if I could do anything and nothing else mattered, other than my family and music, in my personal life, this is what I would be doing. And that has been the lesson of my days out here.”

Reflecting on Augustana

Releasing "Something Beautiful" as an Augustana disc came after a lot of introspection, Layus said.

“That goes a little bit into what I was saying — What’s my path? Who should I be? Under what moniker is the most beneficial way to express this music, both from a personal standpoint, but also how it’s going to reach the most people.

“At the end of the day, I’ve come to the conclusion that … when Augustana started as a proper band in 2002 — my freshman year of college, the band went through just a plethora of lineup changes, of guys who came in and out. And that started from Month 1," he said, laughing again.

“And so eventually, I think there were times that I thought about what Augustana meant — what it meant to me, what it meant from an aesthetic standpoint.

“At some point over the last few years, I just went, ‘This is it. This is a certain kind of song that I write when I am thinking about Augustana, when I’m thinking about the catalog, when I’m thinking about the sort of canon of that moniker.

“And I just write a certain kind of song in that space. And it just means a certain thing when it’s coming under that name and it kind of brings me down a certain path creatively.

"And I just felt, like, without a doubt this was an Augustana album — without a doubt. It felt like it fit categorically in those spaces from the previous records.”

'I needed to go back to the board'

Now age 40 — and with it being 20 years since Augustana released its debut disc "All the Stars and Boulevards," which contained "Boston" — does Layus expect that he'll ever release music under his own name again?

“You know, maybe," he said. "I still feel like I’ve got an itch to scratch with Augustana for many years to come. So at the moment I feel really, really, indebted, in a way, to that name and to that catalog and to the music over the decades."

But he said he's become "more and more focused on trying to put music out that helps the listener on a tough day — get through the next day."

“A lot of times I’m just writing that for myself and hopefully that gets to someone else’s ears and maybe it helps them get through the next day a little easier," he said.

"Maybe leaving something like that behind is a real motivator for me and makes me feel good at the end of the day and just seemed like the right thing to do."

Layus said he's sure that at some point, he'll release music under his name — and it could be a classical composition.

In fact, he said he recently finished his first long-form orchestral work.

"I’ve expanded into that space," he said — noting that for the past two years he's done concerts with the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra and plans a third.

“It’s been a huge expansion in my own creative ambitions," he said. "That makes a lot more sense right now.“

Layus said he actually went back to community college to finish his associates degree "in the middle of playing shows."

"So I’ve been doing that work online backstage," he says, laughing. "I’d play a show and I’d do some more [academic work] when I get back to the hotel or whatever.

“After 20 years in show business I’m a little atrophied in that area — kind of not challenging myself. … I just found myself drawn to the more complex and compositional work beyond just pop music.

"It’s been a really healthy thing for me to be able to spend [that time] … It was unbelievable to find myself back in a piano class as a 38-39-year-old guy.

“Boy it was humbling, ‘cause I was right back where I started, where the professors won. ‘Cause I needed to get back to theory, I needed to get back to training.

"Because if my goal was to be able to compose and arrange and stick with these kind of players at that level, I needed to go back to the board.”