The sound of ‘cosmic country,’ according to its architect, Daniel Donato

Daniel Donato plays like he was born with a guitar in his hand.

The 30-year-old musician started busking on Lower Broadway in Nashville as a teenager, before grinding through more than 400 gigs with Don Kelly’s band at the legendary Robert’s Western World. All of those reps built the effortless, mind-bending guitar work that now feels like a magic trick every time he takes the stage.

His live shows are a wild fusion of outlaw country, psychedelic jam and classic rock, which Donato calls “Cosmic Country.” That’s also the name of his band.

“All of that comes from the energy in the room, from the people that are in the community with us in Cosmic Country” he says. “They really want us to do something they’ve never seen before, which makes every show really intense.”

In this session, Donato breaks down the Cosmic Country mantra for us. We talk about his new album, Horizons, and Donato performs live at World Cafe.

This episode of World Cafe was produced and edited by Kimberly Junod. The web story was created by Miguel Perez. Our engineer is Chris Williams. Our programming and booking coordinator is Chelsea Johnson and our line producer is Will Loftus.