Living in the present: Daffo brings its reimagined repertoire to Santa Fe

Gabi Gamberg loves Santa Fe.

They have visited the City Different but have never performed there until now. Gamberg is bringing their musical project, Daffo, to Tumbleroot Brewery & Distillery in Santa Fe on Tuesday, Oct. 29. They will be opening for the Illuminati Hotties as part of the “Can’t Be Still Tour.”

“I’ve never performed in New Mexico, but I’ve been to Santa Fe three times,” they said. “It’s like, one of my favorites, I would say, like my favorite place in the country ... And the thing about Santa Fe is it smells so good. It smells like piñon, and everything is so beautiful, and the energy is just so good.”

Daffo recently released a new song called “Get A Life.” Around this time last year, it released “Pest” and a couple of years before that it released “Crisis Kit.” It would seem that the writing process is a constant flow of creativity, but that was not the case for Gamberg. “Get A Life” was written after they suffered a creative dry spell.

“I actually wrote it at a Buddhist monastery in upstate New York, on Blue Cliff Monastery,” Gamberg said. “I was there for a meditation retreat with my mom and I was having a really tough time writing for a long time. I had a horrible writer’s block and I wasn’t really being very present in my life. And I was very frustrated because I was at a place where everybody was meditating and everybody was learning about mindfulness, and I was just like, god, I need to just be present and enjoy my life and it’s hard. So it’s kind of like (the) song, is almost like a message to myself just to be present. But it also has a little bit of frustration in it as well.”

Putting out their personal challenges out into the world for everyone to hear can feel odd at times for Gamberg.

“It’s definitely strange,” they said. “I’ve been writing songs for a long time, and honestly, since I can remember, and for most of my life, it’s been a very personal thing. It’s been something that I use to express myself and kind of figure out how I’m feeling. And sharing it at first was very scary, but now it just adds a whole new dimension to the song.”

Gamberg has received feedback from fans on how their songs have impacted them.

“The way that people interpret the music is unique to every person,” they said. “I think that’s really beautiful and it makes me feel very seen. I’ve gotten a couple messages from people that are telling me how much my music affects them and it just makes it so much more worth it when it’s more than just for yourself.”

The Brooklyn-based artist signed to Concord Records this year and has reimagined some of their earlier work including the breakout hit, “Poor Madeline” that features the Portland, Oregon-based folk artist Searows.

“(The label) asked me to do some new versions of some of the things on ‘Pest’ so that they could kind of push the record a little bit more since I released it independently, originally,” they explained. “I had just opened for Searows in New York and I’ve totally fallen in love with their voice.”

The feeling is mutual and Alec Duckart, whose project is Searows, said he loved the song.

“I was like, it would be so cool to sing with Alec and make a new version of this, especially since I wrote it so long ago,” Gamberg said of “Pest.” “I wrote it when I was 17. I feel like I wanted to give a new life to it so that I could kind of appreciate it as I am today. And so I worked with Philip Weinrobe, the producer, and we recorded everything live, except for the vocals that Alec did on top. So the guitar, my vocals, the violin and the pedal steel and the piano, were all live together in one room. And it was just such a cool experience. I definitely feel like capturing that specific performance of it was really special.”