Today we’d like to introduce you to Danny Ermis
Hi Danny, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
Some of the earliest memories I have in life, are growing up in Southern California. My family lived in Thousand Oaks, CA and spent most of my childhood there. We also had a very unique family. My parents are originally from Texas, and early on had some difficulty starting a family. While they had my oldest sister Laura, they began fostering children, and adopted three children through the foster care system. I was adopted as a new born, and born in Galveston, Texas. My dad had to fly out to Texas to pick me up and bring me back to California., where I was brought to this new beautiful and loving family.
Within a span of a couple years, my parents went from having one child to having five children, and less than a year after I was born, they discovered they were expecting my younger brother Jake. All in all, my parents were able to have two of their own children, and adopted four of us to round out this wonderfully diverse family.
In my sixth grade year we uprooted ourselves and moved to Penang, Malaysia. I went to Dalat International School there, and I was able to learn so much about different cultures, and had friends from all over the world. Near the end of my 8th grade year, we moved again back to the United States to Carson City. I spent the tail-end of my 8th grade year and two years of high school there, where I was avidly involved in Basketball. It was my earliest passion as a child and through my adolescence. To this day, I play basketball almost daily.
Half way through high school we moved to Texas where I finished high school, and spent time working and going to Community College. I found it challenging to pay for school and work as much as possible, so before I finished my second year of College I enlisted in the United States Air Force. I enlisted in May of 2010 and spent time at Basic Training at Lackland AFB in San Antonio. For me it was a bus ride over to boot camp, and upon completion I was then transferred to my Technical School at Vandenberg AFB in Lompoc, California.
Throughout my time in the Air Force I worked as a Missile and Space Facilities Technician having a chance to work on our Minuteman III – Nuclear Intercontinental Ballistic Missile system. This was a very unique experience for me, and found that while many other peers from back home in San Antonio, Texas were going to college, I was spending those college years working for this highly secure weapon system, It was something that profoundly shaped who I am today. Through the level of discipline and core values that were taught I found the basis of this mantra that I hold to my daily life today.
After serving four years in the U.S. Air Force I found that I was feeling called back to Texas. I decided to pursue a life outside of the military and moved to Austin, Texas. My goal was to get back to my internal roots of creating. I was always creative as a kid, and had siblings that were also incredibly creative, and we were always doing new and unique things. Growing up, myself and my siblings would make “movies.” We would create scripts, and map out scenes, and shoot them on my parents video camera.
When I made it to Austin, Texas newly out of the Air Force, I found myself working in a great job as an Assistant Project Manager at a General Contracting Company called Bartlett Cocke. I felt unqualified for the job, but learned rapidly under mentorship of my Project Manager and Superintendent. While I worked throughout the week, in my off time I was always making it a point to explore the city. I would take my Canon Rebel camera with me everywhere and would shoot anything that inspired me. Much of it included urban city and lifestyle photography, along with landscape and architecture photography. I found inspiration in so many facets of the city.
Being a major music city, I continued learning how to play guitar and worked on writing music as a solo artist, and continued pushing my own boundaries in terms of photography. I have fundamentally been inspired by people. As simple as that is, I find that any time I really got to know someone, I found some type of inspiration from them. This translated to my own creative pursuits, and I just kept pushing the experimentation process.
While I was also newly out of the Air Force in 2014, I found that I had developed a love for sharing my art and photography through Instagram. Social Media outlets were always a tricky atmosphere. Balancing the lines of what I was doing as a bit of an act, and finding a dualism with authenticity and individual perspective. I learned that by journaling I was able to get a lot of my ideas out there, and helped streamline some of my creative process.
One day I realized that I reached for my phone a couple of times within a few minutes, and at the core, was looking to check my social media notifications and applications. Inherently, I began asking myself why I was having so many internal urges both consciously and subconsciously to check this digital reality. I then laid out the concept of writing about this in the form of a journal style blog on WordPress.com.
I titled it the Social Media Experiment, and laid out this idea that I would delete all social media accounts and just write about my experience. It sounded trivial at first, and as I did, I noticed my life changing in different ways. The idea was to document and share my experience of what life was like for myself and what I challenged myself to do without any digital and social distractions. I then incorporated the social media platforms back into my life to write about how I viewed things after a slight hiatus. It was actually impactful to me to notice what I cared about and what I did not miss.
I annotated these notes, and kept a journal over the last 10 years, and have periodically written these journal style blogs and continue the concept of The Social Media Experiment, as a way of documenting digital, social, and world culture and content through social media platforms. While doing this, I have also continued pushing myself in experimental music and photography.
In 2018 I had moved from Texas to Reno, Nevada where some of my family had migrated back to. While I had been a musician for a while, I was not recording any music. I was always writing and developing concepts in songwriting, and music composition, but never really found a right time or place to dive deeply into the recording process and development of song creation. I was inspired by so many different artists and bands throughout my life, and it always seemed like one of those far off abilities that I didn’t think I could harness.
As I had a new start in Reno, I was working a core job in Engineering at a local Casino / Resort / Hotel / Spa at the Atlantis. On the side, I would spend my time on music composition and experimenting with recording different instrumental demos and tracks. I just tried to create something consistently. I never stop learning something new in regard my work. I continually invest and build out my music equipment, and I consider it my “Lab.” I can do my own experiments with music recording, and to me, there is no right or wrong answer when it comes to creating something.
What I have found is that by sitting down and focusing on the pure intention of creating something, you begin to channel something naturally. Most of my recordings and instrumental tracks funneled themselves together in a uniquely concise fashion. While I do not always make traditional sounding music that you would hear on the radio, I am always just open to whatever naturally creates itself through me. I open myself up to the intention, and that flow of energy comes through and creates something entirely unique and different every time.
I aim to make things that impact myself. I have always struggled with self doubt and confidence in my ability, but as I have gotten older, I have shed some of those notions, and aim to create for the purpose of the shear love and passion it provides my soul and life. I find that those who are meant to find your work, will find your work, and it is a beautiful mystery where our influence and seed itself and where those roots grow through time.
To this day, I am in the process of releasing a second collection of recordings. Throughout this process, I have worked under the artist name “The War Wings.” It was an idea that came to me early on in my time in Reno. It seemed to encompass this name of something that reflected the battle of good and evil, through the biblical texts of angels and demons, and my love for fighter jets and aerospace engineering.
Currently, my two collections of instrumental tracks are shared under the concept of “Digital Noir.” This also reflects an idea of this ongoing story through life in the digital age. Through sharing the ups and downs of life, and sharing the creations of art as they come. I continue to be awe-inspired by so many people, and my ultimate goal is to just contribute a verse in this world. My aim is to never stop creating through my writing, photography, music, and videography. I continue to develop my art through investing over time in different equipment, and eventually hope to find a pathway to creating art as a more full time endeavor.
While I work in my career, I look to balance this corporate work life, and pursuing my internal passions. This is a fine balance that I am always still learning, and I learn something every day on this journey. I find that through diligent and steady prayer life and spirituality and faith in God, I am able to find my way through this often complex world.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
The road has had its peaks and valleys. I have learned that every obstacle and hurdle is a lesson in life. While we aim to build our lives, you will run into obstacles and challenges in life, but having the right support system, whether it be friends, colleagues, and family, I am able to continue finding some type of balance.
Some of the biggest struggles have come in form of life just coming at you. No one can prepare you for everything that life and the vast world has to offer, so it is imperative to be resilient. As difficult as that can be, staying present, diligent, and resilient can aid you in any of the larger challenges through life. Optimism and growth mindset, along with open mindedness is another facet that I aim to keep myself grounded.
Life is not meant to be easy, and the challenges will come in different sizes, however you can always stop, evaluate, and ground yourself for a best foot forward approach. In this way, along with daily prayer and meditation, I have found that God has illuminated my path in some of the darkest times I have experienced. I am thankful for the good and the bad in life, as it has shaped me to be a person who has learned that love and inner peace are at the core of my being, and through love and inner peace, you can find a sense of serenity in daily life.
One of the best pieces of wisdom that I received was from a song my mom would sing to us. Qué será será – whatever will be, will be. I understand that some things are out of my control, and some things I can control, but whatever comes at me, I can learn to accept with grace and put my best foot forward each day. Grounded in appreciation for others and life, this is what truly gets me through some of the rockiest roads.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
At the core, I am drawn to all art, and would consider myself an experimental artist. I look at my individual art through the lens of writing, photography, videography, and music. Finding a way to do all of those things in a solo endeavor is very challenging and rewarding at the same time. I would love a chance to collaborate with other artists, but in the meantime, I look to stay consistent in sharing my writing, music, photography and any other projects as they are developed.
Since starting my journal style blog in 2014, I have accumulated some writing that really reflects a lot of my inner most being. I attempt to make my writing personal, and share in a way that hopefully the reader relates to a degree, and we can find commonalities as they are exploring my ideas and writing. I find this is a very intimate way to share an experience with someone, and it is my offering to whomever cares enough to see and be apart of my work.
I find that not everyone will resonate with all music, and writing, but those that do, and have an open mind appreciate any creation and art for the core of what it is. Anything that I do and share, is a real offering and piece of myself that I give willingly to others. This is the most affectionate way an artist can deliver to their audience. Through my writing and music, I internally reflect and project any piece of myself that comes out in that moment.
Through writing, it is usually a stream of consciousness, and when you are in that mode of writing, you know you have tapped into something. The same can be said for music. When I am recording and looking to create a new composition, I go to the drawing board, and remove any distractions and rules. I allow whatever comes out of my playing to be the centerpiece of the concepts and sound that I write around. Throughout my time writing music under “The War Wings” I have truly been on a journey to experiment in song writing.
I look to create instrumental music through my different instruments. At home I have various electric guitars, a bass guitar, acoustic guitar, and two different types of synthesizers that are incredibly dynamic. With the electric guitars I experiment in finding tones and sounds that perk my ears up. Sometimes you just experiment with different sounds, until naturally one just feels right. I have different effects pedals, and a multi-effects pedal that transforms the guitars abilities. This is like being a kid in a candy store for me.
My journal style blog and music are all under this “War Wings” concept. It is a way for me to continue experimenting with art in a way to tell an ongoing story. The theme is under this concept idea of “Digital Noir.” Exploring the vastness of life in the digital age through storytelling and incorporating concepts that look to innovate and contribute to the world in a way that explores new ideas, positivity, inner-work, and self reflection. There will always be this Yin-Yang – a balance of good and bad, and the aim is to just be moving forward with our life and culture as we navigate the intricacies of technological advancement and what it is to be human and spiritual beings.
These ideas, although broad, I think place me in a group of those who are looking to continually innovate. While you explore your own work through innovation, the creation and art that comes is organic and a time stamp of where I am at each moment. I think what sets me on my own path is the aspect of doing the writing, photography, music recording, and any other projects in a solo effort. I look to share the art, but at the end of the day, I also resonate as an underground artist who doesn’t necessarily need to be featured in front of an audience.
I respect artists who perform, and share their art in this way, and through time I may look to do more outward performance art in this way. It is always something in the back of my mind, and have a lot of ideas about where I will take my work into the coming years.
What do you like and dislike about the city?
I love the culture of Houston. I love how it is such an international place. We have everything in Houston from entertainment, different cultures, food, and SPACE. NASA is headquartered here, and that is pretty cool. I have always been fascinated with space and astronomy, and think that a lot of my work is centered around my thoughts of the stars and planets, along with this rock we’re on called Earth.
Houston is a place that felt like home as soon as I arrived. I have met so many amazing people, and find that it has everything that I love in one place. I could never get bored living in Houston. Some of my favorite things are just walking downtown, and being a small being among the tall trees in the skyscrapers. I love shooting urban city photography, and love that we have the Bayou that runs through the city. The proximity to Galveston, and the ocean is nice, because I grew up in Southern California, and spent most of my childhood and adolescence living right near the beach.
I always feel at peace when I go to the beach, and Houston has a tropical feel, and is a truly wonderful city.
The one thing I like least about the City is the state bird. Mosquitoes! All in all Houston is one of the best places I have ever lived, and could see myself creating this as my home base, but I never know what the future will bring.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://dannyermis.wordpress.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/danny.ermis/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/danny.ermis/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/danny-ermis-165144b9/
- Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/user-893667505
