DAN DONEGAN Reveals His Favorite DISTURBED Song, Shares Clever Advice For Aspiring Musicians

Disturbed guitarist Dan Donegan reflected on the band’s career, and their creative process, plus offered a rare glimpse into his personal favorites from the band’s extensive catalog, as well as sage advice for aspiring artists in a recent interview with GHS Strings.

When asked if he had a favorite Disturbed album or song, Donegan responded: “There’s so many, for so many reasons, ‘cause everything we write is always so personal. We’ve probably written close to a couple of hundred songs over our career. But if I’m gonna narrow it down, which I normally don’t do, but certain ones, like a song called ‘The Light’, it’s just something that’s… A lot of times we like to take darker subject matter and spin a positive outcome on it, for encouragement and empowerment and just a reminder that we all go through different things in our lives.”

“We all go through tough times and struggles, whether it be depression or addiction or sadness or losing a loved one or going through a breakup or having a rough time at work or at school or whatever you’re going through, and just trying to have a positive outcome to be able to fight through those tough times. So ‘The Light’ always sends a positive message. The big catchphrase in that song is ‘sometimes darkness can show you the light.’ Sometimes you need those dark times in life to be able to dig deep, find that strength to find the light again, to be able to power through it and get through it,” Donnegan added.

Donegan also offered valuable advice for musicians looking to carve their own paths in the industry: “There’s no boundaries. There are no boundaries in music. You should just keep an open mind. Do what sounds good to you. Do what feels good to you. For me, the guitar is an extension of who I am and how I feel.”

“And don’t worry — don’t chase things, what you think other people wanna hear, and don’t chase trends, and just write naturally. Always just keep on trying to write and express yourself,” Donnegan elaborated. “And that’s all I ever wanted to do; it was just another way to express myself. Because I was kind of a quiet kid, it was an escape for me, and it just allowed me to express myself how I was feeling. If I felt aggression or I felt like writing a heavier riff or I felt just more somber and just moody and vibey… Just don’t second-guess yourself. A lot of times your first instincts are sometimes the best ones.”

“Even in our early days as a local band, writing and doing demos for the first time, when we were trying to recreate that, when we got a record deal and we were doing our first album, The Sickness, we were trying to recreate the demos, and there was something just very raw and natural about the demos because it was just first instinct,” the guitarist recalled.

“So we actually lifted some of the tracks off the demo, and those were the keeper tracks for the album because there was a rawness to it; there was something that was captured at that moment. It’s always hard to try to recreate something when the first time was when the magic happened. So I’d say just keep an open mind and just do what feels good to you.”