When guitarist Dan Sullivan moved to Chicago in 1997 to pursue a musical career, it didn’t take long for things to take off. Within a few years he released a couple of albums, the self-titled “NadNavillus” and “Show Your Face.” He also started performing in Songs: Ohia, the evolving project of the gifted and acclaimed musician Jason Molina.
Sullivan met Molina in Chicago through a chain of Oberlin College connections, including his brother Rob Sullivan, who also joined the band. Touring behind Molina’s 2001 release “The Lioness”, Sullivan performed more than 70 shows in the U.S. and Europe, sometimes opening for Glen Hansard’s band The Frames, sometimes performing as a solo opener himself. Over his three years in the band, Sullivan also helped make Molina’s most famous — some critics say best — album, “The Magnolia Electric Co.,” which also became the new name of the band, as Molina’s sound evolved in a rock direction.
“He was just a real inspiration and he was a lot of fun to be around,” says Sullivan. “The music was down tempo, generally pretty dark and I could feel that no problem. We had a lot of fun, made great music. He left us too soon.”
Molina, who died at the age of 39 in 2013, left an imprint on Sullivan in many ways, including as a band leader.
“Jason had such a clear artistic vision and brought so much confidence to his performance and to his songwriting that the other musicians became collaborators without diluting any of his vision,” recalls Sullivan. “So seeing how he did it gave me a lot of inspiration for how I could do something similar.”
That’s the approach Sullivan has taken on his fourth album as NadNavillus, “Upper Constant,” released in April. The album features most of the same players as his previous album “Forgotten Portraits,” including Madeleine Aguilar (keyboards, percussion), Rob Bochnik (baritone guitar) and Andy Hall (drums). Newcomer Eddie Matthews joined on tenor and soprano saxophone. Sullivan says he tried to build a structure that would allow all the musicians to bring their own creativity and ideas to the project.
“I wanted to create songs that could be adaptable to different configurations of musicians and I wanted to create music that could be stretched, so we could be spontaneous in the moment with these songs, feeling really inspired about playing, about performing, about interacting.”
Sullivan helms another band, Arriver, which makes what he calls “arty” heavy metal music. He builds and plays his own guitars. He’s also a designer and woodworker, creating high end furnishings and interiors for museums, commercial and private spaces, at his own firm Navillus Woodworks and as a co-founder of Dock 6 Collective, a group of furniture designers and fabricators.
Holding down all of these projects while holding onto his music means Sullivan no longer tours as much as he did in his days with Molina. Even so, his playing continues to evolve. “Upper Constant” marries his approach to the electric guitar in his metal band with the more traditional finger picking style that he brought to acoustic performances, unleashing something new in his style.
“It’s been great to continue more than 35 years in, to find inspiration,” he said, adding with a laugh, “I have to play, you know, that is my particular compulsion, playing guitar and trying to keep my chops up and do something new with it all the time.”