Brian Dunne: Scenes from an Italian Restaurant
Member of New York City’s folk-rock supergroup goes solo
“When I was a kid, my dad worked at a factory — it was a very working class family — so when I would go out to dinner with my parents in the early ’90s, I would see ‘Clams Casino’ and think it was the fanciest food a person could possibly order off a menu, just because it sounded so cosmopolitan and fanciful,” says singer-songwriter Brian Dunne, talking about the inspiration behind the track “Clams Casino” from his forthcoming album of the same title.
“The song riffs on the tongue in cheek, ‘When I get to the top, it’s going to be clams casino for me and all my friends!’ So this album is about what a working man thinks that a rich man has.”
Clams Casino, released on Sept. 5 via Missing Piece Records, is Dunne’s fifth full-length album. With these new songs, he says, “I just feel like I’ve finally come into my own as a writer, and understanding what it was I wanted to say to the world. I really wanted to write about class on this record, so I spent a lot of time thinking about how I wanted to talk about that, and put it in modern terms. Obviously, there’s a lot of great classic middle class [and] working class rock that I’m drawing from, but I wanted to use modern parlance and talk about modern people still struggling with these classic American ideas, like, who gets to stay and dream, and who has to move out?”
Dunne has seen that specific dynamic play out many times in his own adopted hometown of New York City, but his interest in this topic was really sparked by a conversation he had with an older actor at a party. “He said something that stuck with me, which was, ‘In my opinion, the city dies for people when the good ones sell out and the mediocre ones just have to go home.’ And I walked back to my apartment that night and I thought, ‘I could write a whole album about the comings and goings.’”
Until then, “I’d written about love and relationships, and all the struggles that come with being a twenty-something flopping through the world,” he says. Then, in 2018, he wrote a song called “New Tattoo.” It was a turning point. “People really responded to it — it became a hit overseas, and it did well here, too; it was in heavy rotation on XM Radio. And it was the first song I’d written about my generation going through changes. I could draw on my own personal experiences, but I also could just observe and report.
“Once I started writing in that particular voice, I just realized, ‘I can write about this for the rest of my life. This is endlessly fascinating: What humans go through, their disappointments, their fears, their failures, their successes, and how all of it manifests in different ways and different actions.”
Dunne’s insightful, empathetic storytelling is informed by his own experiences. Growing up in Monroe, a small town in upstate New York, he was drawn to playing music from an early age. He learned to play the acoustic guitar, and soon began writing songs that blend indie rock and Americana with a singer-songwriter’s knack for introspection and keen observations.
Brian Dunne “Clams Casino”
“But ultimately, like anybody, [my] sound is just the stew of all the influences and all the things that I love mixed up together — and hopefully some mysterious thing of my own,” Dunne says. “I grew up loving the classic songwriters: [Bob] Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, Neil Young. But as I came to young adulthood, I really heard the music that reflected my life in the modern indie and alternative music of the 2010s, and it really had a profound impact on me.”
As soon as he could, Dunne relocated to New York City (where he’s lived ever since), intent on pursuing a full-time career as a musician. “There were a couple of really, really, really lean years that were really challenging. It was really harrowing those first couple of years,” he says. Even so, he never considered ditching his dream to become a professional musician: “It’s the only thing I know how to do, so there was never any practical Plan B.”
His perseverance was rewarded when people finally began taking notice of his work: “XM Radio had started playing one of my songs, and I started to see, ‘Okay, there’s value in what I’m doing to some people, even if it’s a really small group of people. I’m getting the feedback that they’re glad I came to their town with these songs.’”
In contrast with those early days in the business, Dunne has the opposite problem these days: How to juggle the demands of his solo career, as well as his concurrent career as a member of the successful band Fantastic Cat, a sort of NYC indie rock “supergroup” that also includes fellow notable singer-songwriters Anthony D’Amato and Don DiLego, as well as Hollis Brown frontman Mike Montali.
Dunne says his membership in Fantastic Cat came about entirely by chance. “I got a call to come out for a weekend project where we were going to put together a Traveling Wilburys-style record, a one off record,” he says. But when they released their self-titled EP in 2021, “People really responded to it, and it took us all by surprise. And so we’re smart enough to know that you’ve just got to follow the thread.”
Beyond the skillful Americana/folk rock music Fantastic Cat creates, another compelling aspect of the band is their often hilarious social media posts, in which they take self-deprecating aim at themselves and the music industry’s many clichés. “It started as a source of playful fun in opposition to the self-seriousness of our singer-songwriter careers, which require a bit of earnestness,” Dunne says. “Lo and behold, people seemed to respond to fun, when you seem to be having it yourself.”
As a bonus, the band’s success has, in turn, helped Dunne continue to grow his audience for his solo work. “There’s been a real groundswell of new fans [because of] my involvement with Fantastic Cat,” he says.
Though he’s grateful for all of the success that he’s earned with his solo work and with Fantastic Cat, Dunne says he never could’ve predicted how any of this would’ve turned out: “Some days, I feel like basically the opposite of whatever I had planned is what ended up happening. But I’m really, really grateful for my youthful naivete, because it led me to something that’s even better than I imagined.”
And, he adds, he plans to continue to follow his career wherever it takes him next. “I think what I do is a very humble form of public service,” he says.” I want to entertain people. I want to write songs that they can see themselves in and respond to. I think that modern life is basically impossible, but a song is a little bit of a life raft, and I think that’s valuable. It’s small but valuable work, and that’s what propels me to do it.”
- Roland Gift Steps Into Christmas - December 14, 2025
- 38 Special Hits A ‘Milestone’ - October 8, 2025
- Brian Dunne: Scenes from an Italian Restaurant - September 17, 2025
You May Also Like
-
December 4, 2021 -
May 11, 2020 -
June 13, 2025
