In every family, there’s at least one weirdo. Atlanta’s musical lineage has adopted a new one: Cousin Dan.
A transplant from Dallas, Texas, 24-year-old Daniel Scoggins puts on a nutty, dance-demanding live show complete with lasers and fog. Thumping, instantly catchy beats back Scoggins’ vocoder-altered vocals for an electro-pop feel. But paired with an outfit that looks like an extraction from a hair metal icon’s wardrobe and a rambunctious, two-stepping persona, Scoggins doesn’t quite fit that genre. He’s created his own.
Last April at Laserbeam Kitty, a regular dance-pop event at the Highland Inn Ballroom Lounge, is where Cousin Dan’s fancy footwork first debuted. He’d been toying with mash-up music in the vein of Girl Talk, but had written one original tune. When he performed it and the mostly idle audience was receptive, something clicked.
“When that song came up, I was like, ‘Yes. This is what I need to do. I need to do my own stuff. I want to do stage performance and be awesome,'” Scoggins said.
Cousin Dan snowballed from there, and now the Atlantan performs regularly. But before Laserbeam Kitty, a few unconventional outlets played host to his test drives.
“I’d get on Chat Roulette — it was brand new then — and I’d talk to people and show them the ‘BB Gun’ video and watch them laughing and stuff,” he said.
In the homemade video, he’s not wearing his typical getup. But his erratic dance moves and the fact that he’s alone in his basement studio in a tank top jamming pretty hard to his own song is enough to elicit a few chuckles.
“That was probably the 20th time I [recorded the video],” he laughed.
He also tested Cousin Dan at Java Lords’ open mic night.
“People are mostly playing acoustic guitars and I plug in and get down, and people are dancing right there in the coffee shop,” Scoggins recalled. He said the Little Five Points coffeehouse is where he really got his “kick-start.”
Scoggins’ day-to-day is as charmingly odd as his performances: He helps build sets for museums located throughout the country.
“It’s a big company; there’s a welding area and a woodworking area, and I’m in the scenic department,” he said.
Scoggins’ latest project is constructing life-size trees. A graduate of SCAD Atlanta, Scoggins puts his education to use with Cousin Dan, too. He built his own mini-stage.
“I got a piece of scrap plexi from where I work…built a box frame, got some lights for it and bada bing, bada boom! I did the little system for the smoke to come out on the side. But woah,” he said with eyes wide. “When I built that thing, I was in love. I wanna sleep next to it.”
Though Scoggins’ performances are a bit campy and certainly giggle-inducing, the music is irresistibly danceable.
“I see it as the art has taken a little bit of a backseat to the music. But I kind of see it as making a big ball of the two — my building the costumes, I feel like that’s art. I’ve got the performance art along with the music. I’m trying to manifest it into one big goo ball,” he explained.
Scoggins said his boredom during lifeless sets by bands prompted the idea for a more entertaining set.
“Unless the music is really awesome, you’re kinda like, ‘Eh, let’s go smoke a cigarette outside.’ I wanted to do a show where people are like, ‘What? Lasers? F–king dance floors and ripping Bibles in half?” he said. “I wanted something that people want to stick around for and watch and have fun.”
The Bibles, by the way, are really phone books. (It’s 2011, what other use do phone books have?) Scoggins swore he doesn’t pre-rip them. He also offers an electrified, pumped-up version of Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Free Bird” at his show, during which he typically dons a sleeveless denim vest, shiny gold leggings and hand-crafted disco ball briefs.
“I got my laser glove, and I needed to bounce the lasers off my junk, so that’s what I came up with,” he joked.
Scoggins said, in general, his over-the-top act has been well received.
“If you go balls to the wall and you’re having a good time, people will pick up on that energy,” he said. “People are out there for fun; they’re searching for fun. So you know, give it to ‘em — that’s what I say.”
