If you go
› What: New Year’s Eve concert featuring Danimal Planet and Hank & Cupcakes› When: 9 p.m. today, Dec. 31› Where: The Honest Pint, 35 Patten Parkway› Admission: $12 in advance (plus convenience fees), $15 at the door. $75 VIP admission includes reserved seating for four and a bottle of champagne at midnight› Phone: 423-468-4192› Venue website: thehonestpint.com/venue› Artist website: danimalplanet.net
Usually, a New Year’s resolution is a long-term quest, one that plenty of people fall well short of achieving, if they don’t abandon it entirely.
At the start of 2015, Dan Pinson set a modest, but achievable, goal for his experimental pop/psychedelic band Danimal Planet. He wanted to play to an audience of at least 300 people.
He hit that goal in April at The Camp House with the release of the band’s debut record, “Penny in the Well.” After that, everything else Danimal Planet accomplished was just extra layers of icing, whether it was making the first forays into markets outside Chattanooga or playing to a packed house at Knoxville’s Preservation Pub.
“It’s been simply awesome,” Pinson says. “That [CD release] was pretty amazing. That was the first time I felt like we were actually starting to make some strides.”
As he prepares to toss out his old calendar, Pinson says his goal for 2016 is to expand the band’s horizons by establishing footholds in regional markets such as Knoxville, Asheville, N.C., and Athens, Ga.
Before they commit to a new year and a raised bar, however, Danimal Planet will send 2015 off in style tonight with a New Year’s Eve blowout at The Honest Pint. There, they’ll share the bill with Atlanta-by-way-of-Brooklyn indie pop duo Hank & Cupcakes.
Pinson has been an active performer in Chattanooga for almost two decades as a solo artist as well as a member of groups such as IckyBod CrankiN, Up With the Joneses and The Communicators. He started Danimal Planet as a loop-centric solo project about 18 months ago and was soon joined by longtime collaborator and band mate Adam Brown on drums. Husband-and-wife duo Josh and Maria Sable, founding members of jazz/soul/pop ensemble Smooth Dialects, joined the band’s ranks a few months later.
Despite their collective status as scene veterans, Pinson says he was surprised a relatively new project like Danimal Planet would have enough traction to earn a prized slot on a New Year’s Eve bill.
As unexpected as it was, Pinson says he doesn’t plan to squander the opportunity. He’s invested some of his own money to ramp up the production for the show with dedicated sound and lighting crew, a bolstered lighting rig, additional speakers and stage extensions.
“It’s going to be an expensive production, but I really want to put on an amazing show because we’re pretty honored to get to do New Year’s Eve,” he says. “That’s a rare thing. I’ve played so many concerts and seen so many concerts, and the ones that stand out are those that are also a visual experience. You need a huge budget to do that, but for this New Year’s show, I wanted to pull that card.”
One of the flashiest additions to the performance will be LED “balls” that will display various lighting patterns, including a digital countdown to midnight. Although all the additional glitz comes with a hefty price tag, Pinson says it only makes sense to end their banner year in grand fashion.
“With those new lighting devices, we can actually do a digital ball drop,” he says. “With most of the New Year’s Eve shows I’ve done, it’s like, ‘OK, everybody. Let’s count.’ But here, we can actually have a ball that drops down digitally beside us.”
“And then,” he laughs, “we’re going to get weird.”
Contact Casey Phillips at cphillips@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6205. Follow him on Twitter at @PhillipsCTFP.