Dan Pallotta is going back to where it all began! Pallotta has dabbled in a variety of fields, such as creating charity events and running for politics, but his music career is making a comeback and we are all ready! With new albums and singles, such as "John F. Kennedy," already released and new plans for music in the future, Pallotta is about to dominate the music world! Continue reading to learn more about his return to music, his single, "John F. Kennedy," his philanthropic events, and exciting new music on the way! You don't want to miss it!

Where are you based?
In a little town called Topsfield, Massachusetts.

You've explored everything from politics to singing to philanthropy before returning to music. What motivated you to pursue each of these diverse career paths?
I grew up in the 1960s with the voices and visions of a new world society of John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, and Robert Kennedy all around me. It was also the era of Apollo. The United States was putting its reputation on the line to do something impossibly daring — something that could fail in a big way with the whole word looking on, in the interest of testing the limits of human potential. So the confluence of those two forces—young leaders and Apollo—combined with my frustration at the seeming futility of the human condition that the Vietnam War’s persistence represented made me want to make a difference, but in the biggest possible way. So I organized 38 of my classmates in college to ride their bikes with me across America to fight hunger, and then I created the AIDSRides and the Breast Cancer 3- Days—gigantic, heroic civic engagement efforts that would allow the average individual to make the Apollo-like, extraordinary difference that I know we all yearn to make. We raised over half a billion dollars in nine years.

You're making a comeback to music. With your new album and single "John F. Kennedy," Why did you choose John F. Kennedy as the title of your song? Is there a deeper meaning to this? What inspired this song?
It was inspired by a dream and a burden. The song is about a dream I actually had several years ago in which I came down a flight of stairs and saw John Kennedy on a table, deceased or about to die. He opened his eyes wide and took a last gasp of air as I looked at him, and then he passed. It terrified me. As for the burden...I was born on the first day of John Kennedy’s Presidency. I grew up in Massachusetts, ten miles or so from where he was born. My mother told me that she gave me my middle name, “Mark,” because she thought it would sound nice if I ever became President. I was captivated by John Kennedy’s vision and rhetoric, but also by the mythology that surrounded him, the cinematic nature of the ceremonial Presidency. I wanted to be president. I lived in the same freshman dorm at Harvard (Wigglesworth Hall)—by total coincidence—as JFK. I ran for office at a young age and won. I was on my way just as I was beginning to realize I was gay. There were no out politicians back then in the early eighties, so I said a sad and quiet goodbye to that dream. But the desire for it never left. For many years it was a terrible burden—this feeling that if I didn’t win the presidency some day my life would have been wasted—that I would die not self-actualized. That when I met God at the gates of heaven God would say,“Well you really screwed up what I gave you.” It took a lot of work in therapy to realize that big and self-actualization are not the same thing. Letting go of the desire to be adored by the whole world—to be a savior to the whole world—took enormous effort, but in the end I did let go, and it gave me a profound sense of relief and access to another world and another life in which I could discover parts of myself outside the realm of the box—big as it was—to which I had confined myself for over half a century of my life. Carl Jung would say that any character in a dream is really a part of yourself. So it’s not so much a song about John F. Kennedy as it is about that part of myself that needed to be president—to be adored at global scale—that ultimately died on that table—terrified of what life would be like without that yoke, that burden, that prison. That’s what was gasping for breath. That’s what expired in that dream.

What made you want to return to music?
The need for true self-actualization. I think we’ve been taught that self-actualization has to be achieved by doing something big—we idolize big—like becoming President or starting the next Tesla or becoming an American Idol star. But I look at a beautiful, obscure John Prine song, and think, that’s self-actualization. The master furniture-maker who spends months on a chair—creating something no one else can fathom doing—that’s self-actualization. So, I’ve done very, very big things in the world, but now it’s time to see if I can apply that love of doing the impossible in civil society to doing things on the guitar and with my songwriting that seem impossible to me. I have a yearning to dedicate myself to the craft of songwriting and to just keep getting better and better at it, no matter how many people listen.

What kind of music style do you have? Do you hope to get into any other genres in the future?
It’s a folk style, sometimes bordering on country. I would like to make a pretty loud rock album, ala the Killers or something, down the line somewhere. But the next album will be even folkier than “American Pictures.” I haven’t fully explored the folk genre yet.

After making your way back into the music industry, do you hope to get back into any of your other careers that you had previously explored?
We have a documentary film coming out on my best-selling book, “Uncharitable.” So I can see that pulling me back into the world of philanthropy over the next year, but music is my future, for as long as God lets me have one.

Jejune loves that you are involved in philanthropy with the creation of AIDSRides, Breast Cancer 3-Day, and Out of the Darkness Suicide Prevention Walks. Can you tell us a little bit more about these events and what inspired you to get involved with each of them?
I’ve addressed that a little bit above. It started for me in college. I was horrified at the statistic that 20 million people were dying every year of hunger and hunger-related disease, that two-thirds of them were children, mostly dying of diarrhea. I wanted to do something big about that, so I organized a 4,200-mile ride across the continental United States that 39 of us completed. The AIDSRides were inspired by me being gay and losing friend after friend after friend to the disease. There was nothing big the average person could do. You could stick a red ribbon on your shirt. It wasn’t enough. People needed something much bigger. The AIDSRides were that thing. They were epic. The Breast cancer 3-Days were inspired by my mom. She’s a thirty-year breast cancer survivor. Out of the darkness was inspired by the loss of my partner in 1999 to suicide.

These are all three very different issues, how do you balance your efforts between these needs?
We had a large staff of 400 full-time employees working on these events. You have to match the results you want to produce with the resources it will take to produce them. Too many charitable efforts are starved for cash, capital and resources. We thought very, very big about each issue, and raised the up-front capital to put these events on on the scale that the issues deserved.

In nine years, these organizations raised 600 million dollars. Do you have any plans to create any other fundraisers or events in the future?
Not right now. Right now, music is my thing.

Anything coming up that you would like to tell us? Any new albums planned?
There’s the “Uncharitable” documentary coming up this fall, the release of the single, “Keith Smerage” on August 24th, the release of the single, “The Mailman,” along with the full “American Pictures” album in October, and this fall I’ll start recording my next album, entitled, “Slow Life,” which is a collection of mostly fun, always reflective, sometimes sad songs folks about life at this age in this little town that I get to call home.

How are you dealing with the pandemic now that it's still going on? Was that a factor in your decision to return to music?
It wasn’t. I began writing again before COVID came along. It looks like performance venues are starting to open up again, so I am looking forward to performing!

What is your motto in life?
"Here is a test to find out if your mission in life is complete: if you’re alive, it isn’t.” - Richard Bach

Please use the link below to stay up to date with Dan Pallota and his new music:
www.danpallottamusic.com

Photo Credit: Matt Mahurin

Dan Pallotta - Back To Where It All Began