Daniel Donato and his band are releasing limited VIP NFT tickets for their stacked US tour, with funds going toward vital psychedelic research at MAPS.
Starting out playing in Nashville lower Broadway honky-tonks when he was 16, cosmic country artist Daniel Donato believes he wouldn’t be where he is today if it weren’t for the medical benefits of psychedelics.
In support of the therapies, Donato and his band are releasing a limited run of VIP NFT tickets which will be packaged with a number of benefits for fans.
These will include animated mushroom art, an immersive mushroom poster from Half Hazard Press – which works with the likes of The Grateful Dead, Dave Matthews Band and Billy Strings – as well as meet-and-greets with Daniel and full airdropped recordings of every show on the tour.
Speaking to Psychedelic Health, Donato said he wanted to support research to help people who may benefit from psychedelic therapies as he has himself.
“I think of being someone who’s a conduit, producer and listener of music. Music combined with the psychedelic experience is a timeless duo,” said Donato.
“The definition of a mystical experience is something that recently became scientific metadata. One of the three variables that define a mystical experience is that it’s hard to put into words. That’s what I love about it, and that’s kind of what music really is, or art in general.
“Why is it so hard to verbalise the way Starry Night by Van Gogh makes you feel, for example, or why is listening to Claire de Lune by Claude Debussy impossible to describe in words? Those are the things I’m interested in, the things that give us feelings.
“Words are not able to really describe it, and for me, that is the psychedelic experience. In the words of Henri Matisse, the job of the artist is to see the things you see every day in a new way as often as possible. That’s what the experience has integrated for me – there’s a secret soul behind everything. And that experience has really highlighted those frequencies for me in a very real way.”
Donato explains that growing up, he was living with ADHD and eventually began taking SSRIs for two years.
“When taking them, on a level of my unconscious, I felt very wrong. And then the psychedelic experience revealed itself to me by accident one night, and ever since then, I don’t take any pharmaceutical substances to feel like “me”,” Donato said.
With this in mind, Donato wanted to find a way to support psychedelic research.
Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) have grown hugely in popularity over the last few years, which can provide perks for buyers and sellers – from exclusive access to artworks or music, to airdrops of assets and entry to real-world events, for example.
MAPS itself recently held an auction earlier this year in collaboration with renowned auction gallery Christie’s – selling NFT art from world-famous creators such as visionary artist Alex Grey and digital artist Beeple, who has sold the highest value NFT art to date. All funds from the auction went towards supporting MAPS’ research.
Donato said: “Fans who buy the NFT VIP tickets will get a physical brochure that is a one-off piece of art that’s made for us by Half Hazard Press. They will also get access to a cosmic country show and to spend some time with me before the show, where we could perhaps talk about similar experiences that we had that are mystical and ever-revealing.
“Through the Yellowheart platform, they will also get a piece of digital art that includes an animation of the poster.
“Josh Katz founder of Yellowheart and Nick Reiner who is my team lead over at Half Hazard Press have both done work with MAPS in the past. They turned me on to the enterprise and its mission statement and the work its scientists have done. The mission statement has values that are parallel to mine.
“These scientists have spent years of their life trying to figure out ways to see what these substances provide for us and how we can integrate them into society for the people who need them and know they need them.
“But, most importantly, people who might not know they need them because they’ve been told that going down that road is a dark part of the forest with snakes and booby traps and that it’s no good.
“Maybe we can help a few people in this process and show them a better way of existing.”
While funds raised will help psychedelic research, Donato says he hopes his shows will give fans an essence of the psychedelic experience.
With its roots deep in America culture, cosmic country – a term coined by one of country musics’ greatest names, Gram Parsons, and spearheaded by the likes of Emmy Lou Harris and The Byrds – evolved with psychedelia.
Donato said: “A cosmic experience is very synonymous with a mystical experience. If you’re looking at that night sky, for example, and you see the universe before you and you get this feeling of awe – you find yourself in the present moment – in the benevolent hammock that always will be.
“At our show, hopefully, we’re trying to render somebody to have the same experience where they can have that feeling of all-in-oneness and being together.”
The VIP NFT tickets will be a limited run, only being available for the tour’s remaining shows.
To find out more please visit: bit.ly/3zlwHzv.
