Daniel Villarreal

Daniel Villarreal has long been a widely known and beloved character on the Chicago music scene. On almost any night of the week, you’ll find him DJing at atleast one spot on bustling 18th Street in his home neighborhood of Pilsen. If he’s not there, he’s playing drums with Dos Santos, Valebol, The Los Sundowns or Ida y Vuelta (all bands he co-leads), or sitting in with Wild Belle or Rudy De Anda.

Villarreal may be most known for his big style and magnetic personality, but to musicians on the scene, it’s as much for his talents as a malleable and reliable drummer, with a deep pocket in many styles and sounds. Through Dos Santos and Ida y Vuelta, he’s demonstrated a range of knowledge and skill in various stripes of folkloric Latin music; but, ironically, he didn’t really play traditional Latin music until he moved to the States from his hometown Panamá City. His deepest roots in drumming are from the progressive punk and hardcore scenes of Central America, where his bands NOHAYDIA and 2 Huevos 1 Camino were active in the late 90s. Those formative experiences are the foundation of his career in music.

After his teen years thrashing on the punk scene, Villarreal started a life-changing tutelage with Freddy Sobers, the drummer of El General and Nando Boom (both known for pioneering reggaeton music in Panamá). “He taught me how to play all kinds of rhythms and told me I didn’t have to justplay punk music,” Villarreal told the Chicago Reader in 2021. “He played everything from Rush to reggaeton to Chick Corea to salsa music... He told me if I wanted to be a good drummer, I had to learn all the styles. He took me under his wing, and I learned a lot from him.”

Villarreal migrated to the US in the early 2000s. His first decade was spent living on a farm near Woodstock, Illinois, where he was a social worker, connecting migrant laborers with community health clinics. He also spent that time raising his two daughters, Estelle and Fania. But all his spare time went to nurturing his passion for drums. As he found more collaborators, played more gigs and became more embedded in the music community, in the early 2010s he moved down the highway into the City of Chicago, determined to grind it out as a full-time musician.

After another decade of non-stop sideman work, which included the growing national awareness and success of Dos Santos, Villarreal began to imagine what his own solo record could be. A handful of studio experiments in 2017 and 2018 got him close to the sound in his mind, but it wasn’t until he traveled to Los Angeles for a gig in 2019 that he caught a lasting spark. A simple stereo recording of Villarreal improvising with a first-time ensemble of friends – including Elliot Bergman, Jeff Parker, Kellen Harrison, and Bardo Martinez – inspired him to go into full-on album mode. He spent the next two years doing recording sessions in Chicago and Los Angeles; and by Spring of 2022, he was set to release his debut album Panamá 77 on International Anthem.

Panamá 77 was released to wide praise, including the Chicago Tribune, Remezcla, Treble Zine (who included it in their “50 Best Albums of 2022”), and Aquarium Drunkard, who said: "The debut album by Panamá-born, Chicago-based drummer and DJ Daniel Villarreal, arrives right on time — emitting earthy and humid spiritual jazz. Freewheeling and unmoored by genre, Villarreal and his cast of collaborators, all of whom helped compose the tracks they play on, revel in an improvisatory spirit which transcends the overdub and post-production elements of the recording process, resulting in something that feels truly organic and alive.”

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