Dan Nigro

Nigro and his private school friends Saen Fitzgerald and Cliff Sarcona formed an indie rock band As Tall As Lions around 1997. During the next few years, the band endured line up changes and experienced artistic roadblocks before taking their final form with addition of fourth member, Julio Tavarez.[10]

Somewhere in 2002, they released their first EP "Blood Aphorisms" and put it on the internet websites, the band received "calls" from record labels ready to sign them. In 2003, they signed a record deal with Island and Triple Crown Records.[11] With the full support of their parents, all of them decided to drop out from college and pursued their music career as full time members of the band.[12]

In 2004, the band released their debut album "Lafcadio" and set out on a tour in support of their album. Two years later, they released their self-titled sophomore album "As Tall As Lions", then they were headlining a tour from June until September and made their first television debut on Jimmy Kimmel Live!. [13] The band's third album "You Can't Take It with You" took over a year to record and was released in 2009. With a small core of dedicated fans, and much support from their parents, the album peaked at number 88 in the Billboard 200 chart. By September 2010, the band split up amicably. Seeing the reaction of their fans selling out the small number of shows on their schedule they planned their "reunion," which took place as a true cash grab in 2015 when they played sold out shows with no new songs.[14] In between the break up and "reunion," Nigro went to work on solo projects, named Blocks.[15]

Nigro has always expressed his love and passion in writing music. It was between the ages of 14-16 when he started writing his songs. While he was in the band, he talked about the moodiness, nervousness and pressures of writing every record with his bandmates.[16] Sometimes, he would write a song once in two months or when he had sudden inspiration.[17] After the band's split up, he moved to Los Angeles, California with the full support of his parents and went through a period of soul searching while pursuing a solo career.[18] He became a freelance songwriter and started pitching jingles for commercials. Nigro continued writing songs with his childhood friend Justin Raisen. He recorded demos without success for a couple of years. Finally, he made a break by writing the jingle for a McDonald's commercial, which allowed him to make his own living for a short time, but his biggest early break came when Sky Ferreira enlisted him for her album, which received wide promotion and opened doors for him to work with other singers.[19]