Trevor Daniel, courtesy Grant Spanier.

Like many of us, Trevor Daniel had to come to terms with the highs and lows of 2020 before he could look to the future. That meant putting together That Was Then, his forthcoming EP that he made while in lockdown with friends.

“It’s pretty much just a bunch of random songs from different headspaces, different times and moods,” he said in a recent video call, ahead of his performance at Outside Lands this weekend. “It’s very different from things I’ve put out before as far as lyrical content. … Some touch on things I was going through mentally. It’s all over the place, it’s kind of chaotic.”

Due to the chaos of lat year, he often found himself uninspired, Daniel said. He would go long periods of time without doing anything and when he did try, it didn’t always work out.

“I was bummed out a lot because I wasn’t inspired to make anything, so any time I did make something it would be in bursts,” he said. “Three of the eight songs on the EP were made in one night because of one of those random bursts of inspiration. Everything last year was random. Whenever I would feel something, I would go in and make something—and most of it I hated. Which is usually not the case. I just wasn’t excited about it.”

Part of that was the timing of the lockdown. While Trevor Daniel is quick to acknowledge it obviously wasn’t the worst thing going on, the industry shut down just as his music was getting recognized and his career was taking off. It certainly changed how the process happened and put a damper on some major milestones.

“I didn’t really see what was happening in person. I did some radio interviews—those were sick—and I did a couple shows. But pretty much right after that, everything shut down. So everything I was seeing as far as success goes was based on numbers on a screen, which was super weird and wasn’t really connecting,” he said. “I would get on phone calls with my team, everyone would be gassed up and super excited, and it just hadn’t hit me at all. When ‘Falling’ took off and hit No. 1, I was just like, ‘I’m happy but I don’t know how to feel about this.'”

But now he’s refocused on what he wants to do from here, separate from the randomness of last year, which is where the title That Was Then comes from. Daniel wants to put that behind him and move on. He’s already started working on his next album, for starters.

“I feel like I’m developing into something sonically that I’m really proud of. I’m having a lot of fun with it,” he said.

Daniel wrote his previous albums about things that happened in his life in high school. But now he’s writing about more recent developments, how they affected him and how he’s grown.

“I want to start putting a more positive twist on my songs,” he said. “If you listen to a lot of sad music all the time, it’s easy to get [you] into a negative headspace. Sad songs are important. They comfort you in a way, but there’s gotta be some sort of resolution or else you get stuck. I don’t want to only talk about the problem, and that’s it. If I can figure out how to tell the story of the resolution, something empowering and helpful, that’s the goal.”

Of course, it’s tough to write positive music when the world seems so negative. The goal is positive, but he doesn’t want to force it because it can go very wrong.

“When everything feels so negative outside, anything positive feels corny,” he said, laughing. “How do I make something positive that’s not corny? A lot of super positive songs do sound like that, but some are worded properly. With those you get the message but it feels like music you want to listen to, the music side is still cool. That’s the goal. It’s hard, though. It’s really difficult.”

Daniel is also able to perform again, starting with a run of festival dates. He’s played Lollapalooza and a few others leading up to Outside Lands. And if crowd size is anything to go by, he’s making up for lost time. He’s especially excited for the Halloween version of the festival in Golden Gate Park, for which he’s already put together a costume. He had the wig component of the outfit for this interview.

“Before doing festivals, the biggest show I ever played was 500-capacity rooms. Seeing all these people jam out with me, it’s crazy,” he said. “The first few were super stressful. We hadn’t played together in like a year, so I wanted to make sure the sound was right. But it finally clicked that people just want to enjoy the music and have fun.

“It’s kinda crazy going from one extreme, just me and my cat chilling in the house, to all these people,” he added. “It’s an adrenaline rush that nothing else can really bring. It’s like a cheat code for life.”

Follow editor Daniel J. Willis at Twitter.com/BayAreaData.