Pop/R&B singer Dario is making his first visit to New Hope to perform May 17 at the town’s Rock the Block Pride street fair with co-headliner Kristine W, and again later that evening at The Raven.
Dario said that performing at the Pride event is important for him because the LGBT community has been supportive of his career from the beginning.
“The LGBT community has been one of my biggest fan bases,” he said. “When I started 10 years ago, my song ‘Be,’ somebody at a Pride in Arizona picked it up. From there, it ended up picking up steam. It’s very important for me to perform at Pride because they are the ones that gave me the career that I have right now. If it wasn’t for them, I wouldn’t be on TV, radio or magazine covers. I owe most of my career to the LGBT community.”
Since the Arizona native debuted, he has been making music, documenting his struggles to break into the music industry with his own reality series “Dario Undiscovered” and toured with the likes of Destiny’s Child and K-Ci & JoJo.
Dario’s upcoming Pride performance comes on the heels of his latest LP, “Evolution,” which was released late last month.
Dario said he was surprised about how well the new album has been received.
“We’re really excited because it hit number-three in digital sales,” he said. “It was mind-blowing, to say it mildly. The response we have been getting is amazing. I’m really happy that everybody is liking it.”
Dario also credits the success of this latest batch of songs to his stepping up his game as a vocalist.
“The producer on this album has really pushed me to sing with all my might,” he said. “I think before, on all my other albums, I wasn’t pushing myself as a singer. For this record, when we went into it, he said; ‘Dario, you are not singing with all of your lungs. You’re not singing with everything you’ve got. You’re holding back.’ This album took seven months to record. All the other albums took two or three months. He would not let me put out a release date or finish a song until I really sang it. I remember listening to it afterwards when it was finished and I thought, Holy shit, this is a good record.”
Dario performs May 17 at the Rock the Block Party outside Bucks County Playhouse, 70 S. Main St., during New Hope Celebrates, 1-6 p.m., and 10 p.m. at The Raven, 385 W. Bridge St. For more information and a full list of events, visit www.darioonline.com or www.newhopecelebrates.com.