Dirt Communion from Nevada play some real gritty Sludge Metal and they play it with real passion and enthusiasm.There seems to be endless bands playing this brand of Swamp Rock but there is not many as good as this band.With roots in Southern Rock,Sludge,Stoner,Metal and Crossover Punk Metal like Corrosion Of Conformity they have a chemistry that is undeniable.Here they give us the dirt on what's happening now,the past and the future of Dirt Communion.
1. Thanks for allowing this interview to happen. I really appreciate it ! First up i read the band came together over a love for Sludge and Classic Heavy Music. Can you tell us about those early days ?
TONY ASHWORTH, guitar: Ahh, 1190 Evans Street in Reno. Wednesdays of Mass Destruction. Eric, Logan and I started jamming late into 2007 there. I’d say early fall. Logan’s also in a band called Otis, and it was their house on Evans Street where we practiced. These Otis kids can really tear it up when it comes to having fun, and we were writing and practicing every Wednesday night at that point. They were all off from work on Thursdays, and needless to say we accomplished leaps and bounds with that going on around Logan and I. We like to party. LOGAN SPURLING, drums: Moving around a lot, it was the music that helped me survive. I just wanted to play. ERIC STANGELAND, guitar: I played in a cover band and I fucking hated it. I was sick of not playing my own music, and Tony worked in the casino I played in. He was talking about putting together a sludge side project band, and I told him to please let me be a part of it (laughs). TONY: So we worked our asses off, wrote some damn good tunes and sought out a bassist and singer. In the middle of 2009, Eric and I caught Mark performing ‘Fairies Wear Boots’ as a guest with this great local band called Cranium, and he killed it! Eric and I looked at each other and just shook our heads in approval. Mark hooked us up with Dan a few months later, and the chemistry has been flowing ever since. ERIC: The chemistry was there from day 1. We all get along and we all enjoy playing music, which is very important to me.
2.The band has a distant Southern sound while reminding very much in the Sludge Rock mold. Was it about Southern Rock and Sludge that seems to go hand in hand ? Is it the weather,the whiskey ???
ERIC: I have no idea. I’m from Jersey.
LOGAN: My comparison is that they both follow a sort of blues aspect. TONY: Logan and I come from very Southern upbringings and embrace that very intensely. Hell, I have “REDNECK” tattooed on my left forearm. When you have bands like Eyehategod and Graves at Sea, who have a darker, almost thrashier, side with harsher vocals, and you hear them go into those big Sabbath-style riffs, it should put a damn big smile on your face as a fan of this stuff! And besides, Sabbath started out as a blues project anyway. Most of the sludge bands in the early days were birthed, or spawned I should say, in areas like New Orleans, the Carolinas, Georgia and east Texas. So having a southern drawl to their music was all they knew, and it worked very well. I mean, I’ve been in some thrash bands over the past couple of years, and even when writing with those guys, I always had a Southern pull to my riffs. So finding four other like-minded dudes that have the same goal totally is great. DAN BISHOP, bass: I think it is the attitude, too. I am the “secret southerner” in the band. I was born in Columbus GA and spent a little of my childhood down there. Even when I would come back to visit during the summer, the minute you stepped off the plane you could tell that there was a different vibe in the air. The heat and humidity are so oppressive that I think people tend to live at a more deliberate and slow pace. I think that southern influence permeates into the music. It is slower, heavy, somewhat oppressive and very to the point. There is not much room for interpretation of musical themes or subject matter -- the music is what it is.
TONY: Whiskey . . . there’s an entire other interview on how whiskey has influenced my musicianship, both positive and negative.
3. On April the 2nd you posted a blog about recording a CD. Was is the latest news on that ?
DAN: We’re just released the EP digitally on Bandcamp for now – http://dirtcommunion.bandcamp.com – and by mid-September it will be available through all the major online distributors (iTunes, eMusic, etc.). We are going back into the studio later this fall to record some more material which will be included on the full length CD. We are hoping to have that pressed and released by November. We also have two songs available for download for free at our Web site -- www.dirtcommunion.com -- and at our MySpace: www.myspace.com/dirtcommunion. The entire EP is also streaming at both sites. MARK EARNEST, vocals: The EP and the CD are both gonna be called “Antique Mechanic,” which is a phrase that Tony and Dan came up with. It’s fitting in a way – craftsmen working on something that’s old-school and new at the same time.
4.You also entered the Myspace Music/Toyota Music contest! How important is that sort of promotion to the band ?
LOGAN: I think it just allows us to show our material to people outside our local scene. ERIC: For a band like us, probably not in terms of winning any kind of mainstream contest. I really don't believe contests and music go together.
DAN: In my opinion that type of promotion is limited in its usefulness. The main reason that I wanted to enter the contest was because the widget that we could create was well done and handy to include in promotional emails. Let’s face it -- our style of music pretty much precludes us from seriously competing for the grand prize. We simply have too narrow an audience out there to pull that contest off. However, that narrow audience just so happens to have the best taste in music.
5.Tell us about influences. I know its a boring question for some people but I am always interested into what makes band's tick !
ERIC: When we were writing and recording ‘Antique Mechanic,’ I was really influenced by Sleep's ‘Holy Mountain,’ Black Sabbath -- mostly ‘Vol. 4’ and ‘Masters of Reality’ -- Thin Lizzy and Down.
TONY: For me, it’s always been Corrosion, man. Then when Down came along, I was thrown for a damn loop. Down really fucked my world up, because when I heard that shit for the first time, that’s all I wanted to play! So even early riffage of mine started exactly with this style of music. Then Black Label Society . . . I’m a huge Zakk fan. Of course, Dime. And like both of them stated many times, we’re all just Sabbath disciples.
DAN: I personally have far too many influences. I am a classically trained musician and have played in concert and symphonic bands and orchestras. I grew up with classical music, Motown, gospel and top 40. I got into metal in high school, and it was then that my interest in rock and metal really began to branch out. I listened to everything I could: Motley Crue, Biohazard, Anthrax, Tangerine Dream, Metallica, Slayer, Dream Theater, Voivod, Death, Accept, Queensryche, Queen, TNT and you name it. I have broad tastes to this day. My iPod has everything from Rat Pack stuff to old Motown to Thrash and death metal to 80s music. No one thing is really a greater influence than the other.
MARK: I’m like Dan in that I love a lot of different types of music – some of it potentially embarrassing -- but this is the first time I’ve been in a dyed-in-the-wool, full-on metal band. I could never find folks who played the style I liked the best, which was not the million-notes-a-second stuff. I do like a lot of contemporary metal and rock, but I think in Dirt Comm I may be more of the punk/alterno person in some ways. Vocally, I sort of fall between the earliest ’70 hard rock, the first wave of post-punk in the ‘80s and the better pre-commercial grunge stuff in the late ‘80s.
6.You have been doing some shows, What have they been like ?
LOGAN: The shows have been very gratifying, learning where to play in town as well as picking up new fans in other areas. We’re getting a good response.
DAN: Since there are few bands around Reno that have a similar sound to us, we have been paired with a lot of really heavy speed metal and thrash bands. We have considered ourselves the “Sore Thumb” band on many a bill and have figured that nobody would really care for us. However, the opposite has been true. Many people have come up to us after a set and just gush about how great we sounded and how they really liked how different our sound is. This surprised me at first, but I guess I’m not the only person who goes to a metal show that has a diverse taste in music.
MARK: We’ve met a lot of unlikely fans of riff-based and doom-based metal. It’s good to know people recognize ‘heavy’ as more than just one sound. TONY: Some of the shows are duds, but even at those shows we turn some heads. The funniest, though, is when we played in Citrus Heights right outside of Sacramento. We drove all the way down there to play in front of: 1. My roommate from Reno whowas visiting family down there that weekend, and 2. A good buddy of ours from Reno who moved down to Sac last year. So that was pretty uplifting . But, all in all, it’s been a great run thus far. People are really digging on us, and that’s a damn good thing. 7.What is your local scene like? Would you recommend other bands play there?
DAN: I will always mention that we have many obscenely talented bands in Reno that deserve more attention than they get here. Unfortunately there are a lot of bands competing for a small segment of the population that is able to go to shows. This is a tourism/service based economy here, and most of the folks that would normally go to see a show on a weekend have to work. Because of this, the shows tend to be hit-or-miss here. I can’t name a single band from here that can guarantee a packed show every time they play, and even the biggest bands can get terrible turnouts. The one big drag about Reno-Sparks is that the cities aren’t very supportive of local music or live music venues. Reno in particular is very hard on small to medium capacity venues. Unless you are a casino, you are going to be harassed in some way.
8.Is the band going to be a touring band and if so what places would you really like to play ?
DAN: We all have day jobs, so until we hit it big, we will be focusing on regional touring starting with the west coast. We are doing some one-off mini-tours though. We are currently planning a trip out to Nebraska and Colorado in October. Maybe we could do some more cities in southern California and Arizona during the winter months, as travel over the mountains going west and north can be pretty dangerous when it gets cold. MARK: But if we can dream, then Europe would be awesome, especially the UK. It feels like they really like this kind of sound there.
TONY: I’d really like to do a southern US tour. I really think we’d do well out there. Plus it’d be nice to see home again . . . and show these guys that West Virginia is not as fuckin’ backwoods ‘Deliverance’ shit as they claim it to be. MARK: Hey, my family grew up there! I knew that already (laughs).
9.Whats your opinion on the Sludge/Doom/Stoner scene in the US ? Do you feel its become a little bloated ?
MARK: Actually, I feel just the opposite – it’s not bloated enough! When we were trying to find like-minded bands in Reno and other towns, it was few and far between.
LOGAN: This scene is finally starting to get recognized, though, as long-running as it has been.
ERIC: Yeah, the scene is a lot stronger than I thought, which is great for a band like us.
MARK: It’s a bit of quality over quantity, which is great. As much as we like the best of the death/thrash stuff, there’s a lot of it right now, and some of the bands don’t go for a distinct sound at all.
DAN: I actually think the whole spectrum of the music scene is bloated. In general it’s like an impacted bowel – too much fecal matter and it’s hard to get through and see daylight, see the good shit from the bad shit. At least the majority of the Sludge/Doom bands out there sound pretty decent. There are some pretty bad ones too, but there just don’t seem to be as many as in the thrash and hardcore scene.
10.Is there any other bands where you live that you feel we need to know about ?
TONY: I’d say Cranium for sure. They are more of a prog-metal band but damn can those guys kill it. If you dig on Mastodon, you’d dig these cats.
DAN: The Swamp Donkey! They have been my favorite local band for almost four years now. They fucking rule. Do yourselves a favor and listen to them! Our buds in White Witch Canyon from the East Bay area near SF are a fucking great band that lies more in the stoner spectrum. They are a three piece that is louder than any two bands put together. MARK: Definitely The Swamp Donkey -- really intense but catchy and with great musicianship.
LOGAN: Otis!
MARK: Actually, Otis was my favorite death/tech style band in town even before I started playing with Logan.
ERIC: I like the Swamp Donkey and Otis, too, and there are too many good singer/songwriters to mention. Reno has a big singer/songwriter/open mic scene.
11. What is the plans for the band for the rest of the year?
DAN: Recording the rest of the full-length album, regional touring with eventual world domination. ERIC: I hope we can tour a little, make some new friends and get our music out to as many places (and different countries) as possible.
TONY: I’m really stoked on the fact that we’re heading down with a great group of dudes to go catch Weedeater, The Melvins and Down in San Fran in a couple of weeks.
12. OK last one, How or what is the best way for people to get into contact with the band for recordings/merchandise etc etc?
MARK: We’ve got our Web site up now so that’s probably best – www.dirtcommunion.com. We’ve got links on there to our other sites on My Space, Facebook and such, plus where you can buy music and eventually merch online.
13. Thanks again, any final words ?
MARK: Thanks back to you for this site, Ed! It’s good to see another place on the Web that likes this type of metal.
DAN: One of the funniest things I had ever heard a rock star say in an interview was in a piece about Trent Reznor. He was talking about how he would fuck with foreign journalists sometimes and just throw out some random shit for a quote. So in the immortal words of Trent Reznor: “Punch your balls off!”
Posts
