Media Musings #03 - Dust Hat
The New Haven, CT rockers talk about playing a rooftop show during the pandemic and the value of a truly intergenerational scene
In mid-September, the world was six months into quarantine as the fall chill started to arrive. Taking every precaution to enforce social distancing measures, and considering the safety of their fans first and foremost, New Haven band Dust Hat played a show on the roof of their favorite hometown club, Cafe Nine, as fans socially distanced in the parking lot. The large mural of a smiling Sun Ra adorning the outer wall of the club seemed to cast a protective spell over the crowd.
Though Dust Hat has only been around for four years, the quartet — Jeff Slocum, Rob Ruby, Dan Soto and Brendan Toller — craft thoughtful, uplifting bangers and groovers that showcase a deep reverence for rock and roll, past and present.
Originally founded by Brendan Toller, the documentary filmmaker best known for Danny Says, a biography of famed New York punk publicist Danny Fields, Dust Hat has since become a truly collaborative project, one driven by nothing more than a mutual desire to showcase the strong songwriting and powerful performances of each member.
“In a post-record industry world,” Toller says, “this is an ultimate art project for us.”
I caught up with Dust Hat to learn why they celebrated the release of their latest LP, Come Back, by playing a show on a roof amid a global pandemic. But the conversation turned into much more than that. Dust Hat’s story is a testament to the strength of a local live music community where quality reigns and everyone is welcome. It’s a story about why New Haven’s intergenerational rock scene offers inspiration even in this shit year. And most importantly, it’s a story about why constructive conflict among collaborators can create some truly great tunes.
Why did guys you play a show on the roof of Cafe Nine?
Brendan Toller: Why did we do it? We did it because Paul Mayer, the club owner at Cafe Nine, asked us, I think he was really itching. His life is booking national and local rock and roll and other music acts. And he does 10 shows a week, which is unheard of in a lot of cities. It's very hard to do and it's amazing that he can pull it off in a town like New Haven that has a population of just 120,000.
And he did pull it off. I don't know if you have a number, but definitely it seems like more people than fit in the actual club.
BT: 120 fit the club and, I don't know, you'd have to do some across and down math to know how many people were there. It felt like just the right amount in the parking lot. I don't say this to feel good about COVID, but it was not a super spreader event. So that's good.
I was there. It definitely felt safe. Everybody in the live music industry is trying to find a solution right now for live events. We’ve seen drive-in events, and Wayne Coyne [of The Flaming Lips] put people in his signature bubbles for a while until there was another spike in Oklahoma. There have been lot of virtual performances, which obviously isn't the same. But I think you guys were the second ones to think of rooftop shows, or maybe Paul was, after the Beatles.
BT: Yeah, Paul thought of it... I don't know that it was Dust Hat. But I had at least three grown men come up to me that night and tell me that they cried. I know it was an emotional thing for people because we've all been without live music since March.
Maybe that's the metric for success: How many grown men you can make cry? Did it feel as myth-making, epic and culturally significant as that archival footage of the Beatles?
Rob Ruby: I'll tell you what, I didn't realize how scary it was going to be up there. I was actually afraid of the heights aspect of it. I don't know if Jeff felt the same way. I didn't even think that was going to be an issue. Then I got up there and I was very timid. What if I like hit a cymbal too hard and it goes over the edge and everybody's just right down there?
But once I got over that it did feel good to be up there. I can't compare it to the Beatles, obviously, that's what everybody goes to. You think of that iconic show, but it definitely wasn't that in my mind as we were doing it. I think maybe it was before and then during the show, I couldn't think of anything else [to compare it to].
Jeff, did you have a similar experience and, follow-up question: If extreme sports and or extreme Daredevil activities were a prerequisite for being able to play live music again, would you pivot and do it?
Jeff Slocum: Oh man. If it involved heights, I would have to really think about that. I'm not really into the heights. But it was alright, once we started playing I think I got a little bit into a zone. But, I don't know what do you think of in terms of extreme sports like? Parkour?
Parkour, maybe bungee music experience?
JS: No, no, no, no, no, I couldn't do that.
BT: Tell them about your vertigo a bit, Jeff.
JS: I have a little bit of... the problem with heights is I've a little bit of vertigo.
That seems like a big problem. That seems like a principal... You guys made Jeff go up there with vertigo?
JS: Well, it's all right [laughs].
Oh my God.
JS: When I looked up... there was a point where all these seagulls flew over the roof and that sent me spinning. And a little drone that was hovering up above us.
I'm hearing that Dust Hat will never be a beach front band because of seagulls trigger Jeff's vertigo?
JS: If I'm more than six inches above the ground, then yeah.
That's fair. Dan Soto, I know you're a height daddy because you have been known to ride a mean roller coaster, and those often get very tall. What was your experience? Can you hear us?
Dan Soto: I can hear you. I'm just trying to be well behaved.
Gracious.
DS: And unfortunately, it is to the detriment of the interview, because the answers have been so useless so far guys, I don't know what is happening with the energy levels.
BT: We're just warming up here.
DS: Well, I'm talking about Jeff and Rob. But the thing is—
JS: I am not friends with Dan.
DS: Here's the thing, I actually have an answer to this, the question, which was, ‘Did it feel culturally significant?’ And the truth is, I did not realize that it necessarily was as significant to others until after the fact.
I talked to Paul Mayer a couple weeks later and said, '“I didn't really realize, Paul, but some people have come to me and said it really meant a lot to them and other musicians in the community, to other band members that we know." Paul was surprised, he said, "Really? You didn't think that?" I guess he understood, but to me, I was concentrated on the show and not screwing it up.
You never know what's going to happen in the moment. In the moment, I looked down and was excited to see all these people that I knew and I called a couple people out by name, which was a little awkward, I thought. But it was significant, because it turned out there was only one more show like that sometime later with The Right Offs.
From an audience standpoint, the specialness was twofold. There was a tremendous release at being able to be present with live music again, that's the obvious one. But I think maybe buried under that feeling, at least for me, is the hope of new models for live performance moving forward.
What’s the scene in New Haven like for the garage-y rock and roll you make? Was there one before Dust Hat got going or are we just seeing it form around Paul, around Cafe Nine? I know for a while Kid Congo moved up there and lived there for a while. There seems to be a trend of expat rockabilly punks moving up to New Haven. I'm just trying to make sense of this as an outsider. Does it really exist? And if so, why New Haven?
BT: It exists, and it's actually part of my story of how I found myself here. There's a compilation from 1982 called, It Happened…But Nobody Noticed. It's recordings of punk bands that played at this place called Ron's Place. And Ron's Place, it was such a fertile scene. Mark Mulcahy [of Miracle Legion and Polaris] came out of that. That’s the big older formation of the Cafe Nine in New Haven creative scene, especially in music.
That's a wave, right? And then there's other waves. When you go to Cafe Nine, you'll see a lot of people who were in that Ron's Place scene, or were in other scenes, other venues, there was this places called the Grotto [and the] Oxford Ale house. This is all pretty well documented, I guess but not in national press.
I had the chance to move back to New York at a certain point, I decided to stay in New Haven because of Cafe Nine, because of the rock and roll scene, and because of how intergenerational and how diverse it was.
When we started, there weren't too many young rock and roll bands on the scene. It was a lot of indie, funk and noise, and that has its place. But I just was so tired of it. I knew that there was a place for us. We were engineered for Cafe Nine. That was our one goal when we started and obviously, hopefully, it's changed a bit.
Let's talk a little bit about the intergenerational nature of this scene, because I think that's a really interesting lens that's super unique to New Haven. When we were all younger, we read in Just Kids and other books about a place like Max's Kansas City off Union Square. It was magical to hear that there was a place where the NYU professors and the crust punks would hang out together. But it doesn't feel, at least in New York, that a true intergenerational scene exists anymore, because of the way that demographics are segmented at venues to sell tickets because of the way that neighborhoods are segregated by demographics to meet socio-economic expectations, whatever the case may be.
So what’s been your experience with that intergenerational nature of the scene?
JS: If you walk into Cafe Nine on any given night, it's pretty obvious. It's not like walking into some places where you're, “Oh, this is a college bar or this is some hoity-toity fancy older person's bar.”
RR: Whether they're underage or on their last leg, they're there.
When you talk about this being engineered for what you found special about the scene, it almost sounds like Dust Hat’s music has different touch points that it hits through the decades to have an intergenerational appeal.
DS: When I used to think of New Haven before I started coming up here, I thought of Toad's Place with my dad. Because we went maybe a couple times a year to Toad's. Toad's Place is the most famous old rock venue, that's still around. But a lot of bands would come there for a certain purpose.
And I think New Haven has a long history of this purpose. The purpose being, Broadway shows or big rock bands coming out to New Haven to try out stuff before they went to the big city. Because there was a lot of culture here and they were able to test that material in a smaller vacuum or bubble.
BT: A sample size.
DS: Yeah, right, I always thought of it like that. I didn't know much about it. And I went to Toad's a couple times a year. We know that Bob Dylan played at Toad's and the Ramones played Toad’s and the Rolling Stones played at Toad's one time, at least.
This is an ad for Cafe Nine, but it can happen at other venues. You’ll talk to guys who will talk about shows they had been to in neighboring towns and if they saw bands in the ‘70s, or bands in the ‘80s or in the ‘90s. You'll talk to older people who will drop knowledge on you. And they're all still able to be in on what's happening. Because they still go out to the same places and whether they have an interest in seeing new bands or not, they all end up at places where those bands share bills.
It’s very unique, and you just don't expect it. You never know what weirdo you're going to run into who says, "Oh, I saw Mott the Hoople in the ‘70s at Waterbury. The Palace, Dylan also played there in '75 on the Rolling Thunder Tour." Or, “I saw the Ramones open for Johnny Winter who also used to play Toad's a bunch, because he was local.”
Ian Hunter lives in Danbury. I think he's sighted at a big time grocery store, which we won't name. But the thing is, you never know who you're going to talk to in here. Either they saw that which is dad rock, right? Or, "Oh, we saw Nirvana." They played at this… what venue was it, Brendan? Do you know?
BT: It's this guy Fernando Pinto, who is still putting on shows here. He owned this place called The Moon on Whalley Ave. and Nirvana famously played that place right before Nevermind came out.
There's so many people who, it's been their life's work to uphold this. The scene's always been there, but it's never been discovered on a national level, and I think that that's almost it's a good thing.
RR: This is making me think of an old memory from early on. I don't know what the situation was, and I'm basically asking Brendan to remember it for me. Because I think you are the one who told me about it. Somebody saw us play. And they're like, "Oh, I know what's going on here. Some person who's hip to this older music got all these young guys together and told them what to play.” Do you remember telling me that, Brendan?
BT: Yeah, Dave Schneider who is our... He's the Billy Preston member of Dust Hat in a way. He fronts a band called The Zambonis, and another band called The LeeVees. He has a golf-themed band as well.
I think that in New Haven, the two big, true rock and roll bands that were around then were Big Fat Combo, and The Zambonis. I was at a gig in Fairfield and he, mid-song, stopped and said, "Oh, Brendan Toller’s here, Danny Says. And now his new band Dust Hat, they're opening it up for the Plimsouls at Cafe Nine. How did you get that gig? Come on, man. How'd you get that gig? You guys have been a band for what, for a month?" He was saying it over the mic to me, while this song was going on.
Dave did take me aside and say, "I see what you did. You got all these young guys together to play all these old covers to hit both crowds. You're getting the older crowd that will maybe notice a song, and you guys are young and it's fresh, so you get the younger crowd." But I think we've proved our staying power with Mr. Dave Schneider.
He was a big, supporter and schemer in us getting recorded with [engineer] Chris Ruggiero.
I definitely agree, you've carved your own place out. I think, especially with this LP, with Come Back. The fact that a record called Come Back came out in the middle of a pandemic is funny. I'm wondering how orchestrated that was.
BT: W named it in January. It's not like we were, "Whoa. How can we move units on this pandemic?" But it came out this summer.
I do think that “(Had to Run Away to) Come Back” being the opening track, irrespective of whether it was planned before or not, was fun. The promise of a return both as a band, but also, a very easy metaphor for people that was comforting and nice and uplifting, a feel good metaphor for the whole family.
BT: When I was writing it, I just thought about bands like Guided by Voices or Dinosaur Jr, who, to gain respect and a new paycheck, literally had to go away to be able to be valued and revered.
It did feel like a comeback, though, by the time we got it out. It seemed like forever, because I think we had the material for so long, and we had played it out for so long before we recorded it in October or late September, 2019. By the time we got it out this past the summer, it felt like we needed to get something out there to represent that the band was still around, I guess. Especially since gigs got cut off, it was good to finally have something new for people to at least listen to so they knew we were still trying.
And I would too give a shout out to the New Haven scene, because it's not like we had a show when this came out in the summertime to promote this with. I think we pressed 250 and we've moved half of them out of my living room. That's small potatoes, but there's people who get on Billboard with 400 album sales. It showed to me that people still believe in physical product. People still believe in supporting music. It gave me a lot of hope in a time that was so shut in and isolated.
Totally. I wonder too, if after the year we've all had, there's going to be more of an upswing of that trend. There's this whole narrative of just rock music not being scalable anymore from a business standpoint.
JS: Yeah. I don't know, I think everything comes in waves. Guitars, and I guess live music in terms of actual band playing, are in a little bit of a lull that will always be there. It's definitely not what it was 20 years ago, 40 years ago. But the pendulum will swing. There's a percentage of the population that just can't live without it and they'll always be there.
There are many of us who need live music, going to shows is part of our DNA. And that piece of the community has been especially hard to nurture this year
RR: There's people I just thought that are like family to us, but we only see them at gigs. It's not we hang out with them socially. That's what I guess you could define or call a scene, right? God bless them.
DS: Listen, there's this band called The Schizophonics from California, and they play fast, wild. They play in a wild way physically and energy-wise, and they play fast rock and roll. They have old school roots. I noticed that the guitar player will jump in the crowd, and he's covered in sweat. He's jumping around the entire time, for the most entertaining show that you could see on that level. And there's all these people gathered around him, he's undulating in the air and playing this guitar.
What I realized is that there's some locked in... There's a forgotten sex appeal, I think, to playing rock instruments. And I realized that you have to really have something special to go all out and connect with people when you're behind any instrument.
Is that level of sweaty intimacy ever going to come back? I wonder if I'm ever going to have a singer smell on me again, I guess.
DS: Are you asking in the sense of because of the global situation right now with the virus, just because of trends or both?
I'm asking because of COVID. Even when people are vaccinated and back at shows, I feel there's either going to be apprehension for a while, or there's going to be this big release. There's going to be 10 months of pent up intimacy just spilling off the stage and into the communal bathrooms.
RR: I'll bet that there is some backlash pendulum swing where certainly some people are going to be making that stuff happen. I don't know that it's going to be right away. There might be a cautious period and then it happens. And I have no idea how widespread it would be. But there's no way that's not going to happen on some scale. It may be even be happening right now, we're just not there. The people need it.
DS: The thing that crossed my mind most during that moment, as far as trends and styles and what's popular now versus what was popular in the ‘60s, ‘70s or’ 80s with guitar rock, is that I know there were young people gathered around this guy. And he was doing “Jenny Jenny,” the Little Richard song. He's doing a rave up of these old school rock songs.
I feel in my heart, they don't know or they don't care what the song is. They don't care about Little Richard, they don't care about Jerry Lee Lewis. That's not what's exciting. What’s exciting is that there's this energy behind this thing and this charge and they can feel that no matter what it is. It's inevitable that it'll swing back in a certain way if you do it right.
RR: I tend to get enthralled with the performance of it, all these bands that we play with, that's some of the most exciting stuff for me when we play shows, getting to see all these other acts.
And then I'll hang around afterwards, talk with you guys to some of those intergenerational people in the crowd. When you're a fan of something, especially when you're young and new to a scene, you find that you don't know everything but you're empowered to want to dig more, dig deeper and feed your head on it a little bit.
That's a good sign it's a good relationship. All relationships that work, the difference is, does the work lift you up and empower you and make you feel stronger for having done it or does it drain you, right?
BT: We follow in the mold of what I call “part-time rock.” We all work full time jobs, and with the way that music industry is going, there's not really going to be any legitimate, monetary payoff for this. This is a labor of love and it's paid in experiences like getting to hang with Chris Wilson from The Flamin’ Groovies after we open up for them, or any of these bands — we always open up for Australian bands. That's very fun.
It's also to a point, big cities exist for a reason, right? People feel they have to move to them if they grew up in Idaho, and they need to go to New York or San Francisco or LA.
But for us we grew up here, there's this great hidden scene under a pile of leaves. And with recording the way it is, we can make a great record, we can press vinyl and we can eventually hit cities if we want to, but it's all on our own terms. That's where at least I'm at in life.
I gave it my all to be a documentary filmmaker. Financially, it didn't really pay out, I would probably make another film again at some point. But music is such a different art form, it's so collaborative, it feels like a family and it's emotional. Every show is emotional and writing songs is fun. There's so much added bonus to the art form that I know I always want to be doing it. And we're doing it for the right reasons — fun and joy.
I know you all have a lot of favorite tracks on the record. I hope you do. But what are the ones that you keep going back to all these months later? What are the ones that when you were playing them when you were recording, the whole love vibe really clicked for you?
RR: Let's go with my first reaction when you were saying that. Even when we were playing the song before we ever were going to record it, I was always a big fan of Dan's song, “Comfort Me.” Even though it's the slowest song that's on the record, even though it's the ballad, that song still sounds great to me even after listening to it a bunch of times, it just gets me amped up.
I don't know if it's just Dan wrote a great song, or something about the way... Chris got it to sound really nice. The drum sounds so clean, and he helped us shape sonically how we wanted it to evolve. We were patient with it.
This isn't a compositionally complex song, either, but the way you guys play together and how well you play together really comes through. How about you, Jeff?
JS: I would say “Shot Down.” It's the only cover on there and it's one we've played for a while. It just came out really good. Everybody shines on it and I just have a good memory of us standing around doing all the handclaps. That was a magic moment.
I'm going to recruit you for my children's album, Jeff, when I need a hand clapper.
JS: You're going to need all of us, we're a package deal.
Dan, how about you? Key track, forced to choose one. Drown your babies in the river.
DS: What?
Forget it.
DS: Throw your baby out with the bathwater you meant to say?
He takes a break to eat salad.
DS: It's actually rice with some sautéed spinach. I've been cooking a lot of peasant meals here. But I would say that I think my favorite track is this song that Rob brought called “Past Tense,” but we just call it “Stay” in the band. I just love that song so much.
Rob came up with the melody and brought it in, Brendan did the lyrics, and I did my best to play it like he had it. Jeff did his thing. I think it's a good representation of all of us coming together and being creative.
Just to try to figure out, how does this thing work? How do we make it just a little bit better or more interesting for us I think just to play, and maybe hopefully for people to listen to and enjoy. But that song in particular really shines because it's groovy.
All right, Brendan, last but not least.
BT: I'm going to piggyback on “Past Tense,” but for different reasons. I think about this often, when we were really coming up with the song, Rob came in with the riff, and then at a certain point when we were all playing it and working it out... I think often we're a band where a lot of us come and we have 60-70% of it figured out. “Past Tense,” I felt it was real and true, we really worked it.
The riff is great, but then we just experimented… so much so that I remember being on drums and then humming the faster part to Rob. “No, no, the guitar line should be like...” That is ridiculous.
I'm sitting at the drums, I should have just said, "Let's swap back, we should play this or whatever." I'm not a very good drummer. It felt like a very “The Band” moment where we were all just in on it as this parts equal the whole and working it out.
I hope that if that was style of construction and the style of the band, that none of you are Robbie Robertson.
BT: Yes, I hope not.
What's next? Is that model for collaboration that worked for “Past Tense” repeatable when you guys get back together and start writing? It sounds when one of you can bring a husk of an idea, or a shell, and you guys can just get into a flow. That seems the golden situation, right?
RR: I think so. I think it's the most fun because Dust Hat was always about everybody having a piece. You know what I mean, contributing to it. I think that is repeatable, what we did on that song. Pretty much all the stuff that we do, whether it's something that Brendan came up with, or Jeff, I think all of us bring in different stems that we then elaborate on to make into tunes. And that's, for me, the most fun.
DS: There's a lot of arguing that goes on around these compositions, but it's constructive. We get pretty into it sometimes if we don't like something. But I think we treat this band, somehow, as a super group who never proved their individual worth. We were all waiting for somebody.
I think about me and Jeff and this song, “Phantom Vibrations.” There was always this middle section that is filled with a wonderful raga that me and Jeff were able to come up with in the studio, which I'm glad that we did. It was one of those things where a band is just in the studio and figures out the bullshit.
Serenity is a myth. Real beauty is often born from constructive conflict. Conflict with positive intentions maybe. And a mutual trust that if someone cares enough about something, to complain about it, there's a good reason for it, I guess.
JS: Exactly, that's how it all works out. And it's never a nice thing like you said, it's criticism with positive intentions. It's always for the best of things and it always works out. And that's been our mode of working.
BT: There was a moment where I told everyone I was going on strike until people brought in ideas. I think at a certain point, the band could have gone away where one or two people brought in ideas and that was it and then everybody lived them out. And that's no way to have a band. You see a talent, you got to bring it out. Everybody here has it and it shines in all different ways.
This interview has been edited for clarity and length.