by Benji Heywood (@benjiheywood)
Close your eyes and pick a place at random on a U.S. map. There’s a good chance that wherever you landed, Dummy has played there. The LA psych-gazers have garnered praise for their fantastic new album, Free Energy, and rightly so. Dummy’s blissed-out noise, ear for melody and penchant for head-bobbing grooves produce seriously enjoyable music, but their status as road monsters flies a bit under the radar.
Few bands in the 2020s have toured as relentlessly as Dummy, including a year in which the band played a staggering 110 shows. We caught up with the foursome before their current run of shows to get their expert advice on the do’s and don’ts of DIY touring as well as the indelible stories that will stick with them for years to come.
This conversation has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
photo credit: Jason Watkins
Post-Trash: Let’s start with the good stuff. What’s the best tour Dummy has been on?
Joe Trainor: Our first EU/UK tour has been the best tour we've done. Between staying in really beautiful hotels and hostels and being fed every night, it's just such a stark contrast to touring in the U.S. Also, the crowds just felt way more excited and open to us and expressed so much gratitude. Really looking forward to going back in a few weeks!
Emma Maatman: That EU/UK tour was everyone’s first time doing a tour abroad, and it was a life-changing experience. I would say no shade to the U.S. but… shade. So many places in the EU are so much more accommodating to musicians on tour because their governments set aside money and have an appreciation for the arts! Something as simple as providing a meal and a place to stay, even if it’s just a room in the basement of a venue is so, so, so greatly appreciated by the artists who come to tour there. Not to mention all the beautiful new places we got to see and people we were able to meet.
PT: Dummy has done a ton of DIY touring. What’s the best thing you’ve learned about booking your own shows?
Joe: I think the most important thing to do is curate an exciting show. Ask around who the cool bands are, or just search Bandcamp tags for the city you're looking at, and just click through until you find something you dig. It's also important to balance who you ask, who will draw, and what excites you. Never depend on promoters to properly promote the gigs, just make a group chat on IG with the bands you're playing with and just keep everyone on top of it.
PT: Best tour life hack?
Joe: Bring Sara Gregory (of the bands Lockslip and Entry) on tour with you. She is a ray of light that helps everything run smoothly.
Alex Ewell: Seek out private lobby bathrooms and/or gym bathrooms at hotels. Frees up the room bathroom for your bandmates and gives you unlimited bathroom time in the morning.
Nathan O’Dell: Take the time to do fun things together. Team morale is definitely an underrated aspect of a happy long term band life.
Emma: I TOTALLY agree with Nate about doing fun things together, but I also think it’s very important to find your own little time to be alone. If it’s getting up early and taking a walk around the hotel, running off into the sunset for five minutes at the remote gas station while everyone else gets their snacks, sleep in the van (underrated!), or even just Alex’s hotel lobby bathroom hack—find a little time to just do you.
PT: How about the best off-day activity on a budget?
Joe: Natural wonders and just stopping for things that look funny/fun/interesting on a whim.
Alex: Always start with good coffee, and walking around, maybe visiting a park!
Nathan: Free museums and spending some time seeking out wild highway spectacles that the U.S. is so famous for. An example being…the Biggest Cow Statue In The World in North Dakota.
Emma: This is probably not a real hack, but… meet a fun, smart, and interesting person at the show the night before who promises to give you a walking tour of the city, get their number, and follow through on it! Nathan and I got an incredible architectural walking tour of Berlin that way from our now good friend, Erik! (Use your best judgment here, obviously!)
PT: How on earth do y’all stay awake on long drives at night?
Joe: Listening to something engaging and having a copilot to chat with that won’t fall asleep on you is key. Also, I think having an end goal, not just the nebulous “driving until you find a hotel” method, helps a lot.
Nathan: To bring up Sara again, she introduced us to this awesome trivia podcast called “Triviality” that lasts about an hour. Greatly engaging and a very fun activity for the whole van to participate in.
PT: Do y’all have a favorite drive?
Joe: The drive from Como, Italy to Baden, Switzerland was an all-timer. Once we left Italy we hit The Alps, and it was raining, and just soul-crushingly beautiful. The lush green, the mountains looming so large… I actually teared up while driving I was so overwhelmed by the beauty.
Alex: Mountainous areas out west, certain stretches of highway in this country have insanely beautiful views.
Nathan: Favorite drive was hardly a drive at all but it was our ferry trips across continents on the 2022 Euro/UK tour. The one that stood out the most was sailing into the Cliffs of Dover from France. Collectively I think none of us had ever traveled by boat by way of music so it just felt so new.
Emma: That UK ferry ride was wild. As an American it’s so funny to drive your car onto or off a boat. As if that ferry ride wasn’t enough of a new and strange experience, it also happened to be the day of Queen Elizabeth’s funeral, and the funeral procession was playing on the TVs. Very weird and surreal.
PT: Alright, we did the “Dos”. Let’s cover a couple of “Don’ts”. One thing you should avoid on tour is…
Joe: Your van breaking down.
Emma: Catching COVID. Let’s just say plainly, that SUCKED. We were (and are) all very careful, masking up and fully vaccinated, but it’s always a risk for bands on tour. We’re seeing and interacting with so many people every night. Just be careful out there and be safe!
Alex: Gas station snacks. Nothing but chips and candy… your energy level will plummet!
PT: What’s one thing a band SHOULDN’T do when booking shows?
Joe: Do not take a-hands off approach. You have to stay on top of bookers and local bands if you want the shows to do well. It's your tour, it's your money on the line, and it's not a cheap thing to do. Make a budget and a plan for keeping everything as streamlined and easy as possible. And saving money wherever you can is KEY. When I was younger, I used to set aside money from every check leading up to a tour, saving tax returns or putting all my change into a jar and doing Coinstar right before I left.
PT: Is there a certain drive bands should try to avoid?
Alex: Avoid driving through Colorado at night, you’ll miss out on some of the most dramatic scenery in the country. Due to our van breaking down, we ended up having to do an overnight drive through like 4 states to make it to a show in Indiana. The highways in Colorado were so twisty, it was impossible to sleep in the back, and we missed out on the views since it was dark outside.
Nathan: Alex hit it on the head with this one. We had to rent two cars to get ourselves from the western side of Colorado all the way to Fort Wayne, Indiana which I think is an 18-hour drive straight through. No time to stop at a hotel or else we wouldn’t have made the show. Taking turns sleeping for a few hours while the other person drove. One for the books for sure.
PT: How do you deal with law enforcement at border crossings?
Joe: I don’t think we've ever had a crap experience yet…. Emma and Sara always get us through with ease.
Emma: It’s true, we use any possible sexism to our advantage. Seriously though, just make sure you drop off your “contraband” at a friend’s house or other sneaky locale before crossing! We’ve thankfully never gotten held up for longer than it takes to check our passports and maybe a peek in the back door. But it’s always better safe than sorry!
PT: Let’s wrap up with your favorite tour story you like to tell when y’all are hanging with other bands:
Joe: Well, the last date of our recent West Coast tour was one for the ages. We showed up at 5:30 for soundcheck to find neither the promoter nor the venue had secured a sound person for the show. Meanwhile, the lighting guy bragged about staying open during COVID and violating public health orders. The rep for the promoter was woefully unaware of how to run a show, and even asked me if “we had already played” at 11:30…. which we hadn't yet because he didn’t once try and help the show run at all. We also basically had to do our own sound because everyone there was a fucked up burnt out never was “punk”. There were tons of American flags everywhere and things celebrating the military and vets. It was just extremely weird and gross.
Emma: There was a particular night on our last tour in the UK. Many of the UK shows involved the dreaded “disco loadout,” meaning the venue booked a show immediately after ours and is rushing us out the moment we’re done playing. One night took the proverbial cake. As I leapt from the stage to go to the merch table, bouncers were already yelling and pushing people outside, starting with the merch line, which was crossing in front of the exit route. Other venue workers immediately began hanging humongous streamers and other decorations across the middle of the room, impeding any sort of quick load-out, while other venue employees continued to help usher us out. Then the loud club music started.
We had gotten our gear to the elevator (did I mention this show was on the 4th floor?) and Nathan got in with it. After about a minute, we realized the elevator was stuck on the way down with our gear and Nathan inside. Meanwhile the club night was beginning all around us, and after maybe half an hour, someone climbed in through the roof of the elevator and got the thing unstuck. Once we got to our van an hour or so behind schedule (we had an extremely stressful travel day ahead having to be in Amsterdam by like 2pm the next day), the promoter apologized by giving us a six-pack of very warm Red Stripe. We may or may not be playing that venue again this next tour, let’s hope the elevator has been serviced!
Alex: Tour’s always a rollercoaster, incredible memories but also challenging moments. But you end up forgetting about the hardships, so in general I feel grateful to even have the opportunity to travel around the country and get up on stage every night. In that context every tour we’ve done has been a huge success.
Joe: I think Alex nailed it. It always feels worse in the moment but when you look back you can often laugh at the absurdity of it, and what we are lucky enough to do.