by Dominic Acito (@mycamgrlromance)
Writing music is a way of life for Erica Dunn. She currently fronts the band MOD CON, offers her unique writing and playing talents to Tropical Fuck Storm, quietly strums pensive songs on a nylon string guitar for Palm Springs and even records with the band Harmony on the side. We got to chatting over Zoom on a cold winter evening in Wisconsin (for me) and a hot summer afternoon in Australia for Erica. We talked inspiration, music theory and what’s next for her myriad of different and interesting musical projects.
credit: Jamie Wdziekonski
Dominic Acito: Congratulations on coming out with two, maybe three great records, if you count the collection of older Palm Springs songs that was released in 2021. That must feel pretty good, given the constraints of the year.
Erica Dunn: It's funny it has turned out to be kind of a productive year unexpectedly! I think we were so naive in 2020 about the consequences of the pandemic, about how long it would last, so we already had a plan in place that we had laid out to record and stuff, and I think we just got lucky here for a couple of windows that we could actually see some plans through. It seems weird. I can't really believe they happened! They're the silver linings of the whole year.
Acito: You’re in so many bands that are so great, but they're very different. Do you ever find yourself sitting down with a guitar and just coming up with a riff and being like, well, that's Palm Springs territory or that's a MOD CON song?
Dunn: For the last three releases, it's very clear which thing I've got to get my ass into gear for. But early on in the MOD CON/Palm Springs days, it was a little bit hard to work out which was which. Now I think I've got a pretty clear idea. Generally, the content of the lyrics and which instrument I’m playing helps me get focused on which project I'm working on. Palm Springs is just real slow. I just take a really long time. I'm trying really hard to finish a new album at the moment, and it's just so fucking slow because I'm just on my own. But really, it's the other people in TFS and MOD CON that motivate me. They’re just like, what are you doing? Hurry up. We got this going on. Write some words for this, blah, blah. Let’s get cracking.
Acito: When you're writing with MOD CON, is it something that happens with everybody in the room? You come in with maybe a few riffs and a few ideas because it seems like the guitar and the drums are so in sync that it's kind of difficult to tell which one came first because they're so unique and so intricate.
Dunn: It’s collaborative for sure but normally I'm bringing something to the table. The last record was half written before we had a tour in France and we were able to road test the songs. We had four of those songs written, and that was very organic to see how they worked live. I hadn't finished heaps of the lyrics and I was just yelling, they really developed on the road and changed quite a bit. And then the other songs were a real labor of love at home in lockdown. I wasn't able to see the girls and it was really hard and I was sending them shit and just trying to work on stuff. Then, out of lockdown, it had to come together really quickly at the end. So, yeah, there was like this very much kind of power driven, very much intuitive thing that happened at the end.
Acito: It's kind of a political album lyrically, and it definitely seems like Modern Condition is a commentary on stuff that's going on right now. I specifically wanted to talk about the song “Agadir 1960,” which is about an earthquake in Morocco where it wasn't exactly a severe earthquake, but the destruction was pretty extensive because of a combination of factors like poorly prepared buildings and that sort of thing. I can't help but draw parallels to COVID, which is not exactly the most deadly disease, but the ill preparedness is what makes it so destructive. Was that the parallel you're trying to draw?
Dunn: Yeah, that's pretty much bang on. There's a lot going on in there. I just chose this natural disaster as a kind of fitting backdrop for exactly what you've mentioned. This combination of factors just pulling the rug out on humanity. But also the songs speaks to this frustration with humanity and feeling some gratification when nature just can come along and just swallow us all up and just flatten it out. I mean, it's tongue in cheek, but it's also exorcising of some demons I’ve been feeling. And also in there, some sort of admiration for the Earth's resilience to swamp over some bullshit that we've created. There's a poem, it's actually kind of a short work of prose, by a Swedish guy and his wife, I think Arthur Lundqvist, who were living there in Morocco during the earthquake and documented it. I just stumbled across his book, I was searching around for something weird and I saw this in my friend's bookshelf and I kind of read it in a real snap minute.
He wrote that from being inside the landfill in the earthquake. It's a weird, cool literary thing as well writing from inside a disaster and mapping your observations. I think it was a fun way to sort of mirror how I was feeling at the time, being in lockdown. I don't know if you felt that too, but certainly this swinging pendulum from the macro events of the world that were really unbelievable and the disasters that were just pinging off everywhere and just this unbelievable plethora of crazy combinations that was a perfect storm undoing our lives everywhere. Then, being in this weird little isolated situation box locked down and being completely micro, you know, the way that me and the people that I was living with in that instance were really struggling with day to day; minute kind of survival things. It was this dipping in and out of the really big picture and then into this really personal mundane zone. Both complicated zones!
I felt like that when reading his work kind of spoke to me in that as well. Yeah, so that song, it's got a couple of layers to it, but, essentially it’s probably more aptly described by you, this analogy for what I think was going on and the imagery at that time. There's some fucking really weird BBC footage of the aftermath. It was such a dramatic earthquake, as you mentioned. Like not necessarily so massive on the Richter scale, but just how much it undid. That town was literally flattened and just a heartbreaking eery imagery there. I think all the military were wearing Ray Bans oddly.
Acito: It's a very MOD CON image to me, military personnel wearing Ray Bans in a demolished city.
Dunn: Strange juxtaposition… Of course, like, it's very obvious with the earthquake kind of analogy, but the lack of rhyme or reason of what gets destroyed and what just kind of gets popped up in all the detritus. It's fucking great song to play live, I really enjoy screaming that out.
Acito: It's definitely therapeutic to hear. Do you typically look to poets for inspiration?
Dunn: Yeah. I read a lot. Recently, I’ve been thinking about people writing through covid. I mean, I can't speak for everyone, but I certainly felt like this really strange kind of Echo Chamber going on and it’s been hard to be inspired. There’s been times where I’m feeling like, I don't know what the hell I've got to say about anything! I don’t know how to comment on these scenarios. I was just really overwhelmed as a writer. I feel strange even calling myself a writer. I still kind of have this funny relationship with that, but I try to be productive, and I was trying to get this shit done. I think I read a lot and I kind of went sideways and did a lot of weird sort of journal writing to help with writer's block, but yeah, certainly when you feel like an empty vessel, I remind myself there's never ending waves of incredible literature that you've just got to dig into. I get really excited to find new voices, but also just strange stories or concepts.
Acito: Are there any new voices that you found particularly engaging?
Dunn: For sure. I've just done a double banger of an author I couldn't put down. Her name is Alexis Wright and is an incredible contemporary First Nations author. In the last lockdown my housemate, who is an academic, got roped into teaching an apocalypse literature elective at the University. It was all online for the Physics Department but they needed a cultural anthropologist to help with this elective. I was like, well, that's right up my alley and because we were all in lockdown, we were able to watch the lectures and do the tutorials as well. It's really funny. It's been a long time since I was at school. On one of the reading lists, a lot of the literature and the films and stuff they were kind of giving out to the students were pretty cliche or tropes we'd all already watched but this one book by Alexis Wright stood out called Swan Book and that’s how I was introduced. Then straight away after finishing that, I think I ordered another copy of another book of hers called Carpentaria. And yeah, just kind of couldn't put them down. So that's really exciting. Sometimes you just want to poke your own eyes out because you're like, fuck, this work is so incredible. There's no way I'm ever going to be able to do a life's work like this. It's absolutely kind of jaw dropping the layers and effort and just creativity behind it absolutely blew me away. So that's kind of my most recent, I'm not going to call it my discovery, but this incredible author has just been crushing it for a little while in Australia. It was exciting to read.
Acito: Talking about that, it is interesting to hear a political record from Australia, because I feel like so much about American politics, especially in recent years, is amplified and a lot of American issues have a global reach. Do you feel any pressure when writing lyrics or writing songs to sort of give a voice to Australian political issues and make them understandable to other audiences?
Dunn: Well, when I'm writing, I guess I'm not really thinking about exactly that. But I think it's on my mind sometimes about what story I can tell. What perceptions may or may not be useful. Useful isn’t quite the right word. I'm not really thinking about like, utilitarian songwriting, but I think generally I actually try and keep that critical side away until I've really made a big dint in the writing. Otherwise, I think I would just eat my own tail, you know, like thinking about who's going to be listening and if they can understand it and shit like that. Because I think that might really be paralyzing. In general I am writing just from what I know and from a place of being inspired. I'm sometimes surprised when people say, oh, that song really spoke to me or this some really made sense to me because sometimes I feel my writing is completely batshit! I guess I'm rambling. The short answer is not really haha. I'm not trying to think about making myself understood necessarily, but I guess it's an important agency of songwriting in general. Like certainly, I’ve learned so much about other politics and other perspectives by engaging with artists and music. I think it's more about the story that you can tell and that you can bring to the table that's maybe more what I'm into.
Acito: Yeah, it's just satisfying some of the things that you're singing about. It probably just feels good to shout about them. So, eventually seeing people who have no idea of what the politics of it shouting along too must be kind of a trip to see.
Dunn: Yeah, it's really funny. I often feel that on the road with TFS, there's some deeply, like, quintessentially Australian shit in those songs. And yeah, it's really funny, actually. Sometimes when we are on the road in the States or touring Europe or whatever, (back in the day when we were on tour) it's interesting because I feel like people pick up on, like, I don't know, some universality of some stories even if you don't necessarily understand their jargon. Like, there is some relevant feeling communicated that makes that accessible. I don't know. It's really strange. Like one of the TFS songs everyone always shouts back at us, they’re just hooked into the line, ‘Australia's finest homemade Coke’. It's really weird because it's meaningful to people here of course on the level that drug culture is traditionally sort of bikie regulated, who make drugs in their bathtubs and then sell it on like, but on a deeper level it’s touching on Australia being culturally backwards, anyway, it’s strange that line speaks to people, the weird underdogness of it maybe.
Acito: Yeah. It seems like something that was said sort of in jest, but the way that it's received by audiences is almost like this triumphant sounding.
Dunn: It's an image of Australia being a backwater, but people run with some weird shit.
Acito: Speaking of lyrics, and I don't know if this is intentional or not, but it is quite difficult to find MOD CON lyrics on the Internet. Is that sort of an intentional way to get people to pay closer attention to the audio recordings themselves?
Dunn: Haha, definitely not. I think that's just because basically at the end of the day, all the work behind MOD CON is pretty much me and I just don't know how to do that shit. All the lyrics are in the sleeve of the records- I made sure of that. I feel like I love sharing lyrics. I'm a real nerd and I love getting a record and sitting with it and reading the lyrics. But look, to be honest with you, I think it's just way far down on the list of stuff I've got to do. I think for the songs that we made clips for the lyrics should be up on the YouTube, but I'm not exactly sure about that.
Acito: Yeah. It's an interesting thing, especially sometimes people end up putting it up there on their own. I don't know if you heard about My Bloody Valentine thing recently when they got really mad, someone put up lyrics that they said were insulting.
Dunn: Right. No, I haven't. Well, it'd be funny to see what people try and transcribe from our funny songs.
Acito: I want to talk a bit more about Palm Springs because it's a project that I quite like, if you don't mind talking about it. You talked about being an acoustic guitar player, but am I correct in saying it's a nylon string guitar? Is there a reason you gravitated towards that over like a steel string?
Dunn: Yeah. It's just because that's what I have, and it's a guitar that I really like writing on. Essentially it's that sort of songwriting written on that guitar and in that storytelling headspace. That’s what the basis of the project is, with a host of different collaborators over the last ten years. There was a point where Raquel Solier and I were just Palm Springs; a two piece. We released a couple of seven inches together, and we were living together at that point. She was about to give up drums forever and start focusing on her project called Various Asses, which is still going (it's so good, check that out) but I basically begged her not to sell her drums. I was like, you know, you want to play with me, my fucking shitty country band, whatever. She said yes! She is very generous with her time. Then during the final tape that we recorded is when Sara Retallick sort of put her hand up and said, hey, I wanna play some bass on this if you want.
In that combination we were like, you know, with the three of us, we could really be writing something else. We were kind of energized by a different direction, which is pretty much where the line in the sand got drawn and MOD CON got started, and we were just really revved up by this new sort of combo. Then Palm Springs got really kind of demarcated into another space, and I just went completely the other way. It was really fun and really liberating. So then sort of be able to push both combinations into really kind of opposite sort of direction. MOD CON got pushed one way, and then Palm Springs got pushed in the other and got really pared back. So it was really fun and really scary, too. It's sort of a challenge of the project to be as minimal as possible; there's nothing to hide behind. It's really sort of like a personal challenge. Like, I'm really trying to push my guitar playing in a space that is exciting to me and combinations of just the simplest two elements of guitar and voice. It's just absolutely bare bones.
I think the next record probably will be similar to the Palm Springs and Friends tape and that the approach will be as immediate, and I won't labor over it too long, but I will probably get a few friends coming in and having a couple of other small elements. I think on the last tape there was a little bit of, like, bass, a really small amount of percussion. There's one song with a friend who sings a harmony and that's it. Yeah. I think that's just the parameters that's just kind of what's exciting about it. It's fun to be limited. It's really fun to be have these constraints put on that are a challenge.
Then it's also really fun to have this kind of other project MOD CON being real different. It's got this other energy.
Acito: While you were growing up in Australia, was music education something part of your curriculum where you have music classes?
Dunn: I don’t think that was on offer but I had bits here and there. We had a piano in the house. No one else played it, but I really enjoyed it and so I had a couple of lessons with a piano teacher who was a real textbook dragon. I had a few lessons and it was terrifying. This woman, she was absolutely so scary. I think she really put the fear of God into me about just the rules. She was just one of those classic teachers that can really take the joy out of playing. It really scared me and intimidated me with all these rules. And of course I got really sweaty palms. Like, I'm a nervous person with my Palm Springs, and I used to go there and be a dirty little kid and play her piano, and then she'd just be yelling at me for making the piano dirty and wash my hands and I was just like, fuck. And also, I was really put off by theory notation. All that shit really was a bummer.
In my teenage years I did a music elective and I think I had a few lessons with this guy, this old Greek man who taught guitar lessons at school. But looking back on it, I just never picked up the opportunity to actually learn about music. I was more like a really annoying kid who would make up songs and then try and get someone to listen to them. And this poor old guy, basically I would just get out of class and then go play him my terrible songs and he would just kind of suffer through this awful crap and then he'd be like, but did you do your homework kind of thing? I was like, no. And then he politely kind of put up with it for a little while. I’ve always regretted it, especially now when it's so relevant to me, it would just be such a liberation to have a really good music education. It's just a real bummer to think that I never took that up but the rules were intimidating and I just learnt by doing. Like in the punk bands that I started, and before that, it’s a cringe but I was a chronic emo teen busker.
I would busk and I would take my guitar on the train. I would set up in the city or around the suburbs and do terrible covers and play the local open mic nights and shit and just was so bad. But I just really loved it and really learned by doing and then started a few punk bands in the school, kind of late. But even at that point I think I had really resisted playing guitar technically and I think also it was like a cultural thing, maybe political thing where it was like, you're the girl, you can sing and play the chords kind of thing. I didn't really question it, I was like, well, that's good, cos I don't know how to do that anyway. It took me a little bit of time and especially playing around and opening my eyes a bit more and kind of finding my people and understanding and questioning why have I never fucking learnt lead or done a solo or this or that? There was a really important time where a few kind of boundaries just really collapsed in my early 20s and yeah, I joined this other band and we played heaps and I just got the gumption to put my hat in the ring to play lead and then got some tips from other friends, like older friends who are really good guitar players and then it was something I was really driven to do.
I was like, how the fuck do you do this or whatever? I can remember, like a really good friend in the scene, an absolute shredder and he came round trying to sit there teaching me a pentatonic scale. Haha I don't know, I was useless. I think mostly my musical education was very kinesthetic and just with my surroundings. I was just very lucky to have an absolute dogged perseverance and a real love for music and going to shows and being a kind of punisher and playing a lot, like loving to play and not really minding if it was real bad or we got bad reviews or whatever.
Acito: What's a song that you would busk that you would still play today?
Dunn: Absolutely none of them! I mean, you wouldn't even know them. They're like Australian charts kind of vibe, like fucking Natalie Imbruglia and Bic Runga. Like, maybe they would come out in a bad karaoke set if I was really in trouble, but I was very lucky. My best friend in high school, his uncle was an old kind of rocker, and he played in a band, like a kind of cool punk Australian band called The Moodists, who were around the time of the Triffids and the Bad Seeds, and they were in that kind of scene. His uncle had a bar, and I got a job in that bar. We had a great kind of funny friendship. Another friend of mine and I just started talking about making a covers band. His name was Steve Miller. So naturally the covers band is called the Steve Miller Band. We just punished the punk circuit and would play, like, once a week. Steve was a great guy to play with because he was a wild guitarist and gave no fucks and was also completely unpredictable. He was also just a really amazing person to watch on stage.
He had an incredible attitude about music that rubbed off on me. I don't know. He just had the experience and he was really encouraging and just didn't give a shit about anything. We were terrible sometimes and sometimes we were amazing. It was like a real train wreck kind of show. But we played all the time, and I got my chops up. Baptism of fire blah blah. It was ridiculous. There was two guitars and my friend Phoebe playing drums without any cymbals. We did Tav Falco’s Panther Burns songs, Bo Diddley, JJ Cale, Jesse Mae Hemphill, Shangri Las just whatever we felt like. We did a Steve Miller band cover as well of course. I don't know. We just had this kind of, like, funny rotating. Oh, you like this song? Let's just play this. None of the songs sounded like they're originals. They all are all really messy. But I think the sensibility of his playing really rubbed off on me and just the amount that we played. Finally we were given some really amazing opportunities here. I don't know why, but we also played like some really monster festivals.
Yeah, I don't know. It was real fun until it was not fun and it fucking collapsed because it was so crazy. But yeah, that was a real musical education. I feel lucky that that band existed.
Acito: That sounds like a great experience, in hindsight. It sounds like something where you fly by the seat of your pants.
Dunn: I think we’ve got maybe two things on YouTube that we did clips for even, and we put out a seven inch even of “Who Do You Love?” Really ridiculous. But the clip is funny, I think, for that because while we were recording that clip, we were recording that song, we were actually recording the song like that’s the take! We didn’t have enough money to do more than one… I can’t remember exactly the parameters. So it's just so loose and shit. Just the band didn't know how to do anything. So there were no rules.
Acito: You mentioned the pentatonic scale earlier. Did you kind of just go the other way from a lot of the traditional music theory lessons and scales and stuff and are just kind of guided by your ear? Or do you now kind of have music theory working its way into how you write?
Dunn: Um it really depends. Sometimes I feel like music education is just so in some ways it's essential, and in other ways it's not, which is just stating the obvious. But I feel like there's been points in my life where I've really tried to buckle in and learn things that are relevant to me. I think you get to a point in your own skin where you're bored by what you know, and then things become relevant. That's how it works for me. So, it's really hard to get a foothold in and find where music theory is relevant for me if it’s too abstract. I just don’t have the educational context to put things in place. Things get cemented in my mind when I can put them into use. So that's kind of like I've just been a slow kind of sideways learner. Certainly I don't have that musical kind of background to resist against. I'm just sort of naturally just not doing the right thing! I'm not trying to not do the right thing. I just don't know what I'm doing!
But then sometimes I would try and reach out cos I’ve reached the end of my tether with my skill set. There was a point in one lockdown where I was so fucking bored of every time picking up the guitar and doing the same bunch of things. I contacted a friend who's a music teacher, and I was just like, man, do you want to just speak to me for my own personal sanity? Like, I'll book in a class with you once a week and let's just talk about shit. He kind of brought a few things to the table that I asked him for. I got a couple of other fingerpicking patterns going because I was just bored to death of what I was doing, and was asking for challenges like doing solos in strange timings or whatever. He sent me some fun stuff to do, and that was really awesome. But that was more just like a kick in the pants to sort of try and stop doing the same thing every time I was getting real bored. Combination of being locked down as well, I think. Not playing gigs, not having any other stimulus.
Acito: It's interesting that you say that, because people on sort of the other side of the fence, sometimes regret knowing so much about music theory. I think that's why a lot of people are kind of turning to alternate tunings, because it's like, all right, well, I'll just take what I know and throw it out the window. So I guess it’s a grass always greener thing.
Dunn: Yeah. I'm really happy to just be playing music! It's such a personal journey. I do think it's a very rare person that has a very classic education and hasn't had intuition kind of squeezed out of them. Like, a lot of technically advanced players who've got to really learn and have a very solid foundation of music, as you're saying, get bored or get stifled by it, or kind of find it hard to find their own voice. It's rare to meet someone who's really nailed both. Kind of a free form, kind of feel intuitive, kind of playing by ear sensitivity and also married with having this kind of technical ability. But, I mean, they're out there. The lucky bastards.
Acito: What's next for MOD CON? I know all your albums have the “Mod Con” as the title. Do you think Moderate Conservative will be the title of the next one?
Dunn: Haha I don’t think that’s what it’s gonna be called but yeah, we've talked about it. We've got to do it. We got our number three. It will definitely be a mod con something. We are chipping away at that. At the end of last year and putting out the record was just such a dream. Even recording it, as I said before, it sort of was fucking amazing that it even happened at all. Getting it off the ground here, we were able to have an album launch, which was unheard of, like bands in Melbourne have been waiting two years to fucking launch an album to a live audience. Covid’s been so toxic to live venues here, as I'm sure everywhere, but, like, really venues and places just having the hardest time. Things just shutting down all around us. The town seems very small at the moment, very vulnerable. Things just really falling by the wayside. So when we got to launch the record we just felt a pinch yourself kind of gratitude. We got to launch it, so we had our chops up. We were really excited, we were rehearsing. We're seeing each other. We're like, fucking high five.
Then suddenly just this kind of full blown stop again. We're having this peak wave shit at the moment. So literally everything is on hold. Sara said to me the other day, “oh, fuck, it was good to be a band for a second”. I was like, “Stop it! Too sad!” It feels like the momentum really getting so pulled up and down. After having had a bunch of cancellations over the summer, I think things are looking back. We've still got some really good dates to play and hopefully some dates reschedule. We're just sort of committed, the same as TFS. It's like if things get canceled, we're committed to writing in that time, get in the studio and do something else for better or worse, just keeping each other safe and busy and with some kind of trajectory, which I feel really grateful for, because I think a lot of bands don't have that. A lot of bands are being really blindsided by canceled dates and just giving up and shit. So we feel very positive that we're able to keep going in whatever climate.
I mean, I hope for a long time, but, yeah, it's been pretty fucking rough.
Acito: Well, with things improving, hopefully. Is there any thought of a MOD CON / TFS tour together? Would that ever be? It seems like it would take a lot of energy to do both of those sets.
Dunn: It hasn't actually come up. I feel like that might be crazy, but we are playing a festival in March in Victoria, where I think for the first time, we've both been booked on a Friday night, and I'm going to test it out. Yeah. So twice in a night we'll see what happens, and then I think MOD CON has to drive out and play another festival the next day, so it'll be a good little test. I mean, TFS shows are pretty intense, I think in our last sets we were an hour and twenty minutes really stupid long set haha. I'm not sure if I could just do a double banger every night, but, hey, if it meant that MOD CON could get overseas and play more and do more, I mean, I'd fucking do it.
Acito: I feel like for a set like that, you would need half a gram of Australia's finest homemade.
Dunn: Haha I know how that ends. That tour would last a week.