Doug Dicharry: interview transcript
From our spring 2022 music spotlight on Doug and his band, “Dance Monkey Dance”: accompanying the issue 5 written article.
Interview conducted by Mark N in March, 2022.
transcript and editing by Theresa Hurley.
Written article can be found here.
Doug and Mark
M: I know you play several different instruments, but you chose to go back to school to learn trombone classically?
D: Yes, trombone.
M: That’s fascinating to me, the concept of doing something for a very long time, figuring it out, and then coming back and going “ok now I'm going to classically learn this the ‘right’ way.” Because so many people do it the other way around.
D: Classical learning is going to be critical, it helps you get better. You really start noticing things. This is the most effort I've put forth on an instrument in my entire life.
M: Is “Dance Monkey Dance” just you or do you have other members?
D: From an organizational standpoint, I view my musical life as two entities: one is “Dance Monkey Dance,” and the other is in the classical realm- composing, and being an educator in the school. As for “Dance Monkey Dance,” I would like to have some band members at some point, and I had a couple. A bass player who was doing the shows with me regularly, and I’ve had a few melody guys, and they’re fantastic and I would like to do that more. They just had other things going on. We were just jamming out at first, and it was awesome. Hearing things that I had written sound like ‘real music’, no longer just this goofy guy doing the best he can. It was like a band, it was insanely exciting and warming to my heart. But I wanted to get it a little bit tighter, we just didn’t have the time. This summer I would like to have a lot of band practices with them and have them on my album, which I’m going to do this summer. And get to where we can start doing gigs again.
M: So basically, “Dance Monkey Dance” is just you with a revolving accompaniment?
D: Right. The ongoing joke is that I call it a band. Which is confusing to some people, but the confusion is hilarious to me. For promoters, or someone who might be designing a brand, confusion is probably the last thing you want. You want a defined product so that your consumers can understand what’s happening. But usually, my audience is like “where's the band?” when it’s just me up there with a loop pedal. I'll say things like “hey, we’re going to get the rest of the band up here for this one” before I do a song with a loop pedal, which is basically a recorder. I have people sometimes look around to see where the band is at, it’s just a long running joke. Sometimes I have a hard time remembering something and I might joke and say “we’re having a little band practice” and if people don’t get it, I think that’s hilarious. And it kind of makes it more fun for the people who do get it.
M: When you push the envelope not everyone is going to get it sometimes.
D: Right. Things that are open to interpretation are also exciting for me. A Lot of my song lyrics may be story based for a little bit and then I’ll add a bunch of stuff that’s not true to it, or another line might only be for texture. Tom Waits has a lot of lyrics that are just for texture. He likes to sing about one-eyed people on the wharf because it’s creepy. Or that ‘57 chevy that I just never got to, things like that. Old forgotten things, the antiquities, vintage things, and that’s his texture, and I love that.
M: Is Tom Waits a big inspiration for you?
D: I guess so, I think I discovered him way later than most people. But yes, once I started writing music, he’s definitely influenced that.
M: Who would you say are your biggest musical influences?
D: It really depends on what style I’m going for, the biggest musical influence that I've had is all the different types of people that I’ve played with. Almost every band that I’ve joined, I’ve known nothing about the musical style that they wanted to do beforehand. My first band ever didn’t last very long, and was absorbed by “The Rowskabouts” because we all played horns. We were an eight piece Ska band, and I had never heard of Ska. Then I learned everything about Ska, and that’s all I listened to. The people I grew up with- you were either in a ska band, a punk band, or a metal band. And everyone I knew was in a band. Joplin had at least 12-13 bands that were doing gigs consistently. Then I ended up in a noise band with some guys who were in metal bands at the time.
They were trying to stray from the metal scene and get into noise, and they were listening to “Ravi Shankar and The Residents,” this really strange band from the 60’s that would come on stage in tuxedos and huge eyeball heads. So I got into that noise band and I learned about all this stuff I had never heard of before, and then of course I met Ben Miller when he moved to town.
I knew nothing about blues, bluegrass, or country, and then it just became my thing for a really long time. I still love hearing blues and bluegrass. I’ve also just always had a thing in my heart for Motown, It touches my soul. And recently I’ve been on a Sam Cook kick. Really, my influences are all over the board. I hope that comes out in the music, and I hope that people nowadays don’t want to just hear one thing!
M: How would you describe your music for someone who has never heard it?
D: I tell people it’s under the Americana umbrella. Most of my music is lyric driven, and sometimes I do folk covers. But when I started “Dance Monkey Dance,” I had just left “the Ben Miller Band” and really wanted to write my own music. They were not going to allow me to do that in that band- so I started doing this. I was terrified, first of all that people were going to expect certain things from me. I had only just started learning how to play guitar. I had this imposter syndrome of like “nobody is going to want to hear this crap, this is not good.” And because of that, some of my earlier songs are insanely long, and quite complicated. I would write something then think, “well this is just boring. I better add something.” Now I have a few 10min long songs. Sometimes I look out into the crowd and wonder if they are bored, and then wonder if I should cater to them or just do what I believe I should do.
That's something that you just have to grapple with. It's a dichotomy, you depend on people liking your art, but then, do you change your art to cater to them? And if you do that, do they really like you or do they just like themselves? And I like artists, because that’s what a lot of them are doing and I believe that’s how it should be.
M: Before you were ever in a band, did you have certain artists that really got you interested in music?
D: Growing up I was a band geek, and through school I got some formal training for trombone. At first I was into concert band music. I liked Yanni and Weird Al. My first concert was seeing Yanni in Dallas. Eventually, Nirvana became my break out from “nerd music”. From there I did the whole grunge thing, Nirvana, Pearl Jam, bands like that.
M: So you went from Yanni to Nirvana?
D: Yes, some of Yanni’s stuff is still good!
M: What motivated you to pursue music?
D: I realized growing up that a lot of my motivation was because my parents were proud of me for doing it. I would get good grades and recognition from my teachers, I would get first chair, and 1’s at state. That became my focus and motivation. When I got out of school, and came into the real world, I didn’t find outward motivation. I kind of started reaching out, needing the audience to tell me that I’m good. It became this show of what can I do to rev up the audience? And there’s nothing wrong with that but, I wasn't very concerned with taking a look at my musicality. I wasn’t working to improve myself for the sake of improving myself.
Now that I’ve gone back to school, the only thing I'm focused on is getting better at trombone. I'm playing with these colleagues who are 20yrs younger and a lot of them are insanely better at the trombone. It’s very humbling.
M: What happened to make you realize that you wanted to improve yourself for the sake of improving yourself?
D: My mom and dad stored all of my stuff from childhood, and I was going through these boxes and boxes of trophies. Have you ever really looked at a trophy? As a kid you’re like “I got it!” But have you ever really looked at one? The craftsmanship is crap. No offense to trophy companies- they literally pump out hundreds of these things and put your name on it. It doesn’t have any worth. I realized that is not my worth, and I decided to throw all of them away. That was a huge turning point for me. Now that I've gone back to school and I’m going to become a teacher, I keep being presented with this idea of “Do we take competition out of music?” Because there's this concern of “Am I the best?” and “If i'm not the best, should I be embarrassed to be here?” I do think it’s ok to be evaluated to get better, but competition can create this fear to try new things. And whenever you try new things you’re normally going to suck at it. And to be expected to be at the top just because you were at the top at one point in time, is daunting for a musical education.
M: What are you teaching right now?
D: I’ve taught private lessons for Brass, and I will run sectionals for MSSU. I’m in front of the MSSU concert band right now conducting.
M: Tell me a little bit about your family.
D: I have three kids. I started dating my wife about five years ago. My oldest daughter and I have done a few shows together. My wife and I write songs together.
M: What kind of music do you listen to as a family?
D: Everybody kind of has their own thing- my wife and I both love old country and bluegrass…
M: how many instruments can you play (well enough to use on an album)?
D: I’m definitely not good at all the instruments I’ve dabbled with. I’d say that I can get by with the brass family and percussion.
M: Do you have any goals for “Dance Monkey Dance?”
D: The goal is to not rely on “Dance Monkey Dance” as my sole income- creating some freedom where I can do more practicing, and less shows. To play shows only where I want to. I love all the places that have supported me and booked me, but there are a lot of places that I play that are not music venues and people aren’t always there for the music. As a musician and an artist, I want people to listen to what I have, and either like it or dislike it. I've played a lot of shows where either people are embarrassed to clap or they don’t know to clap. And if you don’t clap for my music, I assume you don’t like it.
M: Do you feel like that is a general assumption for the majority of performing artists?
D: In our culture, when you clap and make that sound it means you’ve recognized that a pleasing sound or performance has happened. And if you go to an orchestra and you finished a piece and nobody clapped, then you did something wrong. I can’t speak for anybody else, but if I finish playing music and nobody claps, it hurts, and I assume you didn’t like it. Sometimes I’ll play a show and call my wife and tell her, “I'm ready to cry, this sucks. I don’t want to do this, why am I doing this?” and she just says “Hang in there. You're going to be teaching soon.” It’s like I leave my family to go do this and it’s something that I love and at the end of the day nobody cares. Then I immediately take it to heart and I’m depressed. Sometimes that’s just how it is.
I want other musicians who are feeling that way to know that they are not alone in that. Or maybe for people who go to concerts and they don’t know that we feel like that sometimes.
M: The whole imposter syndrome is tough, and every artist goes through that for sure. What is something that you would say to the younger you, the one who doesn’t know yet how normal that is- or any of the other lessons you’ve learned since then?
D: I would say “chill out and trust your teachers.” I used to be [stubborn]. If I read something in a book or heard something from a teacher that I disagreed with, I immediately labeled them- “everything you say is wrong.” Now that I'm older, I realize that I'm not going to agree with everything that somebody says, but I may agree with some of the things that they say. So keep your ears open, young Doug. Because there are multiple ways to go about things. Don’t do things because other people are expecting you to do it- nobody is expecting anything of you. Do what you want to do. You’ll be ok and you will figure it out. You’ve got to realize how big the world is and at the exact same time how small the world is.
M: Focusing back on current work: do you feel a shift from being live performance oriented, to being in the studio working on an album?
D: There are lots of ways to approach a music career. Some people hardly ever do gigs, it's a once in a while thing. For me that's the only way I've done it. That's how “the Ben Miller Band” got shows. We just did gigs all the time. I also just love playing with other musicians- I want to get back to more of that again.
M: Do you have stuff available online for people to go listen to?
D: Yes! Unfortunately, there’s a song called “Dance Monkey” by Tones and I, which is really popular- so when you search my name a lot of that will come up. So it helps if you put Dance Monkey Dance! [complete with exclamation point!]
M: What should people expect at a show from you- what’s it like to watch you play?
D: Whenever I present my music, my goal in the past was to impress, it was a lot of me thinking, “Please like me, please see I play a lot of instruments.” That's what it was in “The Ben Miller Band” as well: “oh, he plays a lot of instruments.”
What I'm striving for now with diving into the musicianship and musicality of music, is I want them to say “that song was amazing.” Because of an emotional response. I do like the different timbres and paintbrushes that I have with the multiple instruments, but I don't want to be a gimmick. Something new I just learned from my instructor, is that the goal is not to impress, but to express. I'm trying to think about that now when I start to present my music.
The new goal is not just to play a lot of notes. I'm working towards having some purpose for my music.