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from basement life
Dave Doughman is a man on the run. He has no apartment, all of his belongings have been in storage for almost two years and he spends most nights on borrowed couches. You'll find him with few possessions: a cell phone for business, a rental van, a guitar, and most certainly enough pot to make long hours in the car palatable. One could easily mistake him for a self-aggrandizing soul-searcher on the road Kerouac-style, or worse, a fugitive of small town crime. There's talk of the alleged "Philadelphia Incident," which, Doughman claims the feds have forbidden him to discuss. In reality, Doughman is actually none of what the above might conjecture - or maybe he's a little bit of all of it. He's also the leader of Dayton, Ohio's Swearing At Motorists, and quite possibly one of indie rock's hardest working artists.
Doughman started recording and writing songs casually with a four track in 1995 (though he swears his first exposure to the "biz" came when, at age 17, he played keyboards for a few weeks on Dio's summer tour). His self-released cassette caught the attention of some Dayton folks, and Doughman realized that people were taking his songwriting seriously. He teamed up with fellow Daytonian (and ex-Guided By Voices drummer) Don Thrasher. The duo released a few EPs and joined up with the Bloomington-based label Secretly Canadian soon after.
The two played together for the next three years until Thrasher departed suddenly mid-tour to return to his family in Dayton. Doughman was left without a drummer and a gig the next night in Philadelphia. But, as is typical for a "man on the run", you can find luck in all the right places…sometimes. He ran into a Dayton acquaintance at the Philadelphia show, Joseph Siwinski, who offered Doughman a place to crash that night. "There were all these guitars and everything so I asked him if he played the next morning, and he told me was a drummer." Siwinski had previously played drums for the Philadelphia band The Trouble With Sweeney; Doughman offered to pay his flight home if Siwinski would play his next show in Canada.
The two have been playing together ever since, releasing three full-length albums and touring nonstop. The band has now achieved what Doughman says he always strived for: a loose collective of whoever feels like playing the songs that he has crafted. He tours year-round, sometimes without Siwinski, and his schedule easily rivals Bob Dylan's "never ending tour" of the last few years. "Sometimes it's a little harder to get people to give you respect if you're up there solo versus having a drum," Doughman says. "But this gives me a freedom to do whatever I want. Without Joseph I can reinvent each song nightly, and am free to improvise and only worry about one person screwing up."
He approaches his live shows with an enviable amount of intensity and seriousness - it matters less to him how many people are in the audience and more that they have a great time. "It's all worthwhile when you see people smile at the beginning of a song. I work off the energy in the room." With most songs clocking in at under two minutes, the band's live performance bespeaks certain punk rock influences. Doughman's air jumps coupled with his roaring guitar riffs and Siwinki's stand-alone drumming make for an intense and engaging rock show. By contrast, the production on their records makes their sound heavier than their live show, especially with the addition of bass lines and horns, and much vocal over-dubbing.
It seems a no-brainer to assume that most of Doughman's inspirations for writing songs come from his every day experiences, both good and bad. Tracks like Number Seven Uptown's "Flying Pizza" are exemplary of Doughman's ability to evocatively self-reflect without seeming pretentious or trite. The aforementioned track is about seeing an ex girlfriend in town for the first time, and the resulting startling emotions. It's both accessible in terms of common experience and unique in its honesty.
It's been a long time but not too long/ Not long enough I'm thinking to myself / How's your mom? / And are your working the same place/ Your hair got long/ And on and on...
He invariably gets mistaken for being depressed or manic, both because of his song's subject material and his onstage antics, which can range from mellow to the outraged in one swift chord change. He says that his stage presence is a way to help temper the crowd into dealing with the emotional roller coasters of his songs. "I'm not gonna hang myself after the show," he laughs. "Everything isn't always a bummer. But my defense mechanism is humor, because I'm sharing things that some people don't want to hear. By trying to interact with the crowd in a humorous way, I'm serious about this but not too serious."
Doughman is gifted with a distinctive storytelling voice, not unlike Simon Joyner or Leonard Cohen; he can turn the seemingly mundane into the extraordinary by way of simple, yet penetratable, songwriting. Doughman says that his songs appeal to so many people because they can relate to his situation. "Maybe you haven't lived the same storyline, but the main idea and the feeling, the little punching in the heart, you've felt from some other situation," he says. "Everyone can relate to sadness."
The band's latest album, released on Secretly Canadian, is entitled This Flag Signals Goodbye. Doughman says the record was heavily influenced by his touring schedule, which consisted of tireless performing and traveling over the last year. Probably no surprise, considering his songwriting slants towards the immediacy of situations around him - but it provokes a certain irony for Doughman. "My life is a self-perpetuating myth," he sighs. "I write songs about heading north on this interstate, and it's those songs that lead to the fact that I'm then spending the next few months on the road." But he loves his job, and says that being on tour is like a traveling family reunion in every city.
Doughman says he's got a solo tour lined up with Austin, TX's Okkervil River and Western Keys. And while it's likely that Doughman may still be on the run in the next few years, here's hoping it stays legal.
--Alexandra Chassanoff
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