| swearing at motorists |
BANDLIVESTUDIOWEBSTORE |
26 feb 2006 - salt lake city - kilby court
from slc weekly
Life Hangover: Last Night Becomes This Morning for Dave Doughman and Swearing at Motorists
Three or four years ago, four people showed up to see Swearing at Motorists at Kilby Court, says lead cusser Dave Doughman. “The person working the door, the person doing the sound and these two girls—it was $6 to get in, but they only had $5 between them. We said, ‘just come in.’”
Playing for small crowds, that’s what an indie-rock band does—but two people plus staff? Doughman and drummer Joseph Siwinski went on and rocked till Kilby’s midnight curfew. The set lasted a whole 20 minutes, but Swearing at Motorists played hard because “if there’s only four people there, and the place holds 49, it’s not their fault the other 45 didn’t show up.”
Yeah, but it’s not exactly chicken soup for the indie-rocker’s soul.
Fast-forward to November 2005. Doughman was in his Berlin flat smoking and playing guitar at 5 a.m. He’d been asked to write some sort of official bio announcing Swearing at Motorists’ fourth album, Last Night Becomes This Morning and was contemplating where to begin. Bios are like those family update letters you get every Christmas but with that special public-relations stench. Doughman has made a name for himself with vivid, confessional songs; bios aren’t his style. So when he put on the record and started writing, what came out was as candid as the songs themselves:
To whom it may concern: This album tells the tales of 10 years and 2 million miles under the radar. Living out of carry-on luggage. Sleeping on floors and couches. Driving ourselves and carrying our own gear. For what? To be in debt? For the glory of 27 paid in Lawrence, Kan.?
Or zero paid in Salt Lake City. It’s the lament of the damned, the pained refrain of the indie-rocker who already knew but only just realized that the spoils of honest music are scanty; there will be Kilby nights. You could tweak a line from The Godfather and say this is the business he has chosen, but that’s not necessarily true.
No, it’s because there is no choice. It’s not what we do, it’s who we are. This is a record of transition. Of confusion. Of understanding (mostly that confusion abounds). It is about a self-perpetuating myth. The lifestyle creates the problems that inspire the art, which enables the lifestyle, ad infinitum.
So Last Night Becomes This Morning finds Doughman contemplating life then-and-now as if the past decade were a party, and he’s suddenly hungover. Except his head isn’t pounding, it’s clear. The clarity process begins at the bottom on track one, “Losing the Battle, Losing the War.”) It proceeds from there through “Time Zones & Area Codes” (“Your life is on the seat in front of you … when this plane lands, there’ll be no screamin’ fans”) and “You Will Not Die Tonight (Probably)” (“Although you’ll wish you could”) up to the final track, “Suicide on the Installment Plan.” Here, Doughman realizes “Your way of life/ Is getting in the way of your life.”
The answer, then, is not to make life more or less than it is. It just is. All you can do is be you. Not a rich, satisfying epiphany (a little chicken-soupy, actually). But it’s enough.
“It’s not the most uplifting record,” says Doughman. “None of them really are. I think that’s why people—and why I—like the songs. Even if it’s not the exact same story line, the feeling you get at the punch line, if you will, everyone’s felt that. It’s just like life is reality. It’s full of crap and then there’s a little hope here and there.”
And the punch line is that, having acknowledged abundant and everlasting confusion and frustration, Doughman will continue to hold out hope. Even as he’s set to return to the forest where the tree fell (read: Kilby Court, Sunday night) and only four people heard it.
“It’ll be different this time, right?”
--Randy Harward
for questions or comments contact: webmaster@swearingatmotorists.com