Hi, everyone! Last week, I got to sit down with Joseph Sutkowski, the guitarist and vocalist from the NYC-based group Dirt Buyer. These guys are another band on LA-based record label Danger Collective, I'd like to thank founder Jai Chebaia for getting me in touch with another amazing band! Before Sutkowski created Dirt Buyer, he and his old pal Ruben Radlauer (drums) had a two piece noise rock group before they expanded to add Emma Stacher (bass/vocals). According to Danger's website, the band has a storied history, and one that I was excited to learn more about! The band released their eponymous debut earlier this year and have dropped a few singles along the way. Even though they're just wrapping up a tour with the renowned Reno rockers Surf Curse, I'm glad I could sit with Joseph and learn about the history of Dirt Buyer.
bazzreviews: Which artists or albums inspired you to start a music career in the first place?
Joseph Sutkowski: I’ve been playing music for as long as I can remember, so there are many bands. Early on, I grew up in a jazz house. My dad played a lot of the Glenn Miller Orchestra and some other big bands of that era. In middle school, I was super into My Chemical Romance. Their albums Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge and The Black Parade were super huge for me. As a songwriter, I really love all the singer-songwriters from the 60s and 90s. People like Nick Drake, Joni Mitchell, Slint, and Elliott Smith are all really important to me. However, out of all these bands, there is one defining moment that stands out to me more than anything. I was in high school, and I was a huge fan of the band Muse. It sounds weird because Dirt Buyer sounds absolutely nothing close that realm of sound, but there was an amazing video I watched of their sold-out show at Wembley Stadium. I remember seeing their frontman, Matt Bellamy walking out on stage with this red suit, and he looked so sick. As he’s moving towards the front of the stage, a robot on wheels comes out and delivers him his guitar. For lack of a better word, it’s the most epic thing ever. A switch flipped in my head from then on. I wanted to have a robot be delivering me my guitar, I wanted to play a sold-out show at Wembley. As I said a second ago, I had been playing music for a long time before this. It was not until I watched that video and realized that I wanted to grow up and be a rockstar.
br: I know you and your drummer had your own band before Dirt Buyer, but what led you to start the new group?
J.S.: Ruben used to be in a band called Model/Actriz and there was a period of time where they weren’t a band. I had graduated from college and did a little bit of moving around, from Boston to New Jersey and back to Boston again, which was when I met Ruben. He didn’t have a band at the time, so we started making music together as a two-piece band. wrote six or seven noise-poppy songs together. I can’t remember when we realized we couldn’t be a duo. If memory serves, it was the time I accidentally wrote the riff for our song “Josephine” and sort of disregarded it. He said we should record it, and we did so on Voice Memos. I took it home with me, put it into Logic Pro and put some bass and vocals on it. We had started compiling a lot of different music together and made this fake record label for Bandcamp and decided to put “Josephine” up on Bandcamp and released it as this lost single from 2012 from this random band. We created fake names and a fake history about a this “band”, and it gave us so many opportunities. We put an album together, had some show opportunities and we decided to add our good friend, Emma, to the band’s lineup. She’s super talented both vocally and on bass, and it’s amazing to see our transformation as a band.
br: What’s the significance behind the band’s name?
J.S.: Dirt Buyer was Ruben’s idea, and we liked it because it sounded like the most generic, East Coast emo band name he could have thought of. There’s not really much more to it. See, Dirt Buyer wasn’t really ever supposed to be a band. It was just a recording project, but we made it into so much more. It was the one that outlived the other projects we had worked on.
br: I’ve heard you guys are known for some cool live shows- would you say that you guys prefer performing in the studio rather than playing live?
J.S.: I don’t really know what to say about this one. I love working in the studio and the process of writing songs, they have always been my favorite parts of making music. Recorded music and live music are like two faces of a coin, they’re that different. You take different angles of songs and make them more suitable for live performances. It’s much more personal and I can convey the things I want to in front of people instead of them making their own assumptions by listening to it through headphones. To me, Dirt Buyer is best known for the live shows we do. I put every ounce of effort I have into each show.
br: Can you describe your process for making songs?
J.S.: For our first album, there were a lot of things that I needed to work through. They were all affecting me at the same time, and I had an insane mental breakdown. All of the songs on that record are more on the emotional side because I was just pouring out things that had been bothering me for years on end. The writing process was very collaborative. It would just be me and Ruben sitting in a rehearsal room for two hours at a time and write as many songs as we could. Once we had an idea that sounded good, we’d record it to voice memos. Like I said earlier, if it stuck, I’d put it into Logic and add whatever else needed to be in there to make it a complete song. What you’re basically hearing on that album is voice memos with some stuff added in post. Since I moved from Boston to New York, Ruben has stayed there and I’ve taken the reins on the creative process. I will sit down in my bedroom to just work in Logic all day. Since he’s moved out to New York, I hope the process will become a little more collaborative down the road.
br: What’s more important to you in the songwriting process- lyricism, or the production value and instrumentation?
J.S.: I first focus on the music. I want to make the song as solid as I think a song is supposed to sound like. After that, I’ll add lyrics and fit them in where I think they sound best. It’s not until we fit all these aspects into the “box” of a song that we’ll start focusing on production value. Every little thing has a lot of love and care, so I wouldn’t say one thing gets more attention than the other.
br: I know you guys released an album in January, but do you have any other projects in the works right now?
J.S.: I have a bunch of demos recorded at the moment and we’ve been incorporating those into our new shows. I think once this tour wraps, Ruben and I are going to go Upstate and write a full-length, mainly just workshopping the s--t I’ve had in my back pocket. I want it to be around ten songs, and I have four that I want to be on there for sure. We want this project to be more sure of itself and stronger than our past stuff.
br: What do you want people reading this to know about your band?
J.S.: We are really desperately trying to get Gerard Way to notice us so that we can form an alliance and then hopefully from there collab.
br: What music goals do you have for the future?
J.S.: I for one can say that we just want to keep being a band and getting better at writing music.
LIGHTNING ROUND
Name one album you find as overrated and one you find as underrated.
Generally, I try to keep an open mind with different types of music, even if they’re not specifically my vibe. I don’t think I could even call any album overrated. If loads of people like something, then there has to be a reason that they like it so much? All the more power to the people that made the thing, it’s not my place to call it overrated. As for an album or EP I guess that I think is overlooked, I accidentally found this band called Rabbit Folk when I was searching for my friend’s band ‘Olivia’ on Spotify. This person, Olivia Wallace from Chicago, came up and I was really enamored with her music. I decided to shoot her an email on Bandcamp and tell her how much I loved it. She got back to me and told me that her new project was called Rabbit Folk and they just put out an EP called Sleeping in the Dark. I’ve listened to it so many times over, and I really wish them the absolute best.
What was the first album you ever bought?
I have this memory of going to either Sam Goody or Hot Topic years ago when System of a Down’s Hypnotize came out and buying that CD. Some earlier System records had parental advisories, and I wasn’t allowed to listen to anything that might negatively influence me. That being said, Hypnotize did not have that, therefore I could march right in there and buy it. It was a crowning achievement in my life as a child, and I still love that album to this day.
Who is your favorite artist on Danger Collective?
Favorite-Dirt Buyer
Least Favorite- Model/Actriz.
If you could perform with one musician, living or dead, who would it be?
Elliott Smith or The Breeders.
Thanks so much again to Joseph for giving me his time for an interview, I had a great time learning about this group's beginnings and current state. Go give these guys a listen, I don't think you'll be disappointed. They've got some really interesting tracks that sound quite polished and professional. In the meantime, I hope you readers enjoyed this, and more awesome stuff is coming your way soon!
To check out Dirt Buyer's music, log on to https://dirtbuyer.bandcamp.com/
Comments