A Conversation With Dogs Downstate: Emerging Voices in the Indie Rock Scene 

Dogs Downstate is a band that originally started as three guys who wanted to play music together. Members Syd Dominick (singer), Owen Lamberto (bass), Noel Teter (drums), Joe Malone (guitar), and Lance Collins (guitar) make up the band. How did they come up with their name? Thanks to playing word association games, the words dogs and downstate were thrown together to make a band title that flows off the tongue. Dogs Downstate gives us the backstory on how this group from Providence, RI came to be. 

What are you doing to improve your skills as individuals and as a group? 

LANCE: For my progression, it’s been fun delving into more bands that everybody else likes and seeing what I can learn from that. I come from an acoustic background. A lot is unorthodox, but my playing has evolved because of all the bands everyone else likes. I end up practicing stuff that’s out of my typical wheelhouse. 

OWEN: For me, I’ve been trying to improve my guitar playing, even though I don’t “play” guitar. Sometimes I’ll sit for an hour and a half and I’ll come up with some ideas. I voice-record them on my phone, and then I come back to them weeks later. Becoming more comfortable on the guitar is something I’ve wanted to strive to get better at with these guys. 

NOEL: I owe a lot of credit to my college years, for helping me develop a vision for what I want to do musically. Owing just as much, if not more, to the experience than the actual education. While I was away in college during my freshman year, Lance, Owen, and I were talking a lot on various online platforms. They got me into a lot of the indie music I’m into today. Also being in college and being a developing musician, you have to play a lot of different kinds of gigs if you want to play consistently, unless you happen to be in a super active scene. Out in Connecticut where I went to school, and back in Rhode Island at home, it can be a little feast-or-famine sometimes. The indie rock stuff is my true passion. I’m in Dogs Downstate, and I’m in another indie rock band out in Connecticut. I also play some cover shows primarily during the summer. I have been playing with the jazz ensemble back at my school. I’ve started to play in some theater pits too. The more types of music I expose myself to, the fresher I am when I come to a different style. Especially when I come back to this, it’s the most natural for me, whereas the theater and jazz stuff are a little newer to me, so that requires practicing under a different context. It helps me to just kind of sit and react to the music rather than trying to split hairs trying to figure out new innovative things to do in every song, which is a little bit of a habit I get into sometimes. 

SYD: I try to do a bunch of weirdo shit in public. It’s so hard to get up on stage and perform the lyrics that I’ve written. But be weird at Market Basket. Anything. On top of that, listening to a ton of different music, mostly a lot of funk to bring the vibes in.

I’ve been listening to a ton of shoegaze as well to familiarize myself a little bit more with the genre. It’s like everyone saying we need all those different pieces to come together and make our own sound. Beyond doing weirdo shit, I’ve been taking vocal lessons. (Everyone cheers and rumbles in the background for Syd.) I’m not gonna lie because everybody in here is like an actual musician and just wanted to come in respecting the craft and the time that everybody’s put in. And to put in my own time when previously in my earlier years, I just didn’t have it and I didn’t believe in myself enough to give myself the chance. So, a lot of self-development and being weird. To have grace as well because the madder I am at myself, the less a song is going to get written or the less heart will be into it. And you know, we end up having a song that’s the band’s favorite. It frustrates the shit out of me. So, you know, I try to approach everything from the best angle I can and then go from there. 

JOE: I mostly try to play some music on my own whenever I can and always listen to new kinds of music to stay inspired. 

NOEL: I would be remiss if I didn’t also mention my family because my parents are both very musically inclined people. They’re the reason I’m into music and have been my whole life. My dad is a guitarist. I still play with him a lot. We have a project back at home where he writes the songs, I write on the drums, and we’ve been recording on our iMac in the basement. I also have subbed in with my dad’s cover band various times throughout the years. And my mom is the reason I’m able to find vocal harmonies because she just picks them up out of thin air. She’s responsible for getting me into a lot of the bands I listen to now. Being exposed to music all the time at home has helped nurture me in that way too. 

How would you describe your sound? 

OWEN: The main sound we are feeling right now is shoegaze, plus we’re bringing some post-punk sounds. Also alternative rock, indie rock, not dream pop, but atmospheric. We have some sections in our songs that are very reverb-heavy and ambient. 

LANCE: We don’t show up and think we have to write this type of song. I think that’s one of the reasons why it’s hard for us. I’ll come in and I’ll do some, I don’t know, sparkly shit on the guitar. Noel will throw in his crazy jazz fills. Joe will do some crazy, reverb-heavy stuff. There are fewer criteria and more of an organic flow. I mean, just speaking for me, if I’m like, I gotta write this type of song, it doesn’t feel like it’s gonna happen. And it’s just a job at that point. Like, I just wanna show up and have fun and play some guitar, you know? That’s kind of where I’m at. 

OWEN: The way I describe it, is that we have so many songs that are either almost written or we have some songs that are completely written, but just need vocals, just because we’ve been playing for years. We have a couple of songs that we haven’t even played with Syd yet that we wanna get finished. Depending on how Syd sings it, it could be a nu-metal song, but I think we wanna stay away from nu-metal. We have so many songs that we wanna throw into our setlist. I wanna make multiple set lists to fit the vibe of whatever venue we go to. We also have some softer songs that we wrote and recorded in New Hampshire. We did that just ourselves. I want to be as diverse as possible, but also as organic as possible. Whatever we write together that feels good and feels like us, is our sound. 

LANCE: We’re all ADHD as fuck if you couldn’t tell. 

OWEN: Yeah, that too. 

NOEL: But as far as our energy, genre, or vibe, Syd has the most punk background of us. So, they bring a lot of that sort of energy into our songs. If you hear some of our faster-paced stuff like “Hollow” or “Struck by Lightning,” you hear a lot of that. They’re able to write a wide variety of our stuff. 

Is there anything else you want to say? Any advice etc… 

OWEN: I wanted to mention that we have an EP. I really want it to be out before summer. Right now it’s in the mastering process, so it is almost done. I’m excited about it. It’s a five-song EP. It has our earliest songs. It’s got a blend. The first song is atmospheric and more traditional, like shoegaze. The second song is more punky, and heavier, and it has an ending breakdown. The third song is like a 90s alt-rock song. The fourth song is like a multi-phase five-minute song. I don’t even know how to categorize it. I named it when I first wrote it, “The Title Fight Song” because the riff is like (the band) Title Fight, but it doesn’t sound like a Title Fight song at all. And the last song is like a mixture of all the songs. Except it’s not punky. And it has a dreamy, poppy bridge. Me and Lance and Noel have been in the band for like two, or three years and we haven’t released anything ever. We only started recording because I was getting tired of sitting around and not really doing anything. We were only practicing once a month. Then I was gonna sing and when it came to the vocals, I was like, I hate this. 

SYD: So… Owen hasn’t practiced at Market Basket… That’s the issue. OWEN: (laughing) I was not going to practice at Market Basket… Anyway, when we originally recorded our first session, I thought that we needed a vocalist. Then we found Syd on Reddit and everything was great. I was on (band networking platform) Vampr and I saw Joe’s profile. I listened to his sample. He has samples in the app. I really liked them. I thought that we didn’t need a second guitarist, but some of the parts I wrote required two guitars. I reached out and I was hoping that he would respond, and he did. I’m so happy that this is the outcome because it sounds really good. Everybody’s awesome in this band. Big NiceStudio in Lincoln, Rhode Island is where we recorded. The band that I was in during the pandemic recorded there because Horse Jumper of Love recorded there. And we’re big Horse Jumper of Love fans. It’s nice and they’re super talented.

NOEL: It’s a cool environment. It’s this 200-year-old mill building. It’s completely worth sweating in the summer and freezing in the winter. OWEN: I wanna play a lot more shows. We’re trying to get our foot into gigs. April 17 is our fourth show as a band, so I’m really excited to start doing that more. NOEL: For musicians who are looking to book shows, you should reach out to ten venues expecting to hear back from one. It can be very tricky to land shows. It’s like applying to jobs, honestly. It takes a good chunk of time, so if you like sitting in a coffee shop on a Saturday morning or afternoon, that’s a good way to knock out the booking. OWEN: And another thing I’ll say for advice is there’s no reason to rush a project if you don’t feel comfortable with the outcome of it. If you feel like you need to put something out and you don’t like how the songs sound, then take the time and make sure that you love those songs because if you don’t love the songs, then there’s no reason you should be putting it out. 

If your band was starring in a TV series, what would your theme song be? NOEL: What Owen was saying about having to drive to get to a lot of our shows, is there would presumably be several driving scenes per episode. A couple of Butcher Brown songs come to mind. They’re a very funk influenced band. “Frontline” and “Espionage” are driving-fast-on-the-highway kind of songs. 

OWEN: I have my answer. It’s called “After School, on the Way to School” by Kinoue64. It’s a Japanese shoegaze band. I just like how it sounds. It sounds like a coming-of-age with a guitar riff. Also like a 90’s alt-rock song. 

LANCE: This is gonna need a little explanation. I’d say Big Mike because I love the communal aspect of this band. It’s very raw, dirty, and human, and I think part of our sound is very homespun- very DIY. 

JOE: I will go with one of our songs. I would probably say “Jot.” (Everyone agrees in unison.) 

SYD: I guess my answer is different from everyone’s. It’s gonna be “My Life” by Billy Joel because I have this vision of us all in turtleneck sweaters looking really stiff. I had a Billy Joel phase in school and now Joe and I are older, we’re getting into our later 20s and just figuring life out. And now making big decisions to be in this band and working together. So I think “My Life” by Billy Joel sells it.