Words by David C. Obenour
Cincinnati’s The Dopamines hit hard. Five albums and nearing two decades of going at it, the structure has been set but the songs keep getting tighter and tighter. Bands do that, playing together for long enough you’d hope so, if not just from osmosis – but most impressively is how they’ve maintained a raw edge and intensity.
Personal growth has happened and the lyrics reflects that – which is good too, because some things don’t age well as we do – but 80/20 isn’t dad rock. Just rock made by some dudes who some of which are also dads.
Off Shelf: Acknowledging the weirdness of time during a pandemic, it’s been seven years since the last Dopamines new full length, what’s life been like since then?
Jon Lewis: My life is drastically different since 2017. Without getting into too much detail, I got my mental health squared away, my career squared away, and shed a lot of vices, bad habits, etc. I’m also 40.
Josh Goldman: Life has been busy. I spent a lot of time on tour, I opened a head shop and am in the process of opening another store. Been running the record label and I’ve been trying to raise these damn kids. There have been some changes in The Dopamines as well recently which we are all trying to get used to.
OS: Did the extended time off the road and out of the cycle of practicing and recording change how you thought about being in a band? Make you appreciate anything different than you had on the other side of COVID?
JG: Honestly for The Dopamines and my other bands too, nothing really changed except for basically 18 months of not being able to play shows. I’ve been in the Dopamines for twelve years and in that time we’ve never spent an extensive time on the road. I mean, I was in the band for five or six years already when “Tales of Interest” was released so waiting another seven years for a new record to come out wasn’t out of the ordinary in terms of my experience with The Dopamines. It was kind of par for the course. If anything, COVID gave us an excuse to just take a break and chill as a band until we were ready to get together again. Nobody was bummed out by it, we all needed some time off.
JL: Well, around that time we weren’t practicing anyway unless we had shows coming up. We don’t tour a ton because we have priorities that take more precedence over music in general – families, careers, etc. Also the months leading up to COVID were pretty troubling for a few of us personally and music took a big back seat. Can’t speak for everyone but I had some pretty serious mental health issues that got pretty dangerous late 2019/early 2020. When COVID hit, I was finally starting to come out of whatever meltdown I was going through. Being locked down in my house for a few months actually couldn’t have come at a better time. I was able to dedicate all my energy into getting my head straight, getting everything in my life organized. I kept music locked away during that time because it was a pretty nasty outlet up to that point. Historically I don’t have a very healthy relationship with songwriting. I used music to justify my issues with depression and suicidal ideation. Like it was a necessary evil or whatever.
When everything started to turn in a more positive direction for me mentally, we were still on COVID lockdown. I had all this time on my hands and I was really scared to pick up a pen and a guitar but it turned out to be a very, very positive outlet. It became this exciting exercise instead of an alcohol-fused spiral. I was still able to write about heavy shit but the words and themes about actual trauma and issues in my life didn’t linger after a song was done. I fell in love with it all over again and I’ve been writing a ton even after finishing 80/20.
OS: Was there anything you felt like you wanted to accomplish or tackle with 80/20? Anything that drove this batch of song to get from ideas to finished recorded tracks?
JG: All I knew was that I wanted to dive in and make my contribution to this record. I felt like enough time had passed and I had been in the band long enough to where I felt comfortable contributing creatively to the songs. I took each song, wrote my parts for them with nothing but The Dopamines in mind. I wasn’t writing my own song, we were writing together and I think that comes out really well in 80/20.
I was so scared to contribute any of my own personality to Tales of Interest because I didn’t want to fuck anything up. The Dopamines had been a unit for so long before me that I was terrified I wouldn’t gel. I just wanted to stay in the background. I’ve only listened to that record a handful of times because of that. I was worried that the rest of the guys were not going to like what I wrote.
But on this one I felt I had more freedom to contribute creatively and in the end I am incredibly proud of this record and I am proud to be able to play guitar on these incredible songs that Jon Lewis writes. His brain and songwriting operates in such a different way than I do and it is very exciting to watch how the songs unfold.
JL: I really just wanted to write some fun shit, and have fun while writing it. Wanted to get lost in writing overly complicated lyrics and big song ideas that I have no business attempting. I had ambitious ideas but I didn’t want to get tangled up in it. Being patient, letting songs sit there for days / months / weeks / years until I get blindsided by an idea and then let that excitement take over. Just that process over and over and over for seven years. It was worth it.
OS: How did you decide on recording at Atomic Garden with Chris Dugan for the album?
JG: At the time we were looking at getting someone to record us, we were listening to Swingin’ Utters Fistful of Hollow and Peace and Love and we were all like, “Damn the drums sound so amazing on these records”. We just looked up who had recorded them and it was Chris. So we reached out and he agreed to do it. We weren’t really aware of his accolades until later. I think Atomic Garden was his idea. We needed a studio to work out of and instead of having Chris come to Ohio, we decided to go to California.
JL: Chris had come up a few times actually. Jon Weiner told us he slid into Chris’s DMs in 2022 but didn’t hear back. I was drunk on my couch watching ELO: Live at Wembley and decided to try again. I think Chris happened to be on his phone when the DM came in because he responded pretty much right away. We nerded out hard on ELO and then it just kind of came together from there.
In general, I think we just got behind the idea of “let’s do something different to do something different”. Like Josh said, just really liked a lot of records he did. The idea seemed pretty “pie in the sky” at the time but it came together pretty quick.
OS: Listening back to 80/20, what do you like about the production? How does it sound different from previous Dopamines records to you?
JG: It just sounds amazing. The drums in particular which is what we really wanted. It sounds huge and clean and professional without sounding over produced or fake. It’s totally natural. Working with someone like Chris, you just trust them completely to do their thing. He’s an absolutely professional who’s the best at what he does. We knew it was going to sound great. I think the other records sound great too but this one in particular just has something special about it.
JL: I’m not really picky when it comes to production. I just kind of give myself over to whomever is running the faders and trust that they have our best interests in mind. I enjoy being a passenger with production, just sit and learn and take in someone else’s best practices or tricks that make it unique to them. Sure, I tweaked some gain knobs or had a few moments where I wanted something to sound specific, but 90% is just me having fun being in someone else’s kitchen and learning how they cook. 80/20 sounds like something Chris produced, which is great because that’s why we went to him! It sounds unique to his style and also fits right in with our other records by Matt Drastic and Roger Lima. Had a blast working with Chris.
OS: Knowing to ask about your own evolution might be weird, how about listening to each other? What stood out about each other’s performances on the album?’
JL: Everyone crushed it. This is our fifth record so as far as individual performances go it was business as usual for Jon Michael and Josh. It’s a lot of the little things for me in their performances. Maybe something I would notice that a listener wouldn’t notice. Maybe with Michael it’s a little flourish that was important for him that sounds awesome because it is something he worked hard to do and tweak and get just right, even if it’s only purpose was to ensure the song flowed normally or some shit.
That being said, I should absolutely spotlight Josh’s contributions because he worked on a lot of stuff “offline” so some of what he did on the record was unexpected and awesome. I heard most of it before we hit the studio but it was still fun to hear it layered over all the base tracks.
JG: Nothing seemed different while we were actually recording but listening back my mind gets blown by a lot of the drumming and guitar playing. I know in particular there was a moment in the studio where Jon Weiner looked very scared as he sat there watching what I was doing on guitar. I had caught him by surprise but only because he hadn’t listened to the demos I sent him of my parts.
OS: What’s the cover image of? One of those above ground graveyards? Who took it and what about it stood out to you as the cover?
JG: The cover is a picture of a cemetery in Key West. We had an idea for what we wanted on the cover, we wanted palm trees or some type of beach imagery. We were gonna take one in Alameda where we were staying during the recording but we didn’t. Sometimes as a band we’ve had a lot of trouble making decisions or coming to an agreement in a timely manner so I don’t think anything ever actually got done. I was in Florida and I texted Jon [Lewis] a pic of some palm trees and he just encouraged me to take some more pics and get it done. I found this cemetery and I took a few picture and it just seemed right. Jon added the burning palm tree in the background and it was just so perfect. That really ties it together for me. It’s like this beautiful picture of a warm place but its also a cemetery and on fire. A perfect analogy for this band.
OS: “State of Being” fucking rips and is meant to be shouted along with sweaty audiences. Have you had a chance to play it out much yet? How’s it been live?
JG: Well, unfortunately we probably will never play that one. Jon Weiner wrote it and he quit the band. Its pretty Weiner-centric in terms of he sings it and it’s mostly bass so… yeah.
JL: To piggyback on Josh here, I actually put a few specific songs on the setlist for Jon’s last show with us so I could play them one more time. “Straight Papers” is hands down my favorite song to play live, wanted to make sure I got one more in. Maybe someday we’ll get to play “State of Being”.
OS: Any of the other songs stick out to you as ones you look forward to playing live?
JG: I look forward to playing any of the new ones live. We have been playing “For Heaven’s Sake” but I would also love to play “Tamper-Resistant”, “Save Your Beers” or “The Other Room”
JL: I’m looking forward to everyone else telling us which songs we need to play live. Like a comedian trying out a bunch of new material. The crowd will tell us which songs are slappers and that’s good enough for me.
OS: Lots of punk bands have a tendency to melow over years, or release that gritty acoustic “alt-country” album but you all have kept remarkably visceral over the years. Have you ever toyed with those sort of ideas? Or do you see that antithetical to what you’re doing as a band?
JG: I don’t think we think about it that much. We like playing in a punk band.
JL: Eh, I just kind of sit down with a guitar and write whatever comes. Sometimes it’s slow and sounds twangy with a bunch of open chords, but then I just speed it up and play it with distortion. If I want to do something drastically different, I’ll just give it another name and let it collect dust in a dark corner on Spotify. I feel like there’s enough diversity in what we do that allows it to remain unique from a writing perspective, even within the box of pop punk. Hopefully it sounds that way for people who come across our material.