5 Questions With: Dot Dash

Terry Banks and Danny Ingram stop by to talk about their latest release, Madman in the Rain

Mar 02, 2023

Image preview — Dot Dash. Photo: Edwina Hay

Good morning!

Today we’re talking with DC-based post punk trio Dot Dash

Dot Dash is D.C. based trio of music scene veterans. Guitarist/vocalist Terry Banks and bassist Hunter Bennett were both previously in the power pop band Julie Ocean, while drummer Danny Ingram has played with multiple bands, including a stint with Swervedriver.

2022’s Madman in the Rain is the band’s 7th album, and it wasted no time locking in its spot on my album of the year list. Madman is chock full of poppy hooks and jangle pop. It’s a record that feels like a field trip back to the college radio/indie music of the late 80s/early 90s, a mix of the styles I tend to gravitate toward.

Over 12 tracks, the band covers everything from garage pop to post-punk to a bit of psychedelia. “Wakeupdreaming” sounds like a Mid-Atlantic take on Psychocandy-era JAMC.

I hear some mid-career Wire (it’s not lost on me that the band shares it’s name with a Wire track), The Jam, and more. And you gotta love anytime a band can work in a reference to Candy-O. The closer “Dead Gone” could just as easily been made by The Housemartins.

As you’ll see below, I also hear a bit of the Go-Betweens and maybe…The Verlaines?

Some of those influences must have been by osmosis, as the band has played with everyone from The Undertones to The B-52s to Urge overkill.

On the track “Space Junk, Satellites,” frontman Terry Banks sings. It’s no different/but it’s not the same. He’s right. Madman In The Rain is standing on a LOT of shoulders here, but they’ve taken that gumbo and made a sound all their own.

They allude to plenty of other bands in the lyrics (the lyrics are riddled with references from Dylan Thomas to Devo), and stylistically both. It’s a sound that’s economical without being spartan. Playful but serious. It’s a style that Bennett refers to as “middle-aged punk.”

On “Trip Over Clouds,” Banks tells us, “It’s a lost art playing Name That Tune,” but Madman in the Rain is a fantastic scavenger hunt looking for traces of other bands. Dot Dash has mastered the art of taking familiar elements and framing them in a new way.

I recently caught up with Banks and Ingram via email. Our chat has been lightly edited for clarity/flow.

The 3 of you are all scene vets, with Terry and Hunter playing in Julie Ocean together. Can you color in a little bit of your background for readers that might not be familiar with your story?

Terry: Our drummer Danny’s musical roots go back the furthest in the band – to the late 70s/early 80s D.C. hardcore scene.

I played in some jangly indiepop bands like The Saturday People, Tree Fort Angst, glo-worm, and St. Christopher… Lots of 7” singles and a few albums.

Hunter and I were in a four-piece band called Julie Ocean. We had one album called Long Gone and Nearly There, released by a Philadelphia label called Transit of Venus.

Dot Dash started playing gigs in the Summer of 2010, and we’ve just kind of kept at it.

Our seventh album, called Madman in the Rain, came out at the end of 2022.

All our stuff has been released by Canadian indie label The Beautiful Music, run by Wally Salem1. We hold him in high esteem!

My initial review of Madman described it as “Fantastic pop from Washington D.C. by way of whatever your favorite British post-punk/new wave of the 70s/80s is.” I hear The Jam, a bit of The Undertones (who you’ve played with), and of course, Wire. Who would you add here?

Terry: For sure, we like all those bands a lot. From my perspective, the big inspirations we draw from are a mix of 60s things; punk & new wave stuff and some 80s indie guitar-pop.

Overall, we’re sort of a ‘power pop’ band, but maybe it’s a kind of an indie/post-punk take on it rather than by-the-numbers power pop.

In talking with
S.W. Lauden
for The Big Takeover, Terry mentioned seeing The Go-Betweens while in England. I read that ahead of our chat, and now I can’t unhear bits and pieces of them on Madman. Is that a band you’d agree informs the record’s sound?

Terry: I definitely liked them a lot at the time. The two records I liked the best by them are Liberty Belle and The Black Diamond Express and Tallulah. I feel like their inspiration comes through most on our new record on songs like "Trip Over Clouds."

I saw a mention of Danny having played in Swervedriver. What era of the band was that in? How hard of a shift is/was it to grow from that to the more power pop sound of Dot Dash? I specifically have “Airwaves” in mind as I’m typing this.

Danny: “I played in Swervedriver for 11 months – from February ’92 until the end of the year. This was the period between Raise and Mezcal Head and consisted primarily of touring the states (twice), Japan, Europe, the UK, and various festivals.

I’ve played in a variety of bands since I first started drumming back in ‘79 – ranging from punk, hardcore, goth, post-punk, mod, and so on. The adjustment isn’t so much between genres of music but learning the tendencies of the primary songwriter (Terry) and the other half of the rhythm section (Hunter). There were some adjustments early on – but in the last few years since we pared down to a three-piece, things flow quite naturally – and “Airwaves” is very representative of our style: jangly, mod/pop/punk influenced with lots of melody/harmony.”

Madman In The Rain has everything from agit-pop to garage-pop to post-punk. Even a bit of psychedelia (at least to my ear). It also sounds like a record that was recorded quickly (in a good way), which it was.

You talked about having tracks for this one more or less ready to go before heading into the studio. Is that the norm for the band, or is it usually a little more drawn out? Specifically, do you normally take a bunch of tracks in and cut the list down, or have you done that beforehand?

Terry: As far as recording goes, we’re pretty focused. For us, ‘experimentation’ happens via songwriting and in the practice room. The studio is for showing up and getting your stuff down. So, when making a record, we just say, “OK, we’re recording these 12 songs” (or 10, or 14, or whatever it is) and go into a studio and do it over 2-3 days. It’s just how it works for us.

To piggyback on that a bit, Geoff Sanoff produced this as well as Proto Retro. He played keys and added quite a bit of that over this record, really changing the sound from some of your earlier albums. Was that something you knew would happen going in, or was it more of a happy accident?

Terry: Geoff added some low-key keyboard parts on a couple of songs on Proto Retro, and they were excellent. But on our new record, he really went for it, adding a lot of great, really dynamic parts. Although it wasn’t really planned, his parts are too thought-out and musically complete to call it a happy accident, either. Whatever the case, we all love what he added.

On the Rockin’ the Suburbs pod, Terry described the title track as almost glammy. Can you expand on that a little bit?

Terry: Maybe I’m deluding myself, but that song (“Madman in the Rain”) and "Triple Rainbow" from Proto Retro feel kind of Bowie-ish to me – just something in the chords and the way the songs flow. They feel sort of torch song-y, with a little glammy bombast hiding under the surface.

What’s next? Back to the studio? Out on the road? What’s 2023 look like for you?

Terry: Over the last year or so, we’ve been playing a bunch of shows, just in the D.C. area, but it’s been fun. We have a couple of new songs we’re doing live that are sounding good and pretty rocking.

Beyond that, who knows?

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5 Questions

1. Describe your music style

Danny: Indiepunkjanglemodpopasauras

Hunter: Middle-aged punk

Terry: Post-punk pop

2. What music played in your house(s) growing up?

Danny: Beatles, Jackson 5, James Brown, jazz and classical

Hunter: The Beatles, the Kingston Trio, 1970s soft rock.

Terry: Herb Alpert, Burt Bacharach, Walter Wanderley.

3. What are you listening to these days?

Danny: According to Spotify… Poster Children, Death Grips, and Swansea Sound

Hunter: Drugdealer; Sheer Mag; Allo, Darlin’; The Wonderland Murders podcast

Terry: New faves include The Reds, Pinks & Purples, Bad Moves, and Fur.

4. What are your 5 Desert Island Discs?

Danny: Television, Marquee Moon; Miles Davis, ‘Round about Midnight; Punishment of Luxury, Laughing Academy; Swervedriver, 99th Dream; Fugazi, End Hits

Hunter: Love, Forever Changes; Embrace, self-titled LP (DC not UK); Billy Bragg , albums 3, 4, 6, or 7, depending on the day; The Jam, All Mod Cons; Warren Zevon, Life’ll Kill Ya

Terry: The Clash, London Calling; The Byrds, Mister Tambourine Man; The Undertones, Positive Touch; The Velvet Underground, Live at Max’s Kansas City; Orange Juice, The Glasgow School

5. If you could collaborate with any artist/band, who would it be?

Danny: As an individual? I’d love to collaborate with Killing Joke. Love the drummers through the years. As a band, I’d love to work with Lester Square on lead guitar.

Hunter: Dr. Dre, or to have been the bass player in The Fall.

Terry: Tracey Thorn

Dot Dash- Madman in the Rain, 2022

(Click the record to listen on your platform of choice)

To connect with the band and buy their music, please go to the following:

Bandcamp | The Beautiful Music | Twitter | Facebook | Spotify

On Repeat Records

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