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| Everett Dumas by Larry and Leslie Latour
How did you learn to play guitar? I taught myself. I heard my friend's album - Neil Young, and I just had to learn his stuff. I had a guitar. it was an old Gibson, and it was very hard to play. But I learned some basic chords, enough to play, "Hey hey, my my, rock 'n roll will never die." How old were you then? I was 18? 19? It was really sad because my Dad was trying to influence me with music from the day I was born, but he couldn't. I rejected it, just like my kids reject it. It breaks my heart. That's why I try to use "osmosis" on 'em and not say "do this, do this". When I see a musical family with musical kids I think that's the greatest thing. Have you seen the guy that plays guitar at the (American Folk) festival while his young son plays the fiddle? His son steals the show. How would you describe yourself as a musician? I would describe myself as a struggling songwriter, but primarily a performer. I play cover tunes. But you've written a lot of songs, right? I haven't written that many songs really. I'm still learning, still trying to learn how to write songs. But you've written songs though. How would describe the process of writing songs? What process would you go through to write a song, from start to finish, from the minute you think of it to the minute you write it? That's my problem, I hardly ever finish a song. I write pieces of songs. I have songs that I've written from start to finish, but those took me a long time to write. What's "a long time?" Months. I think the problem with me is that I get so wrapped up in the melody that I don't spend time on the lyrics. I just have too much fun writing nice melodies that are catchy. We're connecting this interview to YouTube, and to your song "The Hill." Tell us about that song. That song was inspired by just driving. I was driving with my boys and we passed the landfill that they're filling up in Hampden (Maine). We drove by it on a summer day and it just smelled so bad. So that song is about a real landfill? Oh yeah. It's called Pine Tree landfill. It was so disgusting that we just started to talk about the fact that it was there and I said to my boys, "You watch, you guys, one of these days we're going to be doing some sort of recreation on that hill." Skiing or something? Yeah. Now they're using it to gather the methane for natural gas but down the road if that ever taps out I think they'll probably do some kind of recreational stuff. It's the biggest hill around! Where does music fit into your list of priorities? Music is what I think about the most. It's almost like I do everything else just to get to the time where I can sit down and play. It's not always structured, but I'm always looking for that time, and almost everything that I do, except the time with my children, is to get through that so that I can play music. Like work. I get through eight hours a day so that I can get home to play some music. So (laughs) it's really all I want to do. Do you feel you're always learning? Oh always learning, yeah. I'm always looking for new ways to express music with my guitar. Like learning different styles and different techniques, different shapes, patterns, that kind of stuff. We have a few beginners, musicians who find it hard to go up on the stage and perform. What advice would you have for those performers? Do it again. Do it again. Do it again. Do it again. And get to a point where you really look forward to it. Get to a point where you've done it so much that it's just second nature. I guess what I always tell the kids is no matter what it is that you do, if you practice, practice, practice, and you're prepared, then there are a lot less nerves. It just kicks in, it's automatic. The more you practice the more comfortable you're going to be on stage when you play. What about mistakes? I made a mistake once (laughs). No, if you make a mistake you just keep ploughing ahead. Don't stop, whatever you do, don't stop. I never acknowledge a mistake, because 9 times out of 10 the average person doesn't even notice it. A performer will notice it, but a performer will also notice that you kept going and did it. It doesn't happen to me as often as it used to because I play more, but it happens to everybody. How would you describe the best night you've ever had, musically? I've had several nights that were terrific, but the best (club) night was where all of the requests were songs that I knew and where my guitar sounded good to me. The hardest thing for me to do is to reproduce a live acoustic guitar sound that I'm happy with. Once I get that, I just get into a rhythm. I'm playing for everyone in the room but also I'm playing for myself, because there's nothing like the sound of an acoustic guitar that's amplified well and that sounds good! So what's the worst night you ever had? The worst night I ever had was playing sick at the Elk's club. I had played there a couple of times before and everybody loved my song selection, but on that particular night it was a (tough) crowd and all they wanted to hear was country and western. I just didn't have the songs they wanted to hear, and I wasn't feeling well. I was really happy just to get through that night, but it made me learn some new country tunes. So it spurred you on to get better in that area. Yeah! You didn't go home and say you never wanted to do this again No, I don't do that anymore. I did that in the very early stages when I really had some nerves, like my first performance. It was in front of 250 people, and I bombed. I swore that would never ever do that again, what was I thinking, why in the world did I do this? It was nuts! And then the next night I was back practicing and playing and singing and working on it again! So, you've played at open mikes, and you've played longer gigs at some of the local venues, like the Sea Dog. What would you say the differences are in preparing yourself to perform at these venues, and where are your favorite places to play? The coffeehouse/openmikes are a captive audience and that's the best, when everyone's listening pretty intently, and everyone's sober. In the clubs you tend to be background music. I've had nights at the clubs when everything was clicking, you know, and everyone was into it and there were 20 people on the dance floor, and, that's a good night, that's fun. But more than likely you tend to be background music in a club. When you first walk on the coffeehouse stage, at the Dadgad for instance, the performance will be short. What are you thinking? You're sitting there in the chair and your turn is coming. And you've done this a 100 times, a 1000 times before, so what's going through your mind when your turn is coming? It's funny how that changes over time. It used to be anticipation, but then after a long time it became pure excitement, an excitement level that I'm going to play my heart out, sing my heart out. And I know that they're going to appreciate what I do, and that's satisfying. But I also know that I'm going to give them something, you know? It's going to be good and they're going to like it. I just want to share good music with people. And do you ever get tired of the music? No, not at all. A lot of time when I play I'm not starting until later so I can be physically tired from a typical work day, and I think, "geeze, what I'm I doing! I've got to go to work tonight!" But, once I get my gear packed in my car and I show up, the adreneline gets pumping. Once you start playing you say, "wow, this is it! This is awesome!" So, do you have any practice tips, or performance tips for the performers at the Dadgad? As far practice tips, practice the song all the way through (laughs). Practice it like you're going to perform it. I started out playing these little snippets of songs and I had a really good friend say, "What are you doing?" I'd say, "Well, you get the idea." And she'd say, "No, I want to hear the whole song!" "Like, every verse?!?", "Yeah!." So I started practicing the whole song, and I still do that. If I'm working on a song, I play it all the way through, every time, unless there's a little intro part I want to work on. So, when you practice a song, practice it all the way through, and practice it a lot. Play it a hundred times before you get to Dadgad on Saturday night. Performers at the Dadgad are fascinated with the idea of getting a good recording of themselves. You've done a lot of recording. Can you talk a little bit about what that was all about, for you? Well, it's funny because recording has always been important to me too. When you sing through a PA system for the very first time, you realize that it's not as easy as you thought. You'd think that however you sound in your living room, acoustically, unamplified, singing through a PA is going to be just that much better and louder. But it's completely different. You hear yourself differently. What sounds great to you doesn't always sound great when it comes back recorded. I started trying to record myself with a cassette player and a microphone. I tried all this different stuff, different low budget ways to record, and it was really frustrating. I couldn't get a quality sound, and it was killing me. Eventually I ended up going to a recording studio and shelling out some money to have it done right. But I found that that's slightly frustrating too, because the meter is always running and you quickly run out of money. If you want to make it perfect you have to have some pretty deep pockets. I think the best thing to do is to get yourself some software. You know, you can buy software pretty cheaply. Just for your own sake if you're going to record a professional quality CD that you're going to sell then, yeah, you need to go into the studio and have it done right and invest the time and money. I own a (personal) recording system that I use just to get ideas down. It's quite a learning curve. You want to be a musician, but you quickly find out that you also need to be somewhat of a computer person to get all of this stuff to work. So, sometimes you have to take a pretty funky path to get to where you want to be. I'm now looking forward to having the time to get away from my current recording system because I need something that has more user friendly drums. I think that's the big key that's missing from what I do, being able to build a really good drum pattern. Short of having a real drummer, that is. Being able to put drums where you want it. That's one of the things that frustrates me. I don't think like a drummer. If you listen to really good recordings you hear pauses and drums that come in here, stop, lighten up, back off, then cymbol crash. You hear the drums as a real living, breathing thing through the whole recording. And if you don't think like a drummer you can't make that stuff up yourself. I haven't been able to anyway. So, talk to me a little bit about the musical influences in your life. How have they evolved over the years? I started out just loving the Eagles. That was probably the first group that influenced me so strongly. I think it was the song Hotel California. The Eagles and Elton John. I never had my own collection of stuff, but I had friends who did. So, that's where I picked it up from. It never occurred to me that I might go out and buy some of this stuff to have at home, I just never did. But I listened to Elton John's Yellow Brick Road album a million times with friends. It's one of those albums where every song is good. With the Eagles it was like that too. And then Neil Young. Mostly what I like to perform are singer/songwriter-type songs. I always ended up playing and singing the songs that would highlight someone's vocals, songs that were more solo type material. So all of those songs that I learned for so many years, I started performing them when I started playing out. But they'll put people to sleep if you play too many of those types of songs. So I had to start to learn some different stuff to try to get people's toes tapping. That's what made me start learning some blues. I got Eric Clapton and Stevie Ray Vaughan and stuff like that, that blues type of comping pattern to get people up and moving. If you could go to one concert in your life today, who would you go see? How about top three choices? Because I'd really like to see Elton John. I don't know if he's still got it live, but I bet he does. I'd also love to see the Eagles. And I used to listen to Dire Straits a lot. I listened to them for years. And then, in the 90's I did an about face and got into alternative music. That's when I started to listen to Dave Matthews, Bare Naked Ladies, U2! And I play a lot of that stuff now. And people come up and they'll say, "Wow I really like that. I haven't heard that played live." But I think the general crowd expects classic rock from most of the people that play. Some of the alternative stuff that I do is not so up tempo but has good lyrics. It's a lot of minor chord stuff. I love to play it and I love to sing it. There are some people that absolutely love it and there are some people that don't like it. So it's hard to please everybody. When do you think you suddenly, or not so suddenly, went from anxiety and stage fright to anticipation and excitement? I think once I played in a couple of clubs a couple of times, that made going back to open mikes and coffeehouses easy. It was quieter and I knew I was going to be listened to. Playing in clubs made it like a homecoming going back to play at Dadgad, like going back to play for family. Everytime I played in the clubs I'd run into hecklers and drunks. All in the same night, you run into a drunk guy who thinks you stink, a drunk guy who loves you, a drunk girl who wants to take you home, someone that requests a song that you know, someone who requests a song that you don't know. You keep going through that and it builds your armor. And then to go back to a venue like the open mike or Dagdad, and you know what you're going to play, and you know that there are not going to be any negatives coming at you. It's just supportive and fun. So (making the transition from anxiety and nerves to excitement )is a gradual process. It's not (snaps fingers) a switch. When you play at the Dadgad and you play two songs, and you know you're not going to get heckled, and you know you're not going to get booed, what indication do you have that you really kicked it? It doesn't matter the response you get, it's how you feel about what you did. It's like, "Oh yeah, I hit every note that I wanted to hit, I felt like my guitar playing was solid." But even though you keep moving forward, if you make a mistake you register it. You say, "Ok, that wasn't perfect." It sticks with you if you made a little mistake or if you don't hit a note or if you mess up the lyrics. True satisfaction comes from, I think, all of the practice that you do before. Then when you perform, and it's seemless and professional, that's very satisfying to me. So, it's within yourself! Yeah!! Thank you Everett. We'll see you soon at the Dadgad! |
