Interview: I Dont Know How But They Found Me (iDKHOW)
Dallon Weekes brings Impending Gloom Tour to Slowdown
Indie pop band I Dont Know How But They Found Me (iDKHOW) is fronted by and is the solo project of Dallon Weekes. Weekes was the bassist and keyboardist for Panic! at the Disco and left that band in 2017. iDKHOW started in 2016 with the first full-length Razzmatazz coming out in 2020. That album was critically acclaimed and a commercial success. The follow-up Gloom Division came out in February of this year, and iDKHOW did a sellout run of shows in the spring. Now back on the road this fall for the Impending Gloom tour, the project will make a stop at Slowdown on Monday, November 25th. Tickets can be secured HERE.
Last month I had a phone conversation with Weekes where we talked about the Gloom Division album, being on the road, influences, and being in the studio with mastermind producer Dave Fridmann.
Omaha Buzz-I was doing some reading about the new album, Gloom Division, and came across a story about the song “Downside” and the relation to Laurie Anderson’s song “O Superman.” Can you talk about that?
Dallon Weekes-I have been a fan of Laurie Anderson as long as I can remember. I remember listening to "O Superman" as a kid and just being fascinated by it. When I originally started demoing out and writing that song, I was basing it off of that sample and a drum sample from a band I love called Phantom Planet. The Phantom Planet boys were more than generous about the drum sample. Laurie Anderson doesn’t ever really allow sample usage. Which is her prerogative. There are no hard feelings of any type since I am such a big fan. So what I did instead is have my wife do a legal version of that sample. Just kind of recreated the texture as best as I could.
Omaha Buzz-And you did catch that vibe. For me that "Gloomtown Rats" song was the one that stuck out to me the most; it kind of had that glammy maybe Bowie meets Prince meets post-punk sound. Can you talk about that song a little bit?
Dallon Weekes-It’s "Gloomtown Rats," and the confusion comes from Boomtown Rats. 80’s brain switches those letters. I think that is how the title came to be in the first place. It was just sort of... when you write songs and you create files on your hard drive, you name them ridiculous things, and so that was always the name for that song idea. I am a big Boomtown Rats fan, so why not? All of the lyrical ideas were sort of born on this ridiculous wordplay that I just randomly named the file when I got started on it. It ended up working out.
Omaha Buzz-You have the song “Satanic Panic,” and I was a hair metal kid in the 80s, so I went through Satanic Panic in real time. Is that song a nod to that?
Dallon Weekes-It absolutely is. Were your parents religious?
Omaha Buzz-No, thankfully they let me keep my Motley Crue records.
Dallon Weekes-I came from a strict Mormon household in the Salt Lake Valley in the 80s, so there was a wide variety of things that were considered satanic when I was a kid. I remember even at eight years old thinking, ‘Really?’ Like Garbage Pail Kids cards, do you remember those?
Omaha Buzz-Oh, I collected them, of course.
Dallon Weekes-I was not allowed to have those because they were satanic. The most far-out there one that I remember was Big League Chew. Which you know is gum, but it comes in a pouch and mimics professional baseball players chewing tobacco. So because of that appearance, Big League Chew was also satanic, and I was not allowed to participate, though I snuck some whenever I got the opportunity. As far as I know, I don’t have my ticket to hell exactly, but I am working on it.
Omaha Buzz-How does the song pertain to that in the lyrics?
Dallon Weekes-It was based on that religious fervor and the televangelist ‘come follow me, come listen to what I am saying.’ It’s not that far removed from the entertainment business and rock n’ roll. The megachurches and evangelicalism. It’s very much show business. It correlates in a weird way, so the lyrics kind of draw comparisons and lines between those two worlds. Rock and roll and evangelical Christianity. When they are up there in their white suits covered in rhinestones, that is Elvis. Not that far removed.
Omaha Buzz-When listening to the albums, I feel like you have to have some very pure pop music influences. I do see that you have mentioned Ben Folds a bit, but who else has inspired you?
Dallon Weekes-A lot of my favorite artists, and maybe it is to my own self-detriment, but my favorite artists are ones that never exactly lived at the top of the charts. In the 90s, when everyone was listening to that post-grunge and nu metal stuff, I was listening to geek rock like Ben Folds Five and Weezer. Their Pinkerton album was a huge influence on me. I loved it from the start. I remember it being one of those records that my friends, who were also Weezer fans, didn’t like. I couldn’t understand it. Like, ‘What are you not hearing?’ This is amazing to me. So things like that. Britpop in the 90s was it for me. I loved Radiohead. And I loved Oasis, but Blur was always my favorite of the outliers of the Britpop scene. I love that stuff. Definitely not cool stuff to be into at the time in the middle of America in the late 90s.
Omaha Buzz-You worked with Dave Fridmann on the Gloom Division album, who was in one of my favorite bands, Mercury Rev, but also has had massive success producing some of the best albums in the last thirty-five years. What was that like?
Dallon Weekes-He has this incredible intuition. Like you go in there and you describe a sound to him, which I have great difficulty doing, but it was almost like he had a built-in interpreter in his brain when it came to synth sounds or drum sounds that you are chasing. He will find it for you. It’s like an intuition that he has. By the time you are done describing the thing you are chasing, he already has it plugged in and ready to go. It’s kind of incredible. I have never really experienced that before. To be at his studio, where a lot of my favorite records have been made, like Flaming Lips “Soft Bulletin" or "Yoshimi," and he would check out for the day and go home with his sons, who are the engineers, and I would just kind of be left to my own devices wandering around the studio at 3 AM playing these instruments lying around. You know, you turn something on or flip a switch, and you are like, "Oh, this is that sound from this record’. So a lot of geeking out.
Omaha Buzz-I don’t know what your first record, Razmatazz, did out in the world, but we had a lot of success with it at the store I work at. So, I have to assume it did well. What was the thought process in following that up, and how did you get to Gloom Division?
Dallon Weekes-Well, I know that there is always... when I got this thing started in the first place, there were no expectations surrounding the project, so I got to do whatever I wanted, and there was no emphasis behind it to make it a hit or anything. I just wanted to make the music that I wanted to make. That was the case with Razzmatazz too, but I came to learn that after that record had the success that it had, everyone was expecting me to make a sequel, to make that same record again. That one did great; do it again. I don’t know if it has to do with pathological demand avoidance or whatever, but I always knew that I was not interested in making the same record twice. So, I made a conscious effort to do a left and turn and step a little further into some of those influences that I talked about earlier from the 90s, like Pinkerton, like Blur, like Yoshimi. I hope people weren’t disappointed or anything, but I made the record I wanted to make, and at the end of it all, that is a win. I consider that a win.
Omaha Buzz-You have had about a half a year since Gloom Division came out and I think one tour under your belt. What has the reaction been to it?
Dallon Weekes-The core fans that we had have been there to support the record, but I don’t think it has brought in any new listeners. And that is kind of a disappointment, because you always want to bring in new people into your audience. The audience we do have has loved it and been supportive of it. As far as checking off that part of the box to bring new people in, I don’t know how much it did in that regard. That is not really a deterrent for me, because I made the record I wanted to make. If you are making art, you have to do it that way. If you are making your art for other people, even if it’s a huge, massive success, you have to like it first; otherwise, you are going to be playing a hit song for the next 30 years that you just hate, and how do you sleep at night doing that? On a pile of money, I guess.
Omaha Buzz-I know that touring has been difficult for many artists in recent years. What is your take on being on the road right now?
Dallon Weekes-It has been difficult for a long while. When Razzmatazz came out, we got hit with Covid and lockdowns, and touring wasn’t a thing. We had to figure out how to promote a record if I can't tour, but luckily that one ended up having legs to stand on even without the touring. Post Covid, we would take, and we still take, measures to keep everyone safe and healthy. Now that everyone is back in action, there is so much to choose from. Everyone is out on the road. You have a whole bunch of different options of bands to go see or tours to go see that are coming through town. So now the challenge becomes, how do I avoid playing in the same vicinity as these giant stadium artists and sell a few t-shirts and keep the lights on?
Omaha Buzz-There has been a lot of transparancy with muscians and mental health in recent years. Have you noticed this and do you think it created a better atmosphere for artists?
Dallon Weekes-I think so. I have been exposed to a monumental amount of empathy that I have never had access to when I was growing up in the 80s and 90s. Things like body shaming and slut shaming. These are things you never heard in the 80s and 90s growing up. And I was never exposed to that sort of thinking or that vocabulary, and until, like, when Twitter started to become a thing, all of a sudden, for the first time in my life, I was being exposed to these different points of view that I never had access to before, and young people today, they get to grow up with this, and I think it is amazing because it exposed them to a kind of empathy that we never had access to before. Like homophobic language was everywhere.
Omaha Buzz-I did it.
Dallon Weekes-And we never thought twice about it. It was just part of the cultural zeitgeist. It was just woven into that. It wasn’t until this new generation of kids came up and pointed this stuff out to us that I thought, if you have an open mind and you are interested in bettering yourself, you listen to them and you reexamine the way you grew up and you go, “Oh, that is messed up, and I should change that.” I never thought about it that way before. There has been a lot of that, and I am very grateful for it. I definitely know what it is like growing up to feel like an other. I have only recently been diagnosed with autism and ADHD, but I have had it my whole life, but I have only learned about this in the last two years. My whole life I have known what it is to feel like you are on the outside. I never really had the language or the knowledge to know what that is, but I know what it feels like. I never want to be someone who makes someone else feel that way, because it is awful. So I am very grateful to be exposed to that kind of empathy from the younger generation of fans that have come along.
Omaha Buzz-You are playing Slowdown at the end of November and you have some Christmas songs in your arsenal. Is there any chance of you performing any of those?
Dallon Weekes-I would love to. I am a sucker for Christmas music in general. I know it is a love-hate thing for people in general, but I am definitely in the love camp. That doesn’t mean I love every song there is.
Omaha Buzz-What can people expect from your live show?
Dallon Weekes-Just shenanigans; some songs will happen for sure. We try not to stick to a script or anything so that every night is a little bit different from the last, as we have to entertain ourselves too.