Dogmanjones On His Musical Journey and Latest Singles

Dogmanjones is a dauntless artist whose music knows no genre bounds. He released his latest single, “Bottom Of The Ocean,” on August 8th. Dogmanjones’ songwriting style intertwines heavy bass and intricate guitar lines in every song, often backed by steady drums that create the internal pulse of the song. Each of his songs is slightly tweaked to change the drive and intention for the listener, which creates an everlasting need to listen to his music over and over.

Could you just start by talking a little bit about the beginning of your musical background and what originally inspired this project?

I began making music, I want to say when I was 14. I was just fooling around really, and experimenting. I released my first album in 2019. That was when I was in college and the process of that album was that I had a computer and a little mini keyboard and that was it. That was in a dorm room. And I had landed on something at that time with that album that I felt was kind of unique and experimental in its structure. The songs are sometimes really short and have three or four sections in them that kind of don't relate to one another. It kind of jumps around within the song, and I thought that was something cool at the time. Just an experimental song structure and introducing a lot of humor and kind of random sonic elements within the songs. That project, the music felt new, and it felt funny to me. And that was enough of a reason to sort of release it, I guess.

But then I would say that basically I hit a certain point, and I would say it was around the time of making that first album, which was the headspace that I'd gotten into. I think for the first time in making music, I had experienced fully putting my guard down and having no rules to making music and doing whatever I want. I can also make music and never share it with anybody. And when I figured that out, it drastically changed the way that I went about making music. I think that that's what really got me interested in it, because there is a creative place that you can go, and I imagine you can do this with pretty much any art form, but with music, it’s this idea of like, “okay, I'm going to make something that the intention of it is to just surprise myself and I'm never going to share it with a single person.”

And so, since I'm never going to share it with anybody, that removes the entire external judgment, fear, or whatever. Somebody might not get it or might not like it. Once you remove that from the equation, it's like, “so it's just for me, how weird can I go into this thing?” And I feel like once I figured that out, making music became far more pleasurable and just more interesting. I think that is what has kept me going is that I feel inspired pretty much all the time when I'm alone in my studio now or wherever I am making music, because I know that there's sort of infinite possibilities of where I can go with something. It doesn't have to be with the intention of making a hit or being a famous person or something. It can just be simply about the art. 

For the single “Tuk Tuk,” what was the process like of creating the song? I know you said that it is in a 5/4 time signature, which really inspired you as well, so what about the song made you want it to be the debut release of your most recent singles? 

I made this song, and some of the other ones that I've been putting out, in the fall of 2022. Before that I had been making a lot of music that was really on the computer, and I just wanted to move away from the computer and play instruments. I was also listening to a lot of bands at the time and live music and I was like, “okay, I want to do this.”  

With “Tuk Tuk,” I was just playing guitar, and I played that bass riff and I thought it was cool that it was in 5/4 time. I'm kind of drawn to anything that feels natural, but in an odd time signature, doing something a little different and having it be a little janky. And weirdly 5/4 is something that kind of pops up a lot for me. I don't know why. I produced it and then I got my friend Max to play drums on all of these.

When I was improvising while listening to the track, I kept singing, “somebody's been looking through my keyhole.” And then I was like, maybe the song is about a guy who's kind of sleep deprived, kind of a hermit guy who's a little bit paranoid living alone in an apartment in New York City, which is sort of what was going on with me at the time. Although I wasn't paranoid or sleep deprived, but I was living alone in an apartment. And then I was like, you know what, possibly there are some aliens that are stalking this guy, but he doesn't know. I don’t know if anything specifically inspired that, or if it was just like, “oh I figured that out, I might as well roll with it.”  

The next single was, “Street Sweeper,” and I thought the song was really fun because it felt a little hypnotic and had this bouncy rhythm. Sonically, where did the instrumentals come from and how did you create those for this single? 

That again, started with a bass line. And I think it's interesting that both of those songs started with just playing I think, the simplest thing and then looping it. I think what happens for me is if I have a bass line rather than a guitar chord or something, there's more options vocally that you could put over it. Because it's like, “oh, actually, it's just one note, so what can I sing over this?” Rather than if it was a very specific chord progression, you're a little bit more trapped with the boundaries of what that suggests melodically.

So I started with that, and then the dream beat of that song I thought was really cool, and it was an accident. I was programming drums or maybe I'd had a drum loop and some of it was just falling in places that I didn't intentionally do it, but it was like, “oh, that's really interesting.” And then I got my friend to record the pattern that I had accidentally made. It’s cool, it has a swinging or a bounciness as you were saying. I don't know specifically if there was any sort of intention with it. It all just flowed pretty quickly except that I just wanted all of these tunes to be acoustic guitar, bass, the drums, and that was pretty much it. I just want it to be those components. 

Your latest single, “Bottom of the Ocean,” felt very coming-of-age and nostalgic with the acoustic guitar rhythm throughout the song. Lyrically, where did the inspiration come from specifically for this song? Did you mean to make it sound very hopeful and nostalgic or did it just kind of come out that way? 

I think that feeling is probably from that guitar and the chord progression of that song, and also the choice of it being a little bit more dreamy production-wise. So I feel like that is the thing about it that makes it feel kind of nostalgic and also maybe dreamy or hopeful, I guess. Lyrically, I was playing just those chords on the guitar for a long time and I was always singing “the bottom of the ocean,” just as a line at the end there. And I didn’t know what that meant or what it could be about. I think that song, I wanted it to feel more like music that I really liked from the 90s. It's almost got more of an Oasis thing to it.

I think it was really the feeling that I was kind of reflecting on a relationship I've been in and sort of the mixed emotions of that. When you're out of a relationship, you are excited about things in relation to your independence again. And you're also adjusting to missing the person and sort of feeling like you kind of lost yourself a little bit, which I'm not sure comes across in the lyrics. But that's definitely what I was feeling while I was writing it. But I think it's that interesting combo of you being hopeful and excited about what's going to come, but you're also sad.

I was really interested in the album cover art for the last three singles because each one is a white background with a painting that relates to an object in the song. What inspired that idea to make these three uniform paintings?

I did them. They're all watercolor paintings. I made the “Tuk Tuk” music video, which is a really cool video that I made with my friend Oliver. There is this sci-fi goofy device that we made for the video. And then when I was putting out the song, I didn't really know what the album art should be, but I wanted it to be something simple and not a photo of me, but something that I could make. And then I was like, “oh, maybe I'll just draw or paint this thing.” And then I did that, and I thought it looked cool. For all of the singles, the album art will show people that they're somehow connected. I think they're cool. It's a really simple thing, a little drawing that has something to do with the song itself over a white background. And that was pretty much it. But it was fun to make the little paintings. 

Speaking of your music videos, they have a lot of humor. They're very fun and random, which seems to be a recurring theme throughout the Dogmanjones brand. So why is using humor very important to you in music and your brand?

I think it's authentic to who I am. There's humor in my everyday life. I think it feels phony for me to be somebody who's trying to seem cool or trying to seem serious. And I often find when I see other music videos of people just lip-syncing and looking hot in different areas or whatever, and that's what the video is. First of all, I've seen it a million times at this point. So what was interesting to me was figuring out how I can make a music video like a short film. I like to make comedic stuff and goofy things, so why not make a music video like a little story that has humor in it and random elements. It just felt more authentic to who I am, I think, to make it that way.

Can you give insight into new music that's going to come out?

I've been basically collecting a lot of songs over the past year at this point that are very different from the ones that have come out. But the general cohesive thing about them is that I got really into sampling vinyls and finding some sort of obscure vinyl records. There are a lot of weird records, children's records about exercise and things like that from the 70s. And just taking little snippets of these samples from the vinyls and then crafting unexpected tracks around them that are sort of a hybrid of live stuff and then electronic stuff. I'm interested in blending a sample in an unexpected way to make it feel natural with the track that goes around it. So that's a project that I'm working on. I have eight songs right now currently in the works.

Follow Dogmanjones on Instagram and Spotify. 

Photo Credit: Erica Snyder