Dowsing: Ten Years

Emo bands aren’t supposed to last for ten years. The typical trajectory is much more compact, burning out, leaving behind a lone record and maybe an EP. Only years later will the discography become revered and part of the emo cannon. But then there are those that stick around, creating record after record. Dowsing is the defining example of the band that never leaves. When they released Okay, fans even jokingly asked if they had broken up. It was an acknowledgement that many of their contemporaries had already moved on to new projects and laid their bands to rest. Dowsing could now be considered grandfathers, recalling the days when CSTVT and Grown Ups played regularly.

But even when they formed in the fall of 2010, Dowsing was a bit afield from their contemporaries. Frontman Erik Czaja didn’t write “twinkly” parts. His riffs were simple enough that almost anyone could figure them out. Instead of trying to write in odd time signatures, they focused on writing pop songs. What Dowsing brought to the early days of the emo revival was emo pop, hewing closer to a Promise Ring than a Cap’n Jazz. And that goal never really wavered, no matter the lineup changes that would come across four records, an EP, and countless splits.

I had the chance to talk to Czaja about all things Dowsing, from their twee emo beginnings to their eventual turn towards punk last week. Below is an edited and abbreviated version of our conversation.

All I Could Find Is You (2011)

I always thought keep it simple stupid was good way of writing songs. Back then, I was writing alone and the thought of another guitar never really entered my mind usually. I’d use lyrics to help paint the picture. The EP was written before I met up to jam with everybody. We just kind of learned six songs and that was the EP.

I sent out some recordings to labels and got some feedback. I had known Keith from him playing in New Brunswick. I messaged him, “hey I’m in this band I think you know these people in the band.” It would be really cool to work with you. I don’t think he ever responded. We saw Keith Latinen at the “last” Joie De Virve show and he said," I don’t know why you dropped it online. I would have put this out” and I was like, “what? Why didn’t you write back to us?” Anyways, that’s how you get a record deal.

It’s Still Pretty Terrible (2012)

I think we recorded the record about six months after the EP. It was pretty quick. Back then we were recording quickly. And the album is half written in Chicago and half written beforehand. I think it was more subdued than the EP. It wasn’t as lightning in a bottle. I think for the first two records people would say “yeah he’s not yelling as much.” That was always the comment.

All I Could Find is You was basically our demo. It wasn’t thought of to be a proper release for us. For the full length, I wanted to make it a bigger thing. I purposely didn’t want to yell all the time.

It’s Still Pretty Terrible is still pretty raw sounding. I only play my guitar and maybe there’s a distorted version of the same thing under it. It’s more open. I was learning as I went. All my other bands I was playing bass. So I wasn’t necessarily writing the songs most of the time. This was the first band I was playing guitar and singing leads. I was never writing structure for songs. The whole band has been a learning experience for me.

I Don’t Even Care Anymore (2013)

Too many feels. That’s my automatic summary for the record. I was going through it. I think I went way too deep on this one. I have stylistic and lyrical oppositions to some things but its fine. I like it a lot. I think there were choices that were made that weren’t the correct ones. We recorded it really fast also again. Probably six to eight months after the full length. We were writing it and told Keith, “hey we got another full length.” We want to put it out in ten months. We wanted to get it out and he was just like no.

It was not a good idea. We should have sat on it a little longer. We had just gotten Mike Crotty in the band. He had started being in the band when we were writing it. He wasn’t really writing until the next record. He was just trying to learn and fill in whatever he could. He did a good job but he was still trying to find his footing.

Originally I only wanted it to be 8 songs and not ten. Keith told me to make more songs. I think now that it should have been 12 songs instead of ten. I think the split with Annabel should have been on the record. I also think if I could go back, I would have made the yelling louder. There’s yelling on that record but it’s all very low.

When the record came out it was a year and a month after It’s Still Pretty Terrible. We had just gotten back from Europe for the first time. Right after that is when the album came out. Then we asked Marcus and Delia to leave the band. It became this whole thing of trying to restructure the band again. That took a very long time to figure out and have fill ins while trying to tour on a record. That took a toll on everything and influenced the next thing.

Okay (2016)

There are definitely songs about Marcus Nuccio and Delia Hornik. I’m Sorry You’re Great, Born To Soar, and Red Legs Kicking are about them. Those songs are about that whole situation and not feeling great about having to do that.

Then a lot of the other songs are about DIY Chicago crumbling and people not liking each other. It was more of an outsider’s perspective of watching people going at each other. This was as cancel culture was starting. It’s definitely heavily about people in Chicago going at it and picking your sides. It was a wild time. People were very upset with each other. It definitely destroyed everything that was going on. I have not seen it recover to be honest. But I’m also old so I don’t know.

The scene kind of shifted in that time period of 2015–2016. That’s when you saw all these big bands like Into It Over It, The World Is A Beautiful Place transcending and moving on. It was still kind of like the old days where some bands would get bigger and some bands would plateau. But then it kind of got weirder and every band could be the “next level” band. Every band has a manager and a booking agent. Every band is booking small clubs and bars. No one is really playing DIY spots anymore. It stopped being grassroots and I was used to the grassroots.

And Y’all seemed to not play Chicago as much during this time as well

We were touring a lot. We just weren’t playing locally very often. It was kind of weird. We would play Chicago maybe two or three times a year max. And that was definitely a turning point in a weird way. We played like 100 shows that year. They were just at other places.

Anything else you remember from OKAY?

Will Lange joined the band right when Greg Horbal from the World Is started doing a lot of booking. He booked us a tour with Donavan Wolfington. It was our first test of “can we do this band again?” That’s 2014 and its before OKAY is really written or recorded. Then we did what we didn’t do ever before. We can’t just record and put this out. We need to flesh this out. I think we demoed the whole record out as a band and we played the crap out of it. By the time we recorded we were really tight and recorded to tape and it took a week. We crushed it. I thought it sounded really good. It sounded like a punk record.

We decided we wanted to work with someone else. I had built a relationship with Mike Park. I know there were hard feelings between me and Keith. He wanted to do OKAY. It’s good to try new things. This is when people starting saying “I didn’t know they were still a band.”

It’s a very angry record

I wasn’t intentionally trying to make an angry record. It just kind of happened. Based on all the stuff that happened it felt good to get it out. We had to kick our drummer out by the end of the cycle. It’s not like we weren’t practicing what we preached. It was pretty full circle of three years I would say. You rebuild and then it crumbles again. “Do we even do this anymore? Is there a point?” The only person we wanted to work with was Ian whose now in the band. Ian was in another band that broke up for similar reasons. It felt similar to have to go through the same thing we did before but it was easier because we knew this person already. It also helped develop the sound to do something new again.

Sky Coffin (2019)

It’s definitely a different time and a different era. We only played one show in 2019 and it was FEST. We’re just older now. We all have jobs. Before COVID we were going to try to do a Chicago show and some short runs. It just becomes hard because Mike P works for NASA and my job was pretty demanding at the time. Ian is doing festivals in New Orleans. This year we were supposed to do more. We were going to tour off the record. We got offered some tours this year but obviously none of them happened.

A lot of this record is really, really weird. When I was touring a lot, I was a temp essentially where I was working in this office with this older lady. She was well past retirement and she needed someone to help her. She was just the strangest lady. I was her personal assistant, her office manager, and doing everything. We would lay on the floor during business hours for twenty minutes. It was almost like we were in a relationship. She depended on me a lot. A lot of the lyrical stuff that’s going on in the record is pseudo spiritual and talking about these things I would do or learn through her.

Its also about finding yourself not drinking and trying to be a better person. “How can I be better. What can I do?” What I was doing wasn’t working. It’s definitely like trying to figure your shit out and trying to just grow up. That’s what we were doing so it kind of makes sense.

Thank you for reading! I do all of these articles on medium as a labor of love, without any possibility of payment. If you enjoy what you read, feel free to send a few bucks my way via Venmo: Hugo-Reyes-6