INSIDE THE WEIRD WORLD OF DARI BAY
Photography by Nate Stritzler.
DARI BAY’s Zack James was raised Windham County, the land that makes up Vermont’s sneakily vibrant South Eastern corner. Outside of this area, Southern Vermont is mostly known for it’s ski resorts, picturesque wilderness, quaint villages, award-winning cheese, and communities grappling with an ongoing opioid epidemic. But over the past few decades, Windham has been able to sustain a small artistic community — partially due to esteemed private high school, The Putney School, and historic liberal arts institution, Marlboro College, pulling creative youths and adolescents into the otherwise overgrown deep Vermont south.
Born into a family of musicians, Zack took to the drums as a toddler, and found himself in the right place at just about the right time. In the mid-2000s, a collective of local artists lead in part by cult Folk-Punk legend, Pat The Bunny, organized small DIY shows in Brattleboro at a studio space co-op dubbed “The Tinderbox”, which put the area on the indie map. Many of the folks who operated, played at, or were in the same general orbit as The Tinderbox went on to find national success — such as Kyle Thomas [King Tuff], Meryl Garbus [Tune-Yards], Matt Johnson [Matt & Kim] and Pat [Johnny Hobo & The Freight Trains and Wingnut Dishwashers Union]. Zack was just a kid during the Tinderbox’s heyday, but he grew up in it’s afterglow, where scene legends Happy Jawbone Family Band, Chris Weisman, Matt Valentine and Ruth Garbus kept the strange musical lifeblood of the Brattleboro pumping.
At the ripe age of 12, Zack and a group of friends began making music and playing in a band called The Snaz. The talented group of teens captivated the entire state of Vermont’s music community with their surprising chops and mature songwriting. The loud buzz behind the band even landed them a slot on Grace Potter’s annual Grand Point North Festival and a trip down to SXSW — even though they were all too young to attend. But after three albums, tons of local shows, and high school graduation ceremonies, The Snaz disbanded.
Now, Zack is living in Burlington, studying English and Computer Science at The University of Vermont, and using his years of experience of playing the drums in a teenage garage band to create something much more avant garde. When he’s not dedicating his time to school, he’s spending his hours as a session-drummer at Burlington’s Leilani Sound, DJ’ing underground techno parties as “DJ Dark Cobra”, and — mainly — writing, recording and fronting his latest musical endeavor, DARI BAY.
Already four releases deep, Zack shows off his penchant for disparate sounds and concepts as DARI BAY. The first two bodies of work, SCIENCE EP and GHOST, are reminiscent of the stoned, fuzzed out slacker punk that put Wavves’ first two home-releases on the national radar. But rather than songs about hanging out on a beach or smoking weed with friends, GHOST draws inspiration from spooky cartoons and Tom Waits’ most industrial sounding material post-Rain Dogs. On DARI GABE, Zack and Gabriel Bernini string together warped pop hooks and whistles with silly lyrics and place them in front of jangly, 60s and 70s-inspired chord progressions. The duo also hammer out a slow, twisted take on The Beach Boys’ classic ‘Kokomo’, which fits as the perfect closer for an unintentionally great record. And on SPLIT [a shared release with ex-OSABA drummer Jonah Siegel], DARI BAY takes a stab at the slowcore revival by conjuring up sounds similar to today’s most popular DIY indie stars, Alex G and Girlpool, while simultaneously tearing out pages from the proverbial book of American Songwriting Motifs with home-spun tracks about riding in cars and falling in love.
Almost as impressive as Zack’s prolificacy, is his ability to traverse genres with each release, and nail the oftentimes absurd ideas and influences that he taps for inspiration. And while sometimes his ideas are a little too scattered and ambitious, his growing interest in the writing approach behind top-tier pop and hip hop hitmakers makes him an exciting prospect that might one day exceed the crowded lo-fi pop bubble. It’s still too early to tell if DARI BAY will be the next Brattleboro artist to make a big leap, but DARI BAY is absolutely an encouraging new example of bizarre, youthful music coming out of Vermont’s lower woodwork — and he has the tools to inspire the next wave of young creators in Brattleboro and possibly beyond.
In the midst of a global pandemic we caught up with Zack over the phone, and sent our photographer friend, Nate Stritzler, out to Brattleboro to explore the scenery and take some pics at a safe distance. They explored some of Zack’s favorite places and we talked about his still young lifetime of music and everything that makes up the weird world of DARI BAY.
hope: You come from a pretty musical family. Can you let me know a bit about your environment growing up?
Zack: My Grandfather was a percussionist who did a lot of improv and kind of interpretive stuff. My Dad was kind of like a rock ‘n’ roll, punk kid who played drums then turned more toward world music and jazz as he grew older. The two of them ran this world music record label together, which also involved importing a lot of foreign percussion instruments from overseas. I grew up around a ton of drums and percussion instruments.
hope: And when did you first start playing music?
Zack: I’ve really been playing drums for like as long as I can say it’s possible, ya know? I would say my whole life, but I don’t know if I was really doing it when I was a baby. I would play with my Grandfather’s band when I was like four or five years old. I don’t know how it sounded to have a toddler on drums but it was really simple stuff.
hope: I mean, if your Grandfather was doing Experimental stuff, I’m sure what you were playing could pass as art.
Zack: That was actually his bluegrass band! It was a bunch of old guys that he would play with at the annual Gallery Walk in Brattleboro.
hope: So you’ve essentially been playing music forever, but most people around Vermont had probably first heard you when you played drums in The Snaz as a teenager. The Snaz received a lot of attention in Vermont because you guys were really good, but also because you were really young. What was it like being in a fairly notable local band as a middle and high school student?
Zack: It felt like a lot more people knew me when I didn’t know them, which was kind of interesting. It still feels kind of that way in Burlington actually, since I was around here back then and people knew of The Snaz up here. It seemed like a lot of the musicians in Burlington already knew my name or something.
hope: Totally. Or as soon as you put “The Snaz” next to your name in conversation, if they’re in the Vermont music scene, they’ll know what you’re talking about.
Zack: Exactly. It’s been super helpful, actually, in getting established up here. I’m very grateful for the head start. But at the time, as a kid, it was just super fun. We were just playing shows in other cities — sometimes on school nights — and luckily all of our parents were very supportive.
But there were times where I was actually very embarrassed of being in the band. In high school some upperclassmen would jokingly call me “Zack from The Snaz”. They were all friends of mine but they’d just sort of poke fun at me about it, ya know? Because of that I sort of felt like it was best for me not to talk about the band that much. I wouldn’t promote at school or talk about the shows that I was playing that week. But then, once a year we’d play a show at my High School and all of the students would show up and go nuts. That was my one time each year where I could be super proud of the project.
hope: Rock shows in a school — that’s so cool! The Snaz played South By Southwest around that time too, right?
Zack: Yeah, it was a really interesting experience because I was way too young to even be there. I remember that we got kicked out of our own show because we were too young. I had a full list of bands that I wanted to see play, but when I got there I realized that I wasn’t going to be able to see any of them. Kind of a bummer. I was like fifteen at the time.
Luckily, we did have other shows that weren’t tied to SXSW in the area, like this one show with Joywave, and I have a bunch of family in Texas that I got to see, so it was a good experience.
hope: It really sucks how the music industry and the alcohol industry are so intrinsically tied together. But it’s cool you were able to play SXSW at that age, regardless. Did you all take being in the band pretty seriously?
Zack: I think the level of seriousness in that band kind of varied among us and fluctuated over the course of our time as a band. But we were more serious than a lot of bands at that age. We tried really hard to get ourselves on the radio and get shows booked, which kind of taught me the hustle of trying to be a local band at a young age. Yet at the same time we had this whole sort of tokenization thing going for us because we were really young kids. That probably made it way easier for us to be booked and get radio play than other bands. I don’t think we really realized this at the time.
Overall it was definitely a fun experience. Being in The Snaz taught us all how to be in a band and have good chemistry. I guess that’s eventually why we broke up... We were all such good friends and we became more worried about the future of our friendship than the future of our band.
hope: And now you’ve been recording and releasing material under the name DARI BAY. That’s your main focus now, right?
Zack: Yeah, I’d like it to be. I’ve been living in Burlington for a bit over a year and I’m pretty cautious of how much time I put into DARI BAY when I’m in school... But it’s definitely my main music project right now, regardless of how much time I’m able to devote to it.
hope: What do you consider DARI BAY? Is it a band? An experiment? A solo project? A hobby? An identity?
Zack: I’ve been thinking about that a lot lately. I guess when we play live I like to bill it as a band. But it’s also a solo project since I write and perform everything, and I don’t really collaborate with anyone in the creation of the music. I don’t know if it is an identity. I don’t think so. I think it’s more of an extension of me…
hope: Where does the name come from?
Zack: It's a person’s name. They’re from San Francisco.
hope: What inspired you to name the project after them?
Zack: I was thinking about people’s names that didn’t necessarily sound like people’s names. A name that could sound normal either as a name or as a name for a band. Something versatile. Like, you could name anything “Dari Bay”.
hope: Tell me a bit about your method of writing and recording material. Do you have any certain philosophies that you abide by?
Zack: There are certain things that I want to keep consistent with all DARI BAY releases and there are things that I need to be different with each release. I’m always messing with different styles of writing but the sonic palette is usually about the same.
With recording, I guess my main philosophy is that I try to capture the energy of when you first come up with something. Something that’s chaotic and has that new spontaneous energy. I take a lot of voice memos on my phone because it’s really hard for me to pick up a guitar and start noodling without coming up with a bunch of other ideas for songs. So I sort of have to record them all as they happen. Then I try to organize it, make it presentable, and then just flip it into a track and make it sound more polished.
hope: That’s cool to know. I had no idea you were using the same sounds from record to record. Each release sounds so different! I guess, lyrically, they’re all pretty different as well…
Yeah, with GHOST I was mostly just trying to write goofy Scooby Doo lyrics.
hope: That’s a funny image to picture. But I guess songs, like “Something in the Water,” are pretty creepy.
Zack: All of those songs are supposed to play like children's horror movies. But there are a couple of things on the record that are based on real predicaments that I’ve had or dreams that I’ve had, but then turning them into jokes.
And with the SPLIT, I was trying to go a little bit deeper into “songwriter” territory. I was attempting to write a love song, a song about where I live, songs about certain real life experiences that I’ve had. “Interstate” for example is a love song, but it’s also just a song about driving.
hope: Ahh an old “Indie Rock” trope.
Zack: I like the idea of writing Rock ‘N’ Roll cliches.
hope: The first release of yours that really grabbed me was DARI GABE, your collaboration with Gabe Bernini [formerly of LuxDeluxe]. It also made me realize that half of your catalogue consists of split EP’s and collaborations. Do you think that collaboration is a defining aspect of DARI BAY?
Zack: I don’t really collaborate with people often at all. I’ll collaborate with someone if I need a sound that I can’t make. I used to have my little brother play lead guitar on some of my stuff but that’s about the extent of it. I try to be as self contained as possible. And as I acquire chops I find that I need other people less.
But, with all of that being said, SPLIT and DARI GABE were just a result of me wanting my music to be associated with people who I think make great music. I am exactly like Drake in this way.
hope: They’re really great songs though! The way that you release your music seems sort of sporadic. Do you have any method to your madness?
Zack: Not necessarily, but at this point I’m making a bunch of stuff that I want to put out as soon as possible — mostly because I’m worried that I won’t be happy with it if I let too much time go by.
I also can’t help but work on a bunch of different projects at once, which is why I haven’t released anything in so long. I haven’t put out anything that I consider to be like, a proper album or a real official body of work. But I’m working on a few different DARI BAY records right now.
hope: So you must just be sitting on a stockpile of new songs now, right? Can you tell us a bit about each of the new records?
Zack: I’m working with flavors of rock music. I’ve got a bunch of songs that are like pure DARI BAY tunes, like a sound that is exactly what I associate the project with. That’s the one that I’ve been working on the longest. Then I’ve got a couple other things in the works, and I’m going for sounds that feel less natural to me. I’ve been pretty into country music lately.
hope: Shit, like Garth Brooks?
Zack: Naw, honestly I don’t know a ton about the genre, but I’ve been listening to real big, current pop country artists. I guess that record is also pretty influenced by early Wilco.
And the last one is being made the same way that I’ve made a few projects before. Like, I record everything all in one day, it’s pretty upbeat stuff. In the end it’ll likely wind up being shorter than the other two records — more like an EP.
hope: What’s your plan or timeline looking like for these?
Zack: I’d like to get them all out this year. I think I’m on track to do that.
hope: Can you tell us a bit about the inspiration behind the new records and DARI BAY as a whole?
Zack: I guess I listened to a lot of Pavement when I first started to develop the sound of DARI BAY. In middle school I was listening to Primus which sort of gave me the idea of making chaotic, dissonant stuff. A lot of my favorite artists are actually from Brattleboro, like Chris Weissman, Zach Phillips, The Lentils, Happy Jawbone Family Band and Ruth Garbus.... But I don’t think I try to really base DARI BAY off any of these artists. It is all pretty conceptual and I keep the range of influences as broad as possible.
But these days I’m more influenced by non-musical things like books, nature, machines...
hope: Can you elaborate a bit?
Zack: When I was recording over last summer I was reading Saul Bellow’s Herzog, and was pretty sucked into the world of that book. I wrote a few songs while I was reading it. I would kind of envision the character of Herzog — this guy who is experiencing a midlife crisis, writes a lot of letters in his head, and has this complicated domestic in-law family situation. He kind of chooses to let himself go off the rails a bit. When I was writing I’d kind of get into that character, put on a trench coat and write lyrics with the book open. Both the book and the protagonist are simultaneously calculated and chaotic.
And with nature I’ve just been really captured by magnitude and perfection. I’ve been hiking a lot and I ride my bike everywhere. Nature feels triumphant and miraculous to me. I’ll try to write chord progressions that replicate that feeling. I try to write lyrics about it as well. Lyrics about natural phenomena. And arrangements that take you somewhere rather than stand still.
hope: And machines?
Zack: I know very little about machines, but it’s the idea of them and partly their aesthetic that inspires me. If I’m looking for inspiration I go on the CAT website and look at all of their huge drills. It feels like a demonstration of man’s ability to manipulate nature in whatever way that we want. Like, we can cut through these incredibly hard types of stone and do whatever we want with raw materials. This is something that I try to replicate with my music. I take just a few basic building blocks and mold them all into whatever I want.
I like to think that it plays into the sound of some of my songs. Like, imagine this huge machine with gears and cogs creating these jarring sounds when it’s in action. It’s these kinds of metal on metal sounds or sounds of different elements of the earth coming together that were some of the original sounds that I sought after with this project and became some of the noises on GHOST.
hope: Yeah, I can see that. GHOST can be pretty harsh and abrasive sounding, but I hadn’t really thought of it as “machine-like” before…
But, aside from DARI BAY, you’ve done a bit of hip-hop production. Can you tell us a bit about -4D-, the album you produced for Actshun? How’d that come together?
Zack: He’s one of my best friends and we went to High School together. I had gotten into making beats a while ago, but it kind of dropped off for me. By the tail end of High School I had gotten back into making beats and made a few for him.
Since then we’ve done a few projects together, and it’s always been a different experience. Some songs we’re in the same room and I’ll make the beat on the spot in front of him and he’ll immediately rap on it, then after an hour or so we’ll have a song. Other times I’ll be at school in Vermont and he’ll be at school in Baltimore and we create the music together from a distance. Sometimes my little brother produces for him as well. It’s just really fun.
hope: Do you have a similar approach to making beats as you do to making music as DARI BAY?
Zack: I don’t see myself as much of a “beatmaker” or even necessarily a “guitar-music” kind of guy, as much as I see an overall music producer. When it comes to the arrangements of the beats I definitely feel like they’re in line with the same philosophies that I follow for DARI BAY.
I like short songs. Songs that are like a snapshot. Songs that might even be slow moving, but always end at a different place than where they started. I do that with DARI BAY as well, try to mess around with time and the listeners perception of it.
hope: Do you foresee your experience as a hip hop producer and your love of hip hop music influencing the sound of DARI BAY more evidently as time goes on?
Zack: I think the things that I love about hip hop music and the things that I would like to apply to DARI BAY aren’t specific sounds that you would hear or recognize as rap music influence. I think I’m more likely to borrow a certain philosophy of making music, a certain workflow or approach to making music that is more common in rap music.
A lot of the stuff I like is being made in a very spontaneous way, with the artist not overthinking what they’re doing, which I love because it captures the whole essence of the environment and headspace they’re in, and their larger idea for the sound. That type of thing is super encouraged in rap music — this stream-of-consciousness style workflow which is very exciting.
hope: Lastly, what’s your vision for DARI BAY as a whole? Where do you want it to go? What do you want it to be?
Zack: I’d like to never stop doing it.
THIS ARTICLE WAS GRACIOUSLY CONTRIBUTED BY:
Carson Ehlert, co-founder of hope all is well and just a guy, in general.