E.137: Isaac Dummer | Musician

Amy Gabay 00:00
Get on living safely campaign is sponsoring this podcast to remind you to keep your spending in the community. supporting local businesses keeps food on the table for our friends and neighbors, follow them on social media and learn more at get on living safely.com On this episode, we talked with musician Isaac Dummer, describing himself as a modern untapped folk singer. We chat songwriting, recording a new album and what’s coming up for this local musicians. You can find more conversations on our website, lacrosselocal.com. I’m Amy. And I’m Brent. And this is La Crosse Local.

Isaac Dummer 00:59
My name is Isaac Dummer. I was born in Holmen, Wisconsin, on a 900 acre farm with four older brothers. I got into the music from being in my great aunt and uncle’s farmhouse and I found this old acoustic guitar. And I just drew to it like a toy. I wanted to beat the crap out of that thing. Ever since starting from there, really young, from toys to what eventually, first became an Alvarez guitar that I ended up losing in Hawaii. Right after writing Peace, Love, Unity and Respect with it.

Brent Hanifl 01:34
Wild. So you know, just looking at your little catalog you have and also on Facebook, on social media playing around town, you reference yourself as a modern untapped folk singer. What does that actually mean?

Isaac Dummer 01:47
I have no idea that, it was given to me.

Brent Hanifl 01:50
Oh, really? Nice.

Isaac Dummer 01:51
Yeah. And untapped? Essentially, I always took it as just a straight from the source, you know, not not a whole lot of thought really given into what the aesthetic has to be just whatever I originally come up with.

Brent Hanifl 02:11
You kind of reference it there, but what is your process? Like when writing music? Is it something that happens, you know, organically quickly? Or is it something that you kind of take your time with

Isaac Dummer 02:21
My songwriting, I have, I’ve had songs that have taken me five years to finish that I just, like, I’ll work on other pieces, I have a recycling bin, all my unfinished thoughts and stuff I just jot into there. I actually write all my music on my phone. And now I have a computer that I do that too with. A lot of the songwriting process starts with what I want the purpose of the song to be about, what do I want the listener to feel? learn? Be about after hearing it?

Brent Hanifl 02:54
Do you have a new, would you call it an album or where you kind of have a EP or a number of songs coming out soon?

Isaac Dummer 02:59
Yeah, it’s an EP, and we’re going to have around a nine track album to add to it. These three really rods tracks here are going to have additional layers added to them, as far as I know. Current state and and they’re going to have this album version, essentially, with extra layers and see what we can do with it.

Brent Hanifl 03:24
When you’re creating an album like this, you know, you kind of start out with these kind of three pieces. What is it like trying to create this during COVID?

Isaac Dummer 03:32
It halted us immediately. This EP thing was never a part of the plan. And it actually ended up being our retreat of saying look, like we’ve been in the makes of this for so long. We are eager to reach the public. I want to, you know, stab my flag into the ground and say I am here I’m Isaac Dummer, so let’s do an EP. I love the raw sound of what we just had in the studio too, as much as I also loved the layers that we had access to. My sound engineer, which is also my uncle, Vinny Milavolti, and Access Recording Studios, he actually ended up contracting COVID. So there is some footage of me being six feet behind him on my own laptop, and just watching his cursor fly around and communicating like that. But that only happened once. And that was just finished trimming up where we had the EP listening to it, vibing out and we said all right, let’s drop this.

Brent Hanifl 04:37
What was the impetus for the songs? Like the lyrics, the reasoning for it? Was there any particular stories for each one?

Isaac Dummer 04:43
Oh, man, Peace, Love, Dignity, and Respect. I wrote that song in Hawaii actually, just after kicking some campers out of our little fire circle as their substance has got it. gotten them a little rowdy. Thinking about like, these guys, and they did ended up being friendly and friends the next day and sharing food together and going on adventures, but things are getting out of hand and the y’re yelling at each other. The complete bad part of the story, one of them actually died of overdose but um, I was just really just like in this desperate time Believe it or not, I was just like, geez, like, what do we need? What are we? What’s the? What’s at the base of desire here and that song came from a rather uncomfortable place, but it was like a heroic cry like a warrior’s heart like this is this right now is what we need. We need peace, love, unity and respect and really just made me want to make this song actually as simple as possible. So you could just throw it into anything.

Brent Hanifl 06:02
You know, you talked about the album coming up. What else is coming up for you? What do you hope to accomplish in 2021.

Isaac Dummer 06:08
More gigs, Oh, geez, I would love a band. If you are hearing this and you are not in a band, join me. Yeah, that’s like, number one right there, get a band going. And just do the whole thing. I feel like I’ve really felt my way into the music career to begin with. Not any artists in my family, in the sound media, all of them are physical media artists. I just want to keep finding myself in the success ring, but now it’s really to start buckling down and getting serious, you know, going to make an ad, I’m going to have a GoFundMe with the EP to support the album. Yeah, I would love 2021 to get a huge step into that full sized album, and getting all the extra layers done. It’s a huge desire of mine.

Brent Hanifl 07:07
You know, you’ve been playing for a while but you’re kind of in this like new phase of you know, really kicking it off. Hopefully getting able to play live, releasing this new album. If people want to follow along in your process, what’s the best venue for them to go to.

Isaac Dummer 07:20
My Facebook page? Absolutely. Isaac Dumars music at Facebook. Whenever I’m playing The Popcorn open jams. It’s a funny thing I would say at the end of my whole three song thing I was. “My name is Isaac Dummer two A’s two M’s. You can follow me on Facebook.” Been my thing, I hope you all are well, you know, just take the consideration of being like we’re in a really hard time right now. be easy on yourself. Welcome your thoughts and welcome who you are into this time. I know. One of my real recent songs that I just finished is Existential Pie. And let me tell you what, we all need a slice.

Amy Gabay 08:03
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