a lil history
by james, summer 2019
dump him began as a solo project in august 2015, as a venue for working through recent trauma through music. at the time, i had severe tinnitus and hyperacusis, and thought i would never be able to play or attend a full band show again. fourtunately, over time i learned to manage the ringing, the pain subsided, and i started playing full-band versions of those solo dump him songs upon suggestion of my friend rebecca.
the first dump him full band show happened at the democracy center in august 2016 with larz brogan on drums and gen cayford on bass. soon after, the three of us did a short tour with larz's band daephne. over time, the dump him "band" evolved into more of a fluid collective of (mostly / sometimes / usually) like-minded queer friends of mine; whoever was around would play in the band. after two years and 18 different pals playing various instruments, dump him has morphed into a 4-piece band featuring myself, larz brogan (gay sin, daephne, bright red reason, palehound, the michael character, every band in the world) on drums, otto klammer (dazey & the scouts) on bass, and mattie hamer (filmmaker extrodinare) on lead guitar (and at one point, also bass at the same time! but those days are over). we're based out of boston (everyone but me) + the pioneer valley out in western mass (me).
nowadays, we write mostly collaboratively and operate as A Band, which rules cuz i'm shit at playing solo anyway, and probably the least musically talented one here out of all of us. the music we make now is probably described best as pop punk or punk pop depending on how pretentious you want to get (but if you want to get pretentious, i get it, i do too -- straight boys on major labels ruined pop punks' rep and i'm pissed off about it). we make this type of music cuz we like how it sounds, not cuz we're tryna BE straight boys on major labels. we don't want that bullshit either.
oh yeah, and we all use they / them pronouns, so don't fuck that one up, either. we ain't girls. except mattie. she uses she / her too. if none of that makes sense to you, look it up, and if you don't respect it, our music isn't for you (although you probably wouldn't like it anyway).
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ok, so that's basically the history. now some current news: we got an album coming out in august on a label larz, mattie, and me started named musical fanzine records (after the team dresch song that makes me feel better when i think i want to die), and our friends' label get better records. it's gonna come with a zine that we made about the record, which we're real excited about too!
i think that's all you need to know, at least from my perspective. maybe larz and otto and mattie will write their very own histories of this band and they will appear here, cuz i'm sure they got more shit to say that is interesting and different than what i have to say, but then again maybe not. thanks for reading!