Interview:

I am a firm believer that one major reason people listen to music is because it makes them feel something. Perhaps this feeling is spiritual? For me personally, it is indeed what I define as spiritual. I have had feelings listening to some of my favorite bands and songs that seemed more spiritual and moving than anytime I ever attended church. Know that I come to think of it, I never had one spiritual feeling in church. Oh well. There is one such feeling and moment that sticks out in my mind that I will never forget.

In 1996, I went to see Tool live in Washington, D.C. on my 21st birthday. I remember the exact song and lyric that gave me the feeling that my soul had flown right out of my body, and was floating around the venue like a kite on a windy day. “Stinkfist” was the song and when recalling the lyrics, there is one line that has always struck a chord in me. When I hear this line to this day on the radio or on CD it reminds me of that show. When Maynard sang “There’s something kind of sad about the way that things have come to be, desensitized to everything, what became of subtlety?” When Maynard sang that one line that night, I remember a rush of energy come over me, and 56 project itself out of the top of my head and into oblivion. The energy and feeling I’m describing is when you hear a song and the hairs on your arms stand straight up; you feel like you could cry. Not cry out of sadness, cry out of being so moved that you appreciate the raw emotions that don’t surface regularly but arrive intensely at that exact moment.

This feeling was multiplied by a thousand that particular night at the Tool show. I think that line in particular touched me because it holds so much weight. We are desensitized more-so now than ever. All of life’s tragedies and the world’s ugliness is so abundant that people just build an emotional blockade. Just watch the nightly news every night like most Americans do, and you see that nearly every story is as ugly and tragic as the next. That could be a whole other discussion, but for me it’s a sad state of affairs. Music for some is a great escape to tune out the world, and “AdvenTour” into a place where they can immerse themselves in another state of being.

We had a fan from Portland, Oregon who was going through a really severe depression. He had come out to shows, contacted us through e-mails, and we befriended him shortly before his girlfriend had called our manager while we were on the road. Our manager had told us that our fan in Portland had committed suicide. In his suicide note he had mentioned Dog Fashion Disco and me particularly by name. He said he appreciated our music and our friendship. This sad and tragic event really made me realize that people hold music, and their favorite bands or artists very dear and close to their hearts. I wrote a song for him about three or four months after his death and recorded it for an EP we put out. The song is called “Gardenia”, and it is the one and only time I ever wrote a song about someone and for someone.

I’d like to think that somehow our song reached him wherever he may be and it made him realize that we appreciated his friendship.

“Music for some is a great escape to tune out the world… where they can immerse themselves in another state of being.”
– Todd Smith, vocalist in Dog Fashion Disco