Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Erik Dionne of Dog Army. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Hi Erik, so excited to have you with us today, particularly to get your insight on a topic that comes up constantly in the community – overcoming creativity blocks. Any thoughts you can share with us?
Writer’s block is something that has not affected me in years. That said, I am probably susceptible to it, but I have learned to approach art and creativity in a way that nullifies it. I play multiple instruments and write, mainly poetry. By having these multiple artistic avenues, I essentially sidestep writer’s block by moving from one creative outlet to the next. Maybe I’ll tinker with banjo for a bit, or move to acoustic guitar, then work on playing cello, for example. Or if I’m really wanting to hear and feel a certain instrument, but nothing new is flowing, I’ll change tunings. I once heard that the human mind becomes more creative when change is presented–the result of evolutionary or adaptive means of surviving new environments or adversity: we’re programmed to think on our toes when forced to. That seems to hold true for me. By shifting from instrument or tuning, my brain tends to quickly find something that stands out on the instrument, and I create the seed of an idea that can be developed further.
However, I honestly do most of my writing without even touching an instrument. For the last couple of years, I have primarily been writing my lyrics first, sometimes with a melody in mind, sometimes where one develops through the writing. Those melodies will come to me–increasingly more often, it would seem–through the dreams I’m having immediately before waking up, or by just doing my morning routine. There’s an array of music happening around us, and I think a good number of my melodies or rhythms are just extensions of coffee cups being set on countertops, the notes of water hitting the basin of a bathtub, or dirty dishes being dropped into a sink–whether consciously listening for them or not, I think our brains are looking for melodies. If you hear two notes, you will try to connect them to a melody. I’ve literally tested this before, years ago on myself and some of those around me. My dad would often idly whistle “If I Only Had a Brain” from The Wizard of Oz. One morning when he wasn’t whistling or humming or doing anything musical, I whistled only the first two notes of that song before stopping. And sure enough, immediately after, my father started whistling the melody in its entirety. It’s not enough for a scientific rule, but it’s empirical enough for me. So I think I often find my melodies by simply existing, as they seem to make their way to me as I move and listen. I have that natural response to sound working for me at all times, combined with the writing that I consciously make time for. The words I’ve written, or lines that come to me as I go about my day seem to latch on to rhythms and melodies, if they did not inherently have them in the writing of them itself.
This brings me to my other avenue of escaping writer’s block, and this is paramount: habit. Make a habit out of writing. At my most prolific, I was writing multiple poems a day, but always at least one. I had a specific time and place I would write, and followed through with it. By making it habitual, my mind became prepared for it, and when I arrived at that time of day and place, my mind would instantly get into a creative mode, and begin analyzing everything. Writing becomes natural this way, and also becomes a kind of meditative reflection on whatever your mind decides is worth peeling the rind from.
Additionally, my favorite pithy advice for overcoming writer’s block is to “lower your standards.” This is actually extremely helpful for me. Write something. It’s that easy. Write one word. Another one will follow. Write a line. Another one will follow. And if it doesn’t, you made your mark, and created something.
Finally, and this one deserves to be at the top: read. Read a book. Read a poem. Any book. Any poem. Not on your phone. Not on your computer. Read a physical book. Something happens with the printed page. You can write on it, go back and forth in it. Stare at it and wonder. Find the words you don’t know. Rip a page and change it forever. Ultimately though, you’ll engage with writing and styles that you will not find in your own writing. And engaging with these new approaches to writing will build upon your own. This, combined with the content of the reading, will inspire ideas for your own writing.
Great, so let’s take a few minutes and cover your story. What should folks know about you and what you do?
I’ve been playing music since I first got a guitar at age 13. That gift forever altered my identity. I played throughout high school in a couple of different bands, but those kind of fizzled out when I went to college and band members could not meet with the same regularity as we could in high school. But I never stopped playing and writing–in fact, my writing became much more conscious as, throughout college, I focused heavily on literature and poetry, and therefore lyrics. But it was in college where I decided–since I could not consistently meet with other band members–that I would continue writing music on my own, and whatever I produced, regardless of style, sound, or genre, would go under the name Dog Army. (By the way, the name does not come from an episode of Frazier, like people ask me with increasing–and hilarious–regularity, but in fact comes from a poem I wrote while in college. However, I believe the name has taken on additional meanings as time has gone on, and sometimes it’s just easier to explain that I do find that episode of Frazier hilarious, and why not tack it onto the meaning of the name?) All that considered, my music has evolved heavily over the years. In the early years, I was making a myriad of acoustic indie ballads about missed or failed romances, alongside darker folk songs about kidnappings, shipwrecks, and strange things in the woods. It wasn’t until I did some significant living (traveling, finding who would become my wife)–that I perhaps understood myself and my music better that I got to a place where I had truly found my sound and style–that realization happened when I was about 26.
My sound now is still difficult to place in a genre, but it is primarily acoustic-based, yet will comfortably flaunt its rock foundations. The result is a kind of southern gothic, dark-folk with a variety of sounds and instrumentation. Most of my songs are either ballads themselves–occasionally, murder ballads–or pieces of larger narratives. I released my first full-length album, Questionable Motives, in 2021. As with everyone, 2020 was a tumultuous year for me and my wife, but producing my album was a kind of respite from the strange, discomfited routine that was the pandemic. I wrote, recorded, and produced every sound on the album by myself. It shows. I remember telling my wife that I could only really achieve a production quality of about 1982. I knew that was the case, but I still needed to make it. For me, it was the first time I had created something of such ambition and actually completed it. At the time, it was my greatest musical achievement because it began from absolutely nothing, and became whatever it is now, purely by my own crafting, using pretty rudimentary recording tools, nonetheless (two microphones, an old Peavey mixer intended for live sound, and version 2.2 of Audacity, which was no minor obstacle). That meant a great deal to me as a person who identifies as a musician and songwriter, and it still means something to me now. Even with such basic tools and limited production experience, I am still proud to say I received immensely validating reviews of that concept album from friends, family, fellow musicians, as well as strangers who owed me nothing.
Since about 6 or 8 months after the release of Questionable Motives, I have been working diligently on my second album. It is much more sprawling–in sound and genre–and where Questionable Motives was a concept album concerned with variations on a central question about free will, this second album is a much more direct narrative concept. It is called “Woodwose: Exigence & Exodus” and is a modern take on the medieval archetype of the woodwose or “wild man.” As the name suggests, it is split into two halves: the first being the protagonist’s reflection on and rejection of the society in which he lives. The second half is his exodus to the forest, where he becomes a woodwose. The first half contains a blend of brooding, dark-folk sounds with raucous rock or southern gothic romps, to then transition to a much lighter, unencumbered set of primarily acoustic songs, while occasionally dipping into more atmospheric, even harrowing, sounds.
Production is slow on this one, but that is because I have learned, and continue to learn, an immense deal about mixing and mastering, as well as the instrumentation itself. I have learned to play cello for this album, and I am also collaborating with a few musicians throughout it. If everything continues as planned, I would love to have this album finished by summer 2024. We’ll see about that though. Life is always, beautifully, happening.
There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?
Diligence. Metacognition. Experimentation. Diligence, primarily, as nothing I have achieved musically happened naturally or automatically. I believe I have strengths, but those have only been unlocked through sheer persistence and habit. Every instrument I play, I was complete shit at playing at one time (and still am for most of them!). The same goes for mixing. I have only learned what I have through making thousands upon thousands of mistakes.
Metacognition. I have to say this one as a teacher, as I have the ability to ask myself what I know, what I think I know, and what I know I don’t know, and ultimately, to constantly reflect on the answers to those questions, because through the act itself, the answers change. It’s this ability that allows me to seek help from those more knowledgeable, and evaluate their advice. It’s what allows me to listen to my first album and know I could mix that a hell of a lot better now, even with the same recorded tracks. It’s also this trait that allows me to conduct the next trait.
Experimentation. When I first started recording the album I am working on now, I thought of David Bowie’s quote which, paraphrased, says something about how when musicians are just beyond their comfort zone, that is when they make their best music. The songs I had written first didn’t quite seem beyond my comfort zone, and I couldn’t really say what made it so dissimilar from something that could have appeared on Questionable Motives. Since then, I have added an entirely new instrument (cello) to my sound, and experimented with dozens upon dozens of recording techniques, as well as gotten new gear to work with, including a brand new DAW (Reaper). All of this experimentation has made the process a constant learning experience, as well as forced me far beyond my comfort zone, to where I believe I am making things that abide by no standard or status quo that I could point to, yet feel right, my own, and part of my sound.
For those early in their journey, I would say the hardest thing to overcome to better–maybe even best–develop these traits is to get out of the way of your own pride. You don’t know everything. You are not the best at it. There is always more to learn. The real challenge though is to be aware of this and maintain your confidence as an artist. Balance the awareness of your own shortcomings with the awareness of your strengths. Recognize your strengths and utilize them, but work on your weaknesses, Listen to others engaged with the craft, and know that everyone is on their own point of their own path of their musical journey. As an example, I wonder if 16-year-old me thinking he was hot-shit on guitar would even like the songs I’m making now at 34, each of which I am currently proud of.
All the wisdom you’ve shared today is sincerely appreciated. Before we go, can you tell us about the main challenge you are currently facing?
I am a father and a husband before anything else. Alongside that, I have to be able to provide an income, so I am also a teacher. After these things, I also have to help make sure the house doesn’t fall apart. If you add up the hours for each of those responsibilities per day, it equals about 27. Realistically though, while I am engaged with all of those things, I am also a songwriter and poet. Becoming a new father was a foundation-shaking alteration to my life, and finding the balance between all of these things is something I am still grappling with, but I essentially went on a creative hiatus for about six months after my daughter was born. Surprisingly enough, perhaps, it is not any one of those things that I consider being the challenge though, as those are my true priorities. The challenge for me is making sure I am present with what is directly before me, so that I may dedicate myself fully to my family. This is the challenge, as I feel that I also have a certain kind of completionist mindset when it comes to artistic projects I undertake.
This mindset where I feel compelled to finish something I begin is advantageous much of the time (such as when writing a song or poem–I often will do that in one sitting), but it becomes a detriment for long-term processes, such as writing, recording, and producing an entire album. I started working on this album in about February of 2022, but as I noted, I took about a six-month hiatus from working on it–at least with any kind of regularity. After those six months, I was able to find times when my wife and daughter would go to sleep, where I could work on my music. This has continued to now, where I work on some aspect of my music every day. From about 9:15-11pm every night, I am working on making my album. When creating every aspect of the album on your own, there is always something to work on: either brushing up on my playing of the various instruments, writing parts for each instrument, or working on mixing and learning more about every element, it is such an endless array of skills one must continually develop. The obstacle for me with my completionist mindset is that I cannot stop thinking about a song until it is complete. And yet, I do not have the means to finish songs whenever I feel like it–I can’t play drums at 10pm, for example. The result is that I will walk around doing daily tasks, or even being in front of my family, and occasionally song segments will be replaying in my head, on loop, sometimes for hours. It can actually be maddening. When this happens at work, I think, “why can’t I be doing this (writing the songs I get ideas for throughout the day) all day, instead?” When it happens at home in front of my family, it’s sheer detriment, because if I’m wrapped up in a musical thought, I am neither truly present nor actually creating anything, as the ideas are there distracting me when I do not want to think of them, so I fade to this strange gray limbo of impotent automation–neither an engaged father nor an artist. The inexplicable thing is that this vanishes as soon as I have the song finished and recorded. The song no longer haunts me, so to speak.
So what am I doing to resolve it? I’m working on it. I try to compartmentalize as much as I can. Teaching makes one pretty good at compartmentalizing; if you can’t compartmentalize as a teacher, you’ll grind yourself into the entire community’s problems, and if you let each person get a small share of your time or focus, it does not take long before you are left with nothing of your own–so you have to find a hardline to separate from that. Additionally, ever since my early 20’s, I prided myself on my ability for hyperpresence; I think this is what has helped me as a poet–though really, it was probably poetry that honed this ability. This has helped me as a father, being able to notice every moment with my kid and her development, but as I stated above, I also have struggled with this as a father in ways that I have not before. I think this is because hyperpresence is not sufficient for being a parent. It’s great to see and feel and reflect on everything your kid is doing in front of you, but to be an effective parent, you also have to be keenly aware of future meals, dates, appointments, plans, others’ schedules, along with a dozen other things, so that you can best meet the needs of your kid, and this has been a new shift for me that I am still trying to grapple with.
Somewhere in all that, I’m still a songwriter and a musician. I know I cannot record a part for a song on a whim as I may have two or ten years ago. So I shuffle tasks and work on what I can, when I can, and having a habitual time that I can dedicate to music helps immensely. By shuffling tasks that are required for the completion of my album, I can alternate what my brain will focus on throughout the day, so that what would be the maddening redundancy of a cello line, for example, looping in my brain, becomes a blend of contemplating mixing techniques, mic placements, guitar riffs, lyrics, or drum rhythms, and if I can come to some kind of conclusion, I can write that down, or record the idea as audio on my phone, and often, move on undistracted until I can do something more concrete during my “music window,” later that night. That seems to quell the completionist in me.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: www.instagram.com/erik.dogarmy
- Facebook: www.facebook.com/dogarmyband
- Youtube: www.youtube.com/@dogarmyband
- SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/dog-army
- Other: Bandcamp: dogarmy.bandcamp.com
Threads: www.threads.net/@erik.dogarmy
Image Credits
Carla Simpson Mary Bell Jane Marie Bryant Dionne
