The members of local indie-rock trio Dummy Ache met some 15 years ago, when all three of them lived in Brooklyn. Guitarist Max Goransson, bassist Sam Rich, and drummer Rich DiGregorio all were in different bands at the time, but they often shared the stage at shows, and even shared the same practice space for a while. In the early 2010s, they were part of a vibrant DIY scene full of young, enthusiastic indie bands.
“I feel like we caught a really special time for the New York indie scene,” Goransson said. “It was like a really peak moment for DIY venues … and those were the venues that we played at a lot. Just really packed, sweaty shows where, in the first years, people were still smoking cigarettes indoors, and probably everything was a horrible fire hazard, and everything sounded like shit. But boy, was it fun.”
All three have since relocated to coastal New England. Goransson lives in Portsmouth; Rich and DiGregorio are both in the Portland area. And with Dummy Ache set to release its debut album, they again find themselves at the heart of a bustling indie scene — albeit one with a shortage of DIY venues.
“There are just so many great bands around here, both in the Americana realm and there’s some really great young indie bands, too,” Goransson said. “They don’t have a lot of different options in terms of places to play, which is really unfortunate. (It’s) the biggest challenge that the culture around here faces.”
Dummy Ache will play an album-release show at The Press Room in Portsmouth on Thursday, Nov. 5, with support from Spirit Hotel, Kong Moon, and Isaac Raven. The new album, “Shakers,” was recorded over just two days at Acadia Recording Company in Portland this past August. Loaded with reverb, the eight tracks shift between dreamy shoegaze and noisy rock, often melding both into a hardy psychedelic stew.
It’s the culmination of an overlapping musical journey for the three bandmates. As each musician separately left Brooklyn and settled in northern New England, they reconnected and started going to shows together. Goransson and Rich, who arrived in the area before DiGregorio, eventually started a band called Righteous Bucks. Though they had never played in the same band before, it seemed like a natural fit.
“It’s a great kind of framework to be buddies and to get together and hang out,” Rich said. “Sometimes hanging out with people you knew when you were 22 does make you feel 22 a little bit. And that’s pretty cool.”
Like the rest of the entertainment world, Righteous Bucks went on hiatus during the pandemic. By the time the Covid cloud began to clear, DiGregorio was in the area as well, and a new group emerged. The first challenge they faced was agreeing on a name.
“We did the usual thing of going through months of shooting each other late-night text messages with really, really embarrassingly awful ideas,” Goransson said. “We had a hard time agreeing on any.”
Only after settling on Dummy Ache did DiGregorio find out there’s a 1930s film of the same name.
“I read the plot and it was not nearly as entertaining as I expected it to be,” he joked. “Just in case you saw that, that’s not what we’re named after.”
The band members share many influences — Yo La Tango, Built to Spill, Dinosaur Jr., Galaxie 500 — and they all come to bear on “Shakers.” Goransson and Rich share primary songwriting duties. At first they wrote separately, each bringing almost fully-formed songs to the table. But as their chemistry grew, they began writing collaboratively. Some of the songs started out with acoustic country chord progressions, but soon the sound evolved — perhaps due in part to the subliminal influence of an unexpected source: the 1990s TV series “Baywatch Nights.” Reruns of the show (a cheesy sci-fi mystery spinoff of “Baywatch”) was often playing in the background while Rich and Goransson worked on their songs.
“As a vibe to have on mute while you’re making guitar noise, and maybe like grabbing little lyrics from the closed captions, you know, or little snatches of words, it definitely is an aesthetic,” Rich said. “We sort of joke about this being a record of spooky beach crime songs.”
Recording took place in two marathon sessions at Acadia, where the group worked closely with studio owner Todd Hutchinson and audio engineer Alice Anderson. Hutchinson is in a “great shoegaze band from Portland” called Crystal Canyon, Rich said, and he understood Dummy Ache’s aesthetic right away. Though the days were long, the process was quick and efficient.
“At the end of the second day, we left having comfortably accomplished literally everything we set out to, even down to the little touches that we had in our head,” Goransson said. “I think that this was a pretty true encapsulation of what it’s like being in a room with us.”
The band plans to play “Shakers” in its entirety during the release show at The Press Room, where Goransson works as music booker. They’ll follow that gig with shows in Brooklyn on Nov. 6 and Philadelphia on Nov. 7.
Eventually, Dummy Ache will get to work on a follow-up album. For now, though, they’re savoring the flavor of a satisfying debut.
“It’s a document of what this band sounds like, for sure,” Rich said of “Shakers.” “I also look forward to a record where we really stretch our legs out and have some time dedicated to messing around and experimenting. But I think it’s okay if the Mellotron stays in the closet until LP two. And the children’s choir deeper, deeper in the closet.”
Dummy Ache will play an album release show with guests Spirit Hotel, Kong Moon, and Isaac Raven on Thursday, Nov. 5, at 7 p.m. at The Press Room in Portsmouth. Tickets are $15-$18, available here. (Full disclosure: PortsmouthNH.com‘s sister business, PortsmouthNHTickets.com, is the ticket vendor for The Press Room.)
