The ROTTEN Issue: Dad Bods
Words BY COLE LAMPE, Photos by Lucero Dunscombe
Even in a city known for its eclectic acts, Madison’s own Dad Bods stands out as one of its most unique offerings. Ever since their live debut back in 2022, the two-piece composed of bassist/vocalist Sean and drummer Chris have come to be known as one of the most exciting live bands around. From drunken shenanigans to amps catching fire, the unpredictability of Dad Bods’ live performances are synonymous with the unconventional nature of Madison’s DIY scene.
Like all good bands, the members of Dad Bods have a long and storied history not only with each other, but also the city they call home. Chris and Sean met when they were freshmen at Madison West High School through a social studies class and mutual friends. Since 2014, the two have played together in a wide array of rock and jazz groups. One of these jazz groups would regularly play at Café Coda, which is where they claimed to have developed their trademark improvisational abilities.
After the two graduated from West in 2017, they formed an indie rock band called Watermelon Collie with other musicians they met through UW music programs. “Watermelon Collie got asked to play a show with a ton of my favorite local acts: EMWAY?, Shoobie, VomBom, Mission Trip,” Sean says. “And me being the excitable young man I was, I said yes without checking to see who was available. Turns out only two of us were available! So Chris and I had two weeks to figure out how to be a two-piece.”
For their first show as Dad Bods, Chris and Sean planned on playing songs from their high school band. After rehearsing the set and starting the show off strong, Sean’s equipment started to malfunction — “a sign of things to come for every Dad Bods show after that,” he jokes. “We could’ve said ‘oh no, this is a tragedy,’ but we said ‘fuck it,’ and we just kept playing and making shit up on the fly.” Relying on their jazz roots, the pair improvised a scorching end to their set that the audience went crazy for. “That show was kind of a go ahead for us to say ‘people like it when we just show up and play music without preparing anything, so let’s keep doing that.’”
Somehow, the second-ever Dad Bods show a week later was even more chaotic. “We were going to a DIY show at the Nottingham Co-Op as fans to watch Endswell, and one of the bands had some trouble on the road and they weren’t going to be able to play,” Sean recalls. “Our friend Arthur who was booking the show asked us if we could play a set in an hour, and we said ‘Okay, why not?’” These two shows established Dad Bods’ reputation as one of Madison’s most energetic and volatile live acts.
Part of this is simply the nature of two-piece bands. As Sean explains, the person in a two-piece band who’s playing notes “needs to do something to make it fill space, and every two-piece act I’ve met has done it in a different way. There’s a saying I like: ‘Limitation breeds creativity.’ I have never met a two-piece band that wasn’t creative. When you don’t have the tools to recreate the sounds you hear on the radio, you’ve got to think of something new, and every two-piece I’ve met has done something new.”
Dad Bods’ methods of filling space are particularly innovative. While drums are oftentimes delegated to being the backbone of a song, Chris’ inventive beats and artful fills lead the song, forcing the listener to think about the instrument in an entirely new way. Sean runs his bass through two channels, giving his tone its distinctive crunch. Sean’s microphone of choice, a strange sort of copper tube, is used to make his vocals as indiscernible as possible. “I like to write lyrics from the perspective of characters I create,” he explains. “And that always came off more earnest to me if it sounds like it’s coming from a non-professional space or if it sounds like a field recording in some way.”
But of course, the pair have their influences outside of their limitations as a band. When asked about their musical influences, Chris and Sean gave an eclectic range of answers: two-piece bands like Death From Above 1979, jazz pioneers like Pharoah Sanders and even the neo-soul of D’Angelo. “I love the idea of taking musical ideas from a place where it belongs and putting it somewhere else,” Sean states. “Like taking R&B behind-the-beat baselines and playing them loud as hell.” However, the band’s biggest influence comes from an unlikely place. “The audience is also an inspiration for us because we jam a lot based on the vibe we’re getting from the audience,” Chris specifies. “And that jam could turn into a song.”
Because the audience is one of the key inspirations of the Dad Bods sound, their songwriting style is incredibly unorthodox as a result. “Every single Dad Bods song that is currently released started as a space in a setlist where we didn’t have anything planned and we made something up,” Sean says. “The next time we have an improvisational space, we’ll remember that little riff or that drum fill we really liked from last time. And then we start from there, and then just follow the flow of the song to see where it takes us. Eventually if you do that enough, you’ll have finished the song, and the audience will have watched you finish the song.”
Although this style of writing can easily result in aimless songs, this is certainly not the case with Dad Bods’ material. The tracks showcased on their debut album Powerbelly combine the raw fury of their live performances with carefully applied studio polish to create the most entertaining 19-minute album you will ever hear. Mixed and mastered by Sean himself, the recording of the album was unconventional, with the pair treating the recording process as the last step of the songwriting process. “For most of the songs, I start by recording only the bass part,” Sean clarifies. “Then I send it to Chris and I say ‘hey, is my understanding of the song the same as yours?’ Once we have a recording of the bass that we agree on, then we do the drums. After that’s done, then I rerecord the bass. Once it’s mastered and ready to go on the album, then we finally know what the song exists as.”
Most importantly, the incredible sound the duo achieved on Powerbelly using accessible equipment reinforces the DIY ethos of Dad Bods. A prime example of this is the vocals, which Sean recorded through an Audio Technica gaming headset plugged into the computer in order to “recreate the energy of a COD lobby.” The informal, rough-around-the-edges nature of Dad Bods, from their relaxed songwriting approach to their ability to harness creativity from their limitations, is perhaps the most enduring lesson we can learn from them.
“I don’t like the idea of making sounds that are so beautiful that they’re intimidating to other people,” Sean notes. “I want to make sounds that people hear and say ‘oh, I know how to make bricked-out bass-boosted sound files!’ And I want them to hear it and go ‘oh this actually sounds good, I can do this.’”
