Dallas Orbiter is a band with an interesting history that brings a richness to the music, which is almost like a psychedelic rock jam band. The music feels both danceable and cinematic. Yu can see the release of the long-awaited album, Spaceman Things, on Friday, Septembers 13 at Mortimers. Big thanks to vocalist Mark Miller and drummer Gerg Flanagan for answering 5 Questions.
Please tell us more about Dallas Orbiter and Laser Bats from Mars and maybe even Captain Sunshine. The pedigree paints a great history of a musical journey.
Mark: First off thank you, Ann for doing this. We’re not very accustomed to email interviews, but we’ll do our best! The four of us (five if you count our beloved former member Eric Lodahl) have been friends and musical collaborators for a VERY long time, and really, we’re friends first. Our wives are friends too & our parents have all met one another & hung out. The musical chemistry started with Dan & me. We found musical common ground our freshman year as music majors in college & I think we both sort of knew pretty quickly we wanted to do something together. Jon joined Captain Sunshine a couple years after it formed. Jon. Dan, & Greg all had paying jobs playing as sidemen together in a country cover band around the same time. The 1998 breakup of Captain Sunshine was something I didn’t handle very well. I wanted to get into some freer music more based on improvisation, and our drummer at the time, who was a really good player, really hated “jamming.” Greg was an obvious choice, because he had recently moved to the Twin Cities with a band who broke up shortly after the move. Dallas Orbiter, even though we do write & play some pretty tight songs, is based on the chemistry we built together improvising from 1999 on. Laser Bats from Mars is just an alter ego to differentiate the song-based stuff from the improvised/spontaneous composition stuff, but it all comes from essentially the same concepts.
Greg: Our history together includes playing together as well as supporting each other’s musical pursuits. The music scene in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, where we all originally met is active and fertile. Some uniquely amazing music is born in that city. When I joined Dallas Orbiter it was an exciting opportunity to stretch out and explore genre-dodging tunes and compositions.
Mark: I’m really glad G brought up Oshkosh, because there really is something in the water there. I’m gonna exploit the “Mostly” in Mostly MN and mention a few current bands from there: Redshift Headlights, The Present Age, and Shoobie, all of whom are phenomenal in their own ways.
In some iteration, Dallas Orbiter has been around for a long time but the new album, Spaceman Things, is the first recording in several years. What spurred the reemergence?
Mark: It was really a Facebook message to me in February of 2023 from the great engineer John Miller (JM) at Future Condo Studio in Minneapolis: “wanna make a record?” We’d all talked about making an album for years, but for whatever reason never did. There were some attempts at it at certain points over the years, but we never really saw it through. I think we were having too much fun just getting together every week & recording improv stuff. I also had a few jobs where I travelled a lot, so that contributed to the delay as well. There was some understandable consternation amongst the band about paying someone else to record us because we had just put a good amount of money & time into upgrading the recording rig at our rehearsal studio (most of the songs on our previous albums were DIY affairs). JM did a fantastic job recording & mixing us, and Bruce Templeton is an amazing mastering engineer.
Greg: Making music as a band can be as much about working together as it is about pulling against each other. If we had the goal of finding a specific sound and perfecting it, we may have burned ourselves out long ago. Thankfully, we find new ways to challenge ourselves to keep the process new. Recording with John Miller was an opportunity for the four of us to have our assumptions challenged and get a fresh perspective.
Mark: It was fun as hell too.
I love Radiate Atcha. I love the momentum and the undercurrent of a heartbeat sound. What was the inspiration for the song?
Mark: Thank you! The guitar riff in the verses is a variation on “He’s a Whore” by Cheap Trick, a song Captain Sunshine used to occasionally cover live (Big Black also did a great cover of it). Breaking down for the chorus is sort of an inversion of the quiet verse/loud chorus thing. Another great example of that inversion is “Gouge Away” by Pixies, but there are plenty of them. I think the off-the-one heartbeat thing in the chorus was an arrangement decision Dan & Greg made at some point. Jon’s keyboard parts on this song (really, ALL the songs) really take it to another, elevated place. Lyrically I don’t really remember what inspired it, but the earth is a dangerous rock hurtling through space, and a lot of things can kill ya.
Greg: We might take for granted how much a glance or a smirk in the studio can influence a tune. This song is no exception. Jon starts off on the keys and Dan and I have a kind of ritual with the way we find each other’s “1” before we come in. We’ve been a rhythm section for decades and it’s still fun to see how tight we can get while we throw curveballs at one another. We certainly have communicated more with music than with words after all this time together.
It is amazing for me to think about you playing music without a live audience, either jamming or posting online (before that was really done!) because it is so danceable. How do you imagine folks enjoying the music – at a show, on a road trip, at a party, alone watching the stars…?
Mark: All of those sound great!! I honestly don’t really think about that. We keep getting together & recording music every week because we love each other and enjoy making things together. If people actually enjoy it in pretty much any context that’s a great bonus & I’m thankful. Obviously shows are great fun & we hope people who hear & like the new stuff will come out & see us.
Greg: I can’t imagine how people will enjoy our art but I hope it does make them move. I think art is less potent if it’s created while considering the audience point of view. I hope listeners can sense how the music is a heartfelt and necessary output for us.
Mark: Just maybe please don’t listen to our music while committing violent crimes of any kind. I think that’s a fair ask. 😊
Please tell us about the upcoming album release.
Mark: (Tell us?) The release show is Friday, September 13th at Mortimers in Minneapolis. Doors 8:30, music 9pm. Last I saw, the cover will be $10. We’re really excited to play with Upright Forms, who just released a fantastic record called ‘Blurred Wires’ on July 19th. Greg & I were at the show & it was a blast. We’re also looking forward to seeing a newer band Field Hospitals, whose bass player, Matt Helgeson (formerly of Maps of Norway & Unbelievable Jolly Machine) is a dear friend of mine. We’ll also be doing a Bandcamp pre-order for the vinyl, date is still TBA at the moment, but we’ll announce it on our socials once we get that figured out.
Mostly Minnesota 