Dossier: DMA’s

Three Newtown boys with little enthusiasm for joining the music industry ranks have, albeit reluctantly, stepped into the mainstream. Plans are afoot to take the band global and with tracks like Delete capturing hearts and minds and a debut album expected early 2015, it’s going to be hard to escape their pull. TMN speaks to the band, their label and manager.

The two-storey house where DMA’s recorded their self-titled EP stands directly behind the Newtown Hotel. It’s typically replete with guitars, amplifier leads and cigarette butts – and there’s an Oasis poster on thewall. Vocalist/guitarist Johnny Took lives here with a bunch of musicians and creative-types: Paddy Cornwall from Sticky Fingers is Took’s housemate and DMA’s tour manager (who also books tours with ex-Annandale Hotel owner Matt Rule) lives in the room adjacent to the lounge room. “It’s almost like this top section of the house has turned into an office or something,” remarks Took, half seated, half laying on the couch.

It’s no surprise. DMA’s are no longer an unsigned band, waiting for offers. Yet, when the industry came sniffing last July DMA’s were hardly what you’d call enthusiastic.

“I sent Johnny an email saying, ‘Hey I really like what I’m hearing, we’d love to hear more stuff, have you got management?’ You know, the usual sort of stuff, and he replied not particularly enthusiastically,” explains Leon Rogovoy, Head of Artist Management at Falcona. Rogovoy emailed the band a mere few hours after DMA’s uploaded a YouTube video for Play It Out. The band had properly recorded the one track, handed it to the front desk at Sydney community radio station FBi that day, and the promo, filmed at their Newtown house, was shared by mutual friend Paddy Harrowsmith on Facebook.

“Eventually he kept nagging me,” Took laughs, “and my friend, who had known Leon from a few years back, said ‘yeah he’s a good dude, you should at least meet up with him’.”

When Rogovoy met with Took, lead vocalist/multi-instrumentalist Matt Mason at The Coopers pub in Newrown, he pitched Falcona’s plan, which he says “pretty much perfectly aligned with the band.”

After signing a worldwide management agreement with Falcona, the agency sent a few demo tracks to the major labels and a handful of independents. “Everyone came back saying ‘yeah this is cool but we really wantto see where it progresses, see where it fits’,” Rogovoy recalls.

Everyone except Johann Ponniah, founder of Illusive Records imprint I Oh You. Ponniah phoned Rogovoy while they were at Big Sound at 8:30am to talk about the band. Six weeks later a deal was locked in.

“It was sort of perfect to where our label was being positioned at the time,” says Ponniah, speaking from Mushroom Group’s Sydney office. “I knew I didn’t want to sign a heavy rock band because we’ve got DZ Deathrays, whoat the time were being pushed as the face and brand of the label.”

Ponniah’s first meeting with DMA’s wasn’t too dissimilar to Rogovoy’s, a bond was formed instantly. “DMA’s are some of the most interesting people I’ve met and worked with and as soon as I met them I was like ‘this is exactly the kind of thing I want to be involved in’,” says Ponniah. “I didn’t want them to sign to our label and then put them in a studio with a producer, with mixers, and all that kind of thing. One of the great things about DMA’s’ recordings is thepersonality that’s in them, and that personality comes from Johnny’s bedroom.”

Before Delete was singled out by Blur drummer/radio DJ Dave Rowntree as Record of the Week for UK station XFM in July, and before the track was added to 63 national radio stations including afternoon rotation on the Today Network, Ponniah was hesitant to release the track.

“I didn’t think that Delete was a single. I thought it was a very, very good song but I thought the fact that it was four- and-a-half minutes and it only kicked in at the three-minute mark was going to hold us back at radio.” Ponniah’s plan to service the track Feels Like 37 to radio two weeks later was derailed by Delete’s success. One of the label owner’s most extolled traits is his ability to know when to ride the wave and when to start paddling again. I Oh You acts Violent Soho and DZ Deathrays both sold out national tours this year and last year’s sold out tour with Odd Future was just another badge in the five-year-old label’s embryonic history.

Just after DMA’s signed to I Oh You in October last year, the band performed their first proper live show as The Coachmen, while on the night of the EP’s release on March 28 DMA’s announced an official launch at cafe Deus Ex Machina in Camperdown. Announced a mere 48 hours before, the venue was at capacity half-an-hour before stage time with a line snaking down Parramatta Road, while the industry-to-pedestrian ratio was just as the band had hoped, in favour of the pedestrian.

“It was crazy,” recalls Took. “Really, we did that first gig as a hit out […] Those are the kind of gigs I like, I’m not a fan of just doing the circuit ‘cos you can, I like those inventive gigs, they keep people on their toes.”

The release of the EP resulted in DMA’s most notable growth spurt, landing just outside the iTunes Top 10 in Australia. Recorded in Took’s bedroom, where the window overlooks King Street and doesn’t quite close all the way, you’d be forgiven for thinking the use of Took’s bedroom to record the EP was a matter of necessity rather than creative insight, but Ponniah’s goal to hold tight to DMA’s raw oddities is etched deep into his vision for the band.

“I thought that if we [signed] with a label we’d eventually go to a studio,” admits Took. “But it was actually some of the other guys we played with who pressed that the reason why they kind of fell in love with the songs is partly because if their demoed form.

“There’s a sound to it that can come off endearing,” Took continues. “You can easily go into Studios 301 and it can start to sound like other things whereas no one’s releasing music that’s the sound of my bedroom.”

It worked. Every show on DMA’s debut tour sold out in advance. Booking agents Village Sounds booked double shows in Sydney and Melbourne and had the band added to local festivals like Splendour in the Grass and Southbound. It was around this time the international industry began to voice its interest.

In July, DMA’s inked a deal with European booking agency Primary Talent. Ponniah had sent the EP to a friend who worked for the agency. That friend passed it on to Ben Winchester, a partner at Primary. Then in September Mermaid Avenue/Mom & Pop Records – home to Sleigh Bells, Flume and Wavves – inked a label deal which saw them release the band’sdouble sided 7” So We Know/Laced on November 14 in the US.

“The first time I heard of DMA’s was through my friend Dein Bein,” recalls Julia Willinger, VP of A&R Records and Publishing at Mom + Pop. “He played me the video for Delete and I immediately fell in love. I asked him if he wasworking with them and if not that he should. And if he isn’t, to please let me work with them! After, I met Johann who told me he was working with the band. And last, Ispoke to the Jagwar [Ma] dudes who are their friends and that sealed the deal. I am lucky and beyond thrilled to be working with them.”

Booking agent Kevin French, who founded Bigshot Touring Artists in the US, has just signed DMA’sto Paradigm Talent Agency. French joined the booker juggernaut in 2009 and has helped take acts like The Vaccines, The National and The Brian Jonestown Massacre global.

Despite DMA’s winning hearts on both sidesof the Atlantic, Ponniah is careful not to let Australia put them on a pedestal just yet. “It’s so ridiculously early for this band,” he says. “It’s great that people are excited but it’s also about ‘well let’s just chill out because we haven’t actually done that much yet.’ A sold-out tour is great but they weren’t Metro-sized rooms they were relatively small-sized rooms, as they should be.”

In November, following a national tour, DMA’s headed to Europe, the US and the UK where theyperformed at the renowned CMJ Music Marathon. Pre-orders for theirdouble a-side 7” vinyl release sold out fast via JB Hi-Fi and theybegan recording a full-length album this month.

The band has apparently 60 demos for the record, and while none of it will be aired ‘til 2015, the gates are open with DMA’s already burning through obscurity to cult stardom in a matter of months – something the ever-effacing Ponniah was always going to downplay.

“I’m very wary of people blowing it out of proportions and putting expectations on a young band,” he says.

“Let’s say if we do put out an album and it doesn’t blow the fuck up, and they don’t sell out those rooms that people say they should be – those are expectations that have been drummed up by other people, not us. I don’t think that way, the band don’t think that way.”

Photo Credit: Ken Leanfore

This article is taken from the November issue of the Australian Music Business Review.If you'd like a hardcopy of themagazine pleasecontact us.