Meet Dagart Allison of Allyson Band in Echo Park

Today we’d like to introduce you to Dagart Allison.

So, before we jump into specific questions, why don’t you give us some details about you and your story.
I grew up in Orange County and my parents had me doing a lot activities. Two of main ones that lasted through high school were piano and swimming. When I went to UC San Diego, I dropped playing the piano and started playing way more guitar. Throughout college, I competed on the UCSD swim team, majored in Biology, and also joined my first band. It was a jam band that played at the local pub on campus and it was super fun even though I was definitely the least talented of the bunch, but they were my good buddies so they didn’t mind.

After college, I stayed in San Diego and put my biology degree to use and worked in a lab. After work, I would teach guitar lessons and also play in whatever band I happened to be in. I played in a couple punk/emo bands, a GnR tribute band, a piano pop band, and an indie band over the course of 6 years. I really loved playing music in a band so there was a time when I wanted perform as much as possible. Something about my music/guitar skills felt lacking though and I wanted to take some serious time to study. I got a scholarship to attend Musicians Institute in Los Angeles and did the guitar program for a year and a half while crashing on couches or living out of my van.

During the end of that program, I started playing a couple of bands and gigged around the east LA scene for a little while, but the bands eventually dissolved. I felt disenchanted by music at that point. Studying music had been amazing and I cherished every moment of that time, but once the school was done and the bands started having issues I felt I needed to have security. I found a job back in San Diego at a bio lab, then started playing in an indie band down there. After playing regularly in SD and LA, that band eventually fell apart and I just focused on work and being healthy.

Overall that time though, I had written my own songs and except for playing a few open mics, I had pretty much kept them to myself. At the end of 2017, I started doing some recording with a buddy Alex Dausch at Studio Studios. We tracked four cover songs. Then the company I worked for shutdown in 2018 and I took the time to track some original tunes with Alex and also with my buddy Mike Kamoo at Earthling Studios. Then I traveled through Southeast Asia for five months, came back to California and now I am releasing the songs periodically throughout 2019.

We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
I would say that it has not been a smooth road and some, or maybe most, of that is certainly my own fault. The biggest struggle for me was figuring out what I wanted from music and dealing with my own insecurities. With all the different bands I played in, it was always a super different dynamic between members and the vision for the path forward for the band. Every band I played in taught me something that I still think about today. And many of those bands have people that I still keep in contact with as friends. There were a couple of bands that I played in where pretty much everything was perfect, but my own insecurities caused me to leave. I definitely regret those decisions and I have learned that the bond between bandmates, when strong, is what should be valued more than ability or personal setbacks. Now, I love creating songs and working with musicians in the studio. There is no “band drama.” But I do miss having a band to play with regularly. That time spent jamming in the rehearsal room is so majical. Maybe I will start one soon.

We’d love to hear more about your work and what you are currently focused on. What else should we know?
I am a musician and songwriter going by the name Allyson Band. So far, I have four cover songs released under the band name Allyson, one cover remix by Famous James and two original songs under the band name Allyson Band. Four more original tunes and a few remixes are set to release later this year. Because they were the first recordings, the covers are cherished songs to me. I am super proud of how they turned out. They were tunes that I loved to just strum on acoustic guitar and sing. Originally, I was going to simply do slow acoustic mellow covers. But once in the studio, creative ideas started flooding into Alex and my head, and we started trying different things.

Basically, I treated the songs with a foundation of acoustic guitar strumming the chords and me singing the words and then there were no preconceptions of what could be added on top. New harmonies and new melodic riffs that have nothing to do with the original song but which sounded interesting to my ear is what I started creating. Alex Dausch really helped fill in all the gaps with his amazing skills on various instruments. And then there are the original songs. They were an attempt by me to create songs that have a familiarity to them and some hooks but are also written about my real life experiences.

Other than the song “Come Like It Goes,” all the original songs are about my life or those I know. They haven’t all been released yet but I am really proud that my songs are sharing my experiences and maybe people can relate to them. Even though I have been playing in bands for a long time, as a songwriter/producer I feel that I just getting started and I can’t wait to try new ideas out. And I love getting other musician friends to mess with my songs and do remixes. It’s so cool how many ways a melody or harmonic structure can be altered. And I am grateful to have talented friends willing to mess with my music.

What were you like growing up?
As a kid, I idolized Jerry Lee Lewis. I saw the movie “Great Balls of Fire” and was mesmerized by this dude that turned the piano into an edgy rock n roll instrument. So I wanted to be that, but I never figured out how to play that style of music on the piano and my lessons were all based on classical tunes. I also got into the whole 90s rap thing that was going on and wrote some of my own raps as a kid. One time I remember telling my friend’s mom that I wrote raps and she wanted to hear it. I said it was too dirty and she kind of scoffed at me. Then I performed the rap and I saw her jaw just drop. I guess she didn’t realize I was trying to copy NWA and so that was pretty hilarious.

Growing up in southern California, with pools a plenty and the ocean, my mom wanted my sister and I to be strong swimmers. So I spent a lot of time at swim workouts and swim meets, which actually exposed me to what other kids were listening to because there was a lot of down time to share CDs. Overall, I was a pretty shy kid who liked learning and doing creative projects at home, like making videos with my sister or recording the piano using multiple tape records to create a multi-tracked song.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://allysonband.com/
• Email: allysonband1@gmail.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/allysonband/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/allysonband/
• Other: https://soundcloud.com/allysonband

Image Credit:
Photos by Margot Robert-Aumercier at IG @lapetitephoto.la

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