DAUZAT ST. MARIE- (it’s pronounced Doe Zahht… and add a little extra emphasis on the “SAINT” in St. Marie)
Interview conducted on May 29, 2020
by Dan Locke/cover photo Jay Gilbert
Los Angeles-based singer/songwriter duo DAUZAT ST. MARIE—(pronounced dō’-zaht, “like robot,” as guitarist Mat Dauzat says) known to many as the voices and guitar of the accomplished Los Angeles rock band Hydrovibe–is gearing up to spread their impassioned harmonic musical synergy with fans both far and wide with today’s highly anticipated release of their new song, “Where Were You?”
What is your upbringing?
Heather: I grew up in a very small town on a bayou in South Louisiana. Yes, I’m a Cajun! I learned how to cook gumbo and jambalaya at a young age…and practically everyone I know is musically or artistically inclined. Regretfully, I don’t know much Cajun French, but I still have my accent. I love talking to people, and I love being on stage. In fact, if you knew me as a child you would have often seen me standing on a counter or chair singing my heart out – LOUDLY!
Mat: I grew up in a small town in North Louisiana – quite different than Heather’s world of South Louisiana. Both equally awesome, though.
How did you discover music?
Mat: I have brothers who are ten and eleven years older than me, so I would always sneak into their room to listen to their classic rock records. That exposed me to Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, Boston, Lynyrd Skynyrd, etc. at an early age. It established a musical ground foundation for me to cut my teeth on.
Heather: My interests in classic rock from the ‘60s and ‘70s was heavily influenced by the area I grew up in–deep in Cajun country on a bayou in South Louisiana. In fact, it was a long time before I realized that The Beatles, Queen, Genesis, and Journey weren’t current hits, but I’m grateful for that solid entree into good songwriting with singers who certainly know how to bring it!
How did you start to write music?
Mat: My parents said that I was able to whistle before I could even speak… and would come up with my own melodies. I taught myself piano at age three by fumbling around until I could mimic songs that I had heard. In doing so, I would always come up with my own melodies and riffs along the way. It has always just been a very natural thing for me.
Heather: I started much later than that. I really only got serious about songwriting when I met Mat, and we started the band together.
How did you get your band together?
Heather: I had heard that a guy in high school in Ruston, Louisiana (where I had just moved for college) was putting a band together. It sounded like a fun way to meet people, so I auditioned. Mat and I clicked musically, so we started performing acoustically at local coffee shops while forming our rock band Hydrovibe. Our duo, Dauzat St. Marie, spun from Hydrovibe around 2014.
Heather- How did you learn to sing?
I’ve never had formal singing lessons. I’ve just always loved singing… in the car, in my bedroom, anywhere there was music on. For me, it’s always been something I am compelled to do. If you catch me unaware in a store, I’m most probably humming to myself or singing whatever’s playing on the sound system.
Mat- Do you remember how you got your first guitar?
Mat: Very vividly so! Some of my earliest memories were that I wanted to play guitar. I even tried to build my own rudimentary guitar-like instruments when I was very young. For some reason, I was shy about asking my parents for a guitar, so I stuck with the only instrument in the home – the piano. One day while playing around in our attic, I found an old beat-up acoustic guitar and FELL IN LOVE! I brought the instrument down and immediately began dissecting classic Led Zeppelin riffs.
And do you still have it?
Mat: You know… I’m not sure! I’ll have to check with my parents to see if they still have it. Sitting in that hot Louisiana attic for years before I discovered it had done a real number on the neck. The action was so high, it was really hard to fret chords. The instrument was not really worth saving, but I kinda hope it is still around for sentimental value.
Mat- Before Taylor what was your favorite model, made, and year guitar that you owned?
Mat: I don’t know what it is about me and attic guitars, but the guitar I was playing before my relationship with Taylor Guitars was a 1954 Gibson LG-1 acoustic that my aunt found in an attic of a house she purchased. She gifted the guitar to me, and it was in fairly rough condition, but I was able to get a local luthier to give it the love it needed to sing again. It’s a great sounding guitar. I still use it on records from time to time.
How was NAMM?
Heather: It was a whirlwind of performances and interviews… and a little bit of time to catch up with friends in the business.
How did you pick whose name came first in the band’s name?
Heather: We struggled with the band name for a while, but once we decided to use our names we didn’t put much thought beyond that. So, we went with what sounds right and looks correct visually.
Your big break was being the songwriter for a song (Killer Inside) which was on the movie Saw III. How was it to have a song on a soundtrack which people actually remember? Because most music from a soundtrack people don’t remember.
Mat: It was an absolute honor! Not only was Hydrovibe the first female-fronted band included in the soundtracks of the SAW franchise at that time, our song was the ONLY song in the movie SAW III. Our inclusion in both, as well as having our video in the SAW III Director’s Cut DVD and the SAW Trilogy Box Set, really was a huge boost to our careers and set us on a trajectory that most young songwriters don’t get to experience. We are forever thankful.
How did you became friends of Rick Springfield and Pat Benatar and her husband Neil Giraldo?
Mat: Rick discovered Dauzat St. Marie through his front-of-house guy and invited us to open one of his “Stripped Down” solo acoustic shows in Reno, Nevada. After that show, he basically invited us to open any and all of his “Stripped Down” shows, which we DID! We toured all over the U.S. with him for about four years, which led to our inclusion on the Rick Springfield / Pat Benatar & Neil Giraldo Summer U.S. tour in 2018, which has now led us to our upcoming tour with Rick Springfield and Chicago! Talk about a fruitful friendship!!! We are very blessed.
What is your favorite track on the album?
Mat: I would say my favorite is “Time Slips Away.” It’s the fan favorite and usually our show-closer.
Heather: It’s hard to choose a favorite, but I’m partial to the dark, moodiness of “Sinking Down.”
How do you stay healthy while touring?
Mat: That can be a tough one! We get better and better about making healthier choices and paying attention to health on tour as we go. In our earlier touring days, it was quite often dollar menu eating and cheap booze drinking. I cringe a little even thinking about it now! Combine that with late nights, early mornings, long drives, and smoky rock clubs, and you don’t exactly have a recipe for longevity! We now try to eat as healthy as possible, which is a bit easier on the bigger tours because there are usually healthy choices at the catering area. We also try to get in some workouts whenever we can. We’ve been following the YouTube channel BodyFit By Amy, where there is a great deal of High Intensity Interval Training workouts that only require body weight. That has been a game-changer!
What are you’re feeling about streaming music?
Mat: MIXED! We see the great benefit of having our music so easily accessible that it can be quickly and easily spread far and wide. That helps with exposure, but the pay is so incredibly low that it is a minuscule stream of income for most artists.
Digital vs. vinyl?
Mat: If you are asking how we consume music, then definitely digital. I like the whole concept of vinyl, but we don’t own a record player. I totally get why people are gravitating back toward vinyl, though, and we would like to release music on vinyl in the near future.
Heather: Like Mat said, we listen to digital music, but I really miss flipping through my parents’ vinyl collections, studying the liner notes and artwork, and putting that needle on an album to listen from start to finish. There’s so much weight to that! I’m really hoping we can release our music on vinyl soon.
Any plans to tour?
Mat: ABSOLUTELY! As soon as we can see a window of opportunity where it is safe and socially responsible to tour, you can bet that Dauzat St. Marie will LEAP at the opportunity! We can’t wait!
What song from the past is in your mind right now? And what is the meaning that song means to you?
Heather: During this shutdown, we’ve been devouring music documentaries on TV… everything from “A Life in Waves” about Suzanne Ciani to “There’s Something You Should Know” about Duran Duran to the “Beastie Boys Story” to “No Direction Home” and “Rolling Thunder Revue” about Bob Dylan. For me, the live versions of Dylan’s “Isis” stick with me because of his intensity and raw emotion in the performances.
Mat: Typically my mind is preoccupied by the song of tomorrow more so than songs of yesterday, but like Heather said, we’ve been watching a lot of documentaries and have especially been on a Bob Dylan kick of late. He had a birthday on Sunday, so we were playing around learning his song “Masters Of War” (you can find a clip of us performing it on our socials) and I was just thinking to myself, man, this is basically a dark folk version of Black Sabbath’s “War Pigs” (recorded 7 years later). Both are super heavy in their own way. Interestingly enough, Dauzat St. Marie has covered both songs and for some reason it ends up sounding quite a bit dark bluegrass when we do.
Do you know if you won the Tiny Desk Contest yet? Why did you pick the song you used?
Heather: They haven’t made the announcement yet. Fingers crossed! It’s hard to choose one song to define Dauzat St. Marie, but we decided that “Little Warrior” has big impact emotionally and lyrically. We’re hoping people who are introduced to us via the Tiny Desk Contest will be intrigued and want to dig deeper into us as musicians.
How do you feel the Covid-19 virus going to affect the music business in the future?
Mat: Oh… wow. So difficult to predict right now. We are friends with many industry moguls and traveling troubadours alike, and we ask the same question of them often, and everyone has such differing outlooks. I know for the immediate future; the big tours will be a no-go for a bit. Our Summer U.S./Canada arena tour with Chicago and Rick Springfield just got pushed to 2021. For acts of our stature, however, we can be nimble and get into smaller venues sooner. When it is safe and socially responsible to do so, of course. You can bet we’ll be on tour as soon as we can. Will crowds are ready to pack back into smaller venues so quickly, or will that take some time? We’ll see.
What have you been doing with your self-quarantine?
Heather: We are staying very busy! In a time like this, you must be fluid and able to adapt to whatever each day brings. So, we’re releasing music and trying out new formats like online concerts.
Heather why did you decide to form a partnership with Susan G. Komen during these times?
Heather: After my battle with cancer, we both felt a bit aimless. We had spent about a year fighting with everything we had and putting all else in our lives on hold. So, when I finally got my cancer-free diagnosis, in addition to the elation and joy of having beat it, we also felt a bit lost. Suddenly, there was no outlet for our energies. So, we decided to turn our efforts outwards to help others going through similar battles. We reached out to Komen last year to partner up with them so that our efforts could be realized in a big way. For example, for every $150 raised, Komen can provide a free mammogram to a woman. And statistics show that 1 in 8 women will have a form of breast cancer. So, these mammograms are crucial!
Have you discovered or rediscovered any new hobbies?
Heather: We knew that our release “Where Were You?” needed a music video to accompany it. Since the traditional methods of shooting a video were off limits during the shutdown, we figured out how to do it ourselves. So, we can now add “Filmmaker” and “Video Editor” to our resumés. I’ve also been painting and drawing again, something I really haven’t done much of since graduating from art school.
Lots of people are doing nightly concerts over either YouTube, Facebook, Twitter or Instagram. Are you planning to do something like that?
Heather: We have done about four or five online concerts and social media takeovers and have really enjoyed them. We’ve been solely focused on our song release and video premiere. But now, we will set up more of these online concerts. We’d love to hear which social platform your audience likes most!
Do you think it will be possible to make a living doing concerts this way?
Mat: This is what is so scary – most non-major artists were barely making a living BEFORE this pandemic! The music biz has become tougher and tougher over time, and now this pandemic has completely squashed the live show interface between artists and fans for a while. I’d say that touring represented at least 90% of Dauzat St. Marie’s overall music income, and I can’t see the live streaming shows fully replacing that income. Sounds bleak, I know, but that is where my mind is at right now. Ask me again this time next week and I might have a differing outlook. This is all so new and things are evolving rapidly. Dauzat St. Marie will survive because we are resourceful, super scrappy, and full of hustle, but it will be one of the biggest challenges to our music career to date by far.
First, it was an article in the New York Times, then Rolling Stones talked about it and finally, Live Nation CEO said that concerts may not start again until the fall of 2021. Do you think this could happen?
Mat: To clarify, in their reporting, they are talking about major touring, not small venues. I think it is almost certain that major touring won’t likely be cranking back up until 2021 at this point due to the sheer number of moving parts. I personally believe it will be back up and running way before the Fall of 2021. Will it be running at full capacity? Maybe not, but it’ll be running. Perhaps it gets fully back to normal by the Fall of 2021? I like that thought!
Heather: I think everyone’s doing their best to figure this out, and I see lots of hurdles to overcome when it comes to the large concerts and tours. Of course, Mat and I are hoping that they come back sooner than fall of 2021! We’ll just have to brainstorm, get creative with concerts in the meantime, and hope for the best!”
With Social Distance being the norm. Do you feel that it maybe the end of the music fest for the next couple of years?
Mat: I don’t think it will be the END of the music fest at all, they just might look a little different than the music fests we’ve come to know. We’ll likely see temperature checks, face masks, a safe distancing between concert goers, etc. for the immediate future, but those guidelines will evolve over time. One must also bear in mind that all it takes is a drastic change in virus data (in either direction) or the development of a vaccine/treatment to quickly reverse a lot of these restrictions. Hopefully, we’ve learned to never rule out the unexpected!
What about Holographic concerts in our living room?
Mat: I have a friend who owns a tech company that will be bringing us concerts in Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality in the near future. They have scanned and accurately recreated some legendary venues and will be able to scan and recreate artists/bands to put them in these environments to play shows. He let me demo it. Once you put those VR goggles on, you are in a strange, yet familiar new world. It’s realistic and trippy! Will that fully replace the old in-person analog shows? Unlikely. It might be a really cool alternate source of entertainment, though!
Heather: It all intrigues me, but at the same time we would then be competing with departed legends like Freddie Mercury or Bowie or Prince, wouldn’t we??? LOL
How do you see yourself in the next five years?
Heather: In five years, I will be healthy, happy, and touring the world without the social distancing that’s required right now!
Mat: What she said! Wherever she goes I go anyway!
Anything you would like to say in closing?
Heather: Thank you, Dan, for a great set of questions. We’d love for your readers to keep in touch with us. Obviously, performing our songs is the driving force for what we do, but a huge reward for us as touring musicians is meeting people from all different walks of life. Those connections are what keep us up late at night writing songs and learning how to make music videos. 😉 Since we can’t tour right now, we’re relying on social media and our website to keep these connections alive!
Mat: Thank you for some great questions! It made us think quite a bit!
You must be logged in to post a comment.