Written by: Mark Abell
I had the joy of meeting Dustin Bushnell a.k.a. “Duddy B,” the vocalist and guitarist for the reggae/alt-rock fusion band, The Dirty Heads.
Dustin was nursing himself back to health with a cup of tea and honey after partially losing his voice from a particularly intense East Coast tour with Slightly Stoopid, wherein he was playing a gig almost every other night.
The Huntington Beach outfit will be touring for the rest of the year, with dates across California and Hawaii.
On friendship:
Stereo Embers: I spoke to Rymo, the drummer for Slightly Stoopid. Any funny stories about those guys?
Duddy B: This is the first tour with those guys. We’ve had nights where none of us remember going back to our buses.
SE: Describe the process of collaborating with Matisyahu on “Dance All Night.”
DB: We had built a relationship with him on former tours. As we were doing “Dance All Night” we felt Matis. He just jumped into the booth and killed it.
On possessions:
SE: What items would you bring to a zombie apocalypse?
DB:My shotgun and our tour-bus. I’d turn it into a zombie killing tour bus and would drive around looking for supplies to add onto it then build a stage around it with a cage. We would sell so many zombie CDs and we would be the dopest band.
SE: Do you have any hemp clothes or items that use hemp seeds like cereals, lotions, etc? Think it’ll catch on?
DB: I smoke weed but don’t go looking for that stuff.
SE: Who pioneered the custom Modify Watches collection with Dirty Head’s logos? Is somebody in your clique highly interested in design or was that something pitched to you by a third party?
DB: They wanted to know if they could make watches with our logo–we sent them designs that we liked…it was a percentage deal. Sure, why not?
SE: Pleased with the Dirty Heads T-shirt/sweatshirt collection? Did some of your friends create those graphics?
DB: We have a full merch company that does that. If it’s cold out you’re gonna sell a lot of hoodies.
SE: Any studio equipment that you have been lusting after?
DB: I do recordings at my house–I use mobile recording stuff to get our ideas down. For my mobile recording–the Duet–I love that thing. It’s an amazing interface for mobile recording and I’d recommend that for a quick throwing of some recordings down
Discussing music:
SE: In the event you were locked in solitary confinement, which handful of well-recorded albums would you bring into your holding cell?
DB: Led Zeppelin and Bob Marley–you’re gonna have to listen to it over and over again so you know you won’t get over it. And, some nature sounds–I’ll be locked up and need some fucking sounds.
SE: Any classic Southern California albums inspire you?
DB: I listened to The Doors growing up. I grew up super into Sublime in Long Beach and the punk rock scene–Pennywise…The Offspring was close by as well as Korn. We’ve been lucky about which bands were performing close to us.
SE: It seems like indie rock artists have been releasing 24-bit albums. Do you think it will catch on within the reggae scene?
DB: All that matters is what the group wants to do.
SE: Which current producer’s sounds do you most admire? If you had the opportunity, which producers would ideally produce one of your next albums?
DB: We loved Supa Dups, we loved what we got out of him. We were thinking about getting Diplo to do a track. We’re thinking of using those two guys.
SE: Is there a particular studio you really enjoy recording in? Are there other studios you’d like to try if you had the resources and the opportunity?
DB: We try and use new studios to get new vibes. Sonic Ranch in Tornillo, Texas is one of our favorites. We do most of our recording at home and pick a studio to finish up in.
