Interview by Marisa Whitaker. Photography by Sydney Frost.
Dallas Wax is a five-piece psych-Southern-rock band from Brooklyn. It consists of vocalist and namesake Ryan Dallas Wax, guitarist Matt Stawinski, bassist Fons Urbaneja, keyboardist Owen Hite, and drummer Gabriel Seiler. The band’s first EP, The Air We Breathe, was released in October 2024. This year, they’re touring the states, playing gigs around NYC, and gearing up for the release of their debut album. I sat down to talk with Ryan, Matt, and Gabriel at Duck Duck bar in Williamsburg.
Dallas Wax performs live tonight (5.20.25!) at Baby’s All Right (site of our recent mag fair!) in support of Teen Jesus and the Jean Teasers so you know where to be…
Marisa Whitaker: I’m not gonna out you guys, of course.
Ryan Wax: It’s like that Almost Famous thing. He turns back, and he’s like, “Write the truth.”
MW: Y’all are relatively new. You started in 2023?
RW: I mean, sorta, yeah.
Gabriel Seiler: I was talking to Kenzo [Repola] last night, and he said, 10 years Nautics has been a band. That does make me feel new.
RW: Same with a lot of bands. Telescreens are like 10 years old, and Cab Ellis. But yeah, to answer your question, we established September 2023. First show was in October 2023.
MW: And Dallas Wax came after Water Gun, right? [Brooklyn-based alt-rock band including Ryan as guitarist and Gabriel as drummer]
RW: Yeah.
MW: Did you (Ryan) initiate Dallas?
RW: Yeah. I wrote the demos. I had seven. Narrowed it down to the five that are on the EP The Air We Breathe.
Matt Stawinski: What were the other two demos?
RW: They were just not the vibe. They were super sad-boy. Anyway, I had demos that were pretty fleshed out. I brought them to each guy in the band, and they listened to them separately. Everyone was like, “I’m down.” Owen [Hite] came into the picture as we were recording and finishing the EP.
MW: Oh, y’all got straight into it?
RW: Yeah. We were recording the stuff before the band was even put together. Before we’d had our first rehearsal or first show or anything.
MS: You just went in and did it with Gabriel.
RW: And Owen came in and did keys. Ethan Matt [“creative associate” and friend] played some keys on it too.
MW: Why’d you go about it that way?
RW: I had been playing with bands in college where I was singing, but I really wanted a band where I was a frontman, selfishly, or whatever. I love the Water Gun stuff and playing with them, but my wheelhouse is more the blues rock, psych rock kind of thing. I had the bandwidth to do a new project, so I started making demos in my apartment. It came together really well.
GS: It’s nice that we got the recording done so early because the process between recording and release takes a lot longer than I wish it took. We got to start rolling it out pretty early in the band’s life.
RW: I think that’s a big part of the reason we’ve been able to do as much stuff as we’ve done in a year and a half of being a band. A year after being a band, we already had an EP out, and then after a year and a month, we were recording an album. I think putting the music out first really helped us get shows, get gigs, get heard, get new bands and people on board.
MW: How did you pull everybody in? How did you know everybody?
RW: Fons [Urbaneja], Ethan, and I were at NYU. I knew I had those guys. I met Matt a year before we started the band. We were just hanging out and jamming because Ethan and Matt went to Michigan together. Ethan was like, “I gotta connect you guys because you guys both like guitar and have the same influences.” I met Gabriel randomly at a show, and we hit it off.
MW: What show?
RW: It was at Arlene’s Grocery. I remember, I walked out to smoke a cig, and I started talking to Gabriel about music. We went to Welcome to the Johnsons in the Lower East Side.
GS: I remember when we were chatting, I asked you at some point – I looked around, making sure nobody was listening – “Do you like John Mayer?” You gotta be careful saying that, man.
RW: Matt came to a Water Gun show before I was in Water Gun. I was like, “I met this guy (Gabriel), he’s cool, and I want to go see his band.” I remember watching Gabriel drum, and I looked over to Matt, and I was like, “That’s gotta be the guy.” Then Owen went to University of Georgia. I’m from Atlanta originally, and so a couple of my friends from high school went to Georgia and knew Owen. When he moved up to New York, they were like, “You gotta play with this guy. He’s really good.” We met at the studio, and I heard him play, and it was like, “He’s the guy.” Everyone was the guy in different ways.
GS: It’s the Avengers, man.
RW: Yeah, it kind of was like that. “I’m putting together a team.”
MS: Everyone’s very different, too.
MW: In what way?
MS: Musically, in terms of taste, the way that we play our instruments. We all play so differently. I think it’s a unique mix for sure.
RW: I picture it as a five-way Venn diagram. In the center circle is blues, psych rock, and classic rock, and then everybody has their own stuff outside the diagram.
MW: I love y’all’s individual Spotify playlists on your page.
RW: I think that’s a good representation of what people are super into.
MW: I gotta go and actually listen to them. Why isn’t [creative associate] Ethan in the band? *half kidding because I know Ethan’s a rapper*
RW: I consider him a creative associate of the band. He’s good because his brain is wired a lot differently than ours. He has a more modern view on music. We’re all very old school, I think, in the way that we want to do things. And if we did things the way we wanted to, we probably wouldn’t be where we’re at. He’s, foundationally, a good person to have in your ear. Sometimes he annoys the piss out of me, but I know it’s all out of love because he wants the project to do well.
MS: Ethan, I think he has a great mind. He also has a lot of experience performing. He gives us a lot of feedback on our mix, our performances, and everything that happens at the shows. Ethan gives us a lot of great feedback that we trust. We trust his taste too.
GS: He’s been in the group chat since the beginning. We need somebody to yell at us to make TikToks. It is also nice that he doesn’t listen to the songs outside of our shows. When we got in the studio, he went up and recorded the album with us. I listen to our songs all the time. And that’s partly because, as a drummer, I don’t have a kit in my home. Sometimes I get to go to our rehearsal space early, crank some stuff out. I can do rudimentary exercises, like on a pillow or something. I don’t get to practice that much, so listening to myself when we record our rehearsals is so important. I think we all are so familiar with the songs because we play them a lot. So it’s nice to have somebody, when we get to the studio, who has a fresh ear.
MW: I can totally see how he has a modern approach. Even though he’s not an outward rock ‘n’ roller, it’s still cool that he helps and y’all trust him. To have someone around like Ethan, who knows about the industry, is great too, as a lot of local bands may not have that same insight. And it’s impressive how much y’all have done as a young band. Outside of him, do y’all have a team? Or are you doing everything yourselves?
RW: I’m pretty much doing a lot of the management stuff. We booked the tour ourselves, with some help from this band, Underground Springhouse. Their tour manager, Sean McLeod, is a good homie, and he sent us a bunch of leads and contacts. We booked a lot of the shows through his contacts. People like that, good people, have helped.
MW: Y’all were on some early bills with good local bands, like The Gasoline and Savoia.
GS: Pure charisma baby. I mean, you chat with somebody, and they’re like, “We’re dying to hang out with you, so you might as well book our band.”
RW: A lot of our first shows, we were on as a support for bands that were from out of town or more established bands. We had a lot of opening slots at Mercury Lounge, which was a good way to get tight with each other and have people hear us. I would say that’s another reason we were able to hit the ground running. It was nobody’s first time performing. We have a lot of chops playing live, from previous bands, playing in college and high school. Performing came pretty naturally to all of us. There’s a lot of little things that happen live that you can kind of tell with people who don’t play live …
MS: You don’t have any amateur moments.
RW: Like time between songs, knowing when to tune, when to talk, when to play songs into each other. That’s one thing that Gabriel really brought to Water Gun, that I wanted to bring to Dallas Wax, was transitioning into songs really smoothly. It makes you seem really tight, really pro.
MW: Y’all were super tight and clean on Friday (March 14 at Baby’s All Right).
GS: It’s another thing to do to get people to come see you again. I feel like we spend so much time rehearsing because every set is so different. There’s different transitions, cool moments, a new cover. Changing up what you do every show is important.
MW: I was gonna ask y’all. How do y’all strive to do a completely new performance every time?
GS: We don’t play the same setlist.
MS: Always a new cover. The cover is usually dependent on the gig. When we went to New Orleans, we played Dr. John.
RW: Yeah, we want to keep it fresh. Definitely depending on the bill and the venue, our set changes. We’re playing in Boston in a couple days, and the bands we’re playing with are heavy, kind of punk, so we’ll probably do a more upbeat, louder set. We’re going down South later, and we’ll have longer sets where we can jam and space out more, have dips in energy and stuff. A handful of us come from a jam band kind of background. That’s the most fun part about a jam band, the spontaneity of it all. I don’t want to go and play the same set every night, same solo every night. That’s not fun. It feels like a job. And we like to keep people on their toes. When you play so much in New York, it’s pretty easy to play so many of the same venues. The way you keep your people and friends coming to see you is making it so where they’re not knowing exactly what’s gonna happen.
MW: And y’all are working on an album?
RW: Yeah, we recorded it. We’re mixing it now, so we’re hoping to have it wrapped by the end of April, and then figure out what to do with it.
MW: Yeah. Figure out the roll out and everything.
GS: I’m the guy, I just click my heels, I’m so excited about it. I’m like, “Let’s do it. Get it out and whatever. It’s fucking ready.”
MW: How do you envision the rollout?
RW: You, obviously, were a part of the music video [for unreleased track “Girl Like Me”]. Having all of the assets ready to go before we even post an announcement or anything. I’m with Gabriel, I want it to be out. I want people to hear it because it sounds so good. We’ve put so much time, effort, and money into it sounding that good that it’s worth waiting until we have all of our ducks in a row, all the promotional materials and stuff.
MS: Ethan’s been a huge voice in the conversation too. He lets no stone go unturned when it comes to promoting it, which is great. I’m also like Gabriel, where I just want to put the music out. I think it sounds great. But having that other voice of, “Well, don’t rush it. Make sure you do it right,” is really good.
MW: Are any of the songs you’ve already put out gonna be on there?
RW: No, it’s completely fresh. We’ve been playing them live. People that have come to shows have heard most of the songs. Bands that we idolize, like The Grateful Dead, those guys always play a lot of unreleased stuff at their shows. People knew the songs before they came out. People are excited for “Girl Like Me” and “Sharks” to come out. They remember them from the show.
MW: On Friday, so many people were singing back the words to y’all. That’s gotta be a good feeling.
RW: People know when the drops are, when to pull their phones out and take videos, and that’s super sick. That’s marketing for the songs on its own.
MW: What makes Dallas Wax stand out? What makes y’all different?
GS: The keys. That’s a big part of how we pick our covers. Owen’s New Orleans style piano, Oregon stuff, is not that common in New York. It’s hard to come by. That plays a role in our covers, because we want to do stuff people don’t see other bands do because they can’t do it.
RW: I think our influences are different. Most of us are from the South, and that has a big role in it. Most people in the city are from Connecticut or whatever, and that’s cool. It’s a lot of Strokes- and Ramones-influenced stuff. We have a lot of Southern Rock band influence, which is harder to come by in the city. We also like to get out of the box in the studio. We’re gonna have some sitar on the record. We’re gonna have Greg [Carleton] from Cab Ellis play sax on a song. We used almost every instrument that was in Graham Stone’s studio, where we recorded.
GS: There’s jingle bells!
RW: There’s jingle bells, a rain stick, a thunder boom stick, a tamborine, a Ugandan goat drum.
GS: I bought wind chimes. I was like, “Can I please put these in there?”
MS: We sampled his dog.
MW: That’s rock ‘n’ roll. What does rock ‘n’ roll mean to y’all? Why do y’all still wanna keep doing it?
RW: It’s timeless. Ever since the creation of the commercialized music industry, rock ‘n’ roll has been prevalent. It’s many different forms. It’s a cycle, and it comes back, and trends come back within rock ‘n’ roll.
MS: There’s some energy when you get in a room with everybody, and then you just kick it off. You’ve got the power and the drums, music’s ready, everything’s loud. It’s such a good time.
RW: I wouldn’t say that we’re doing anything super unique. I don’t think you have to, as long as you’re doing it justice, and you’re doing it well. Rock ‘n’ roll will never die. It’ll never be out of style. It’s always gonna be cool. People like The Rolling Stones and The Cure are still selling out MSG, 40, 50 years later.
GS: I want us to go more rock ‘n’ roll. I think we should start smashing toilets in hotel rooms, punching drywall.
MW: That’s what I’m saying. Which famous rock star are each of y’all the most like? I think Gabriel is like Joe Walsh, if we’re talking about throwing TV sets out of hotel windows.
RW: I’d love to be Jimmy Page, minus the pedophilia. Jimmy was kind of the first rock guy to be glamorous and really embrace that “I’m a god” type-thing, with what he wore, and with the way he was doing voodoo and shit.
MS: Someone who’s no longer alive, certainly Stevie Ray Vaughn. If there’s one guy I would’ve wished to see live, it would be him. That energy and intensity of only one guitar on stage, and to see what he’s doing, it’s insane. You listen to him play, and he never misses, never.
MW: Y’all are in the middle of a tour. How’s it been?
GS: We’re hitting the road for four days. We’re going to Virginia and ending that last leg in North Carolina. That’s gonna be a long drive back. I’m excited to see what happens. Explore local gas stations. Get some gas station sunglasses.
RW: That’s one of the most fun parts, for me, being able to see new places. Driving and seeing America and all its fucking horrible glory.
MW: What’s in the van on a road trip?
MS: Cigarettes.
RW: Lots of beef jerky. Weed, beef jerky, and cigarettes.
MS: We’re pretty simple.
RW: Sometimes we’ll read to each other. Read each other bedtime stories.
GS: Owen read me Moby Dick when we were sleeping in the same room one night. He did all the voices.
[Ethan walks in.]
MW: What do you have to say about Dallas Wax?
EM: On the record? Great American band.
MW: And y’all are headlining each show?
RW: Everywhere, yes, besides Virginia.
GS: We’re headlining a huge festival in North Carolina.
RW: We floated playing a show in Boone, and some guys helped us put it together. It’s our first fest, and it’s the first year of the festival, too. So hopefully we can kick it off on a good note. We’re so excited for that show.
MW: What are your other plans for this year? Goals?
RW: We had a meeting at the start of the year.
MS: “The meeting.”
RW: The meeting. With a whiteboard and everything man. Shit was professional. We lined up what we wanted to do, and one thing was, we wanted to play 10 shows out of town. We’re three months in and we’re already accomplishing that. We’re now trying to double that.
[Everyone claps]
MW: And you will.
RW: And we will. For the long term, it’s an extension of that. Success for me, if we’re able to be on the road all the time, that’s what I want to do. That’s my dream lifestyle. Survive and live off on going on the road, seeing the country, going to Europe, hanging with my guys, playing music.
MS: And recording in the off time.
RW: Keep making good shit and playing it for people to like it.
MS: I think that’s what we all want.
RW: Everyone wants it. I think that’s another reason why we’ve been able to do what we’ve done in a year and a half. Everyone’s aligned. It’s a priority.
MW: How would you each describe Dallas Wax in five words?
GS: Stepson rock, drink more beers.
MS: Powerful, fun, psychedelic, blues rock.
RW: Just some guys havin’ fun.
MW: I love Dallas Wax.
RW: Dallas Wax loves Marisa Whitaker. And Dallas Wax loves Deli Mag.
MW: Thanks for chatting with me fellas.