If you didn’t get the opportunity to see The Dirty Water Dance Band (DWDB) at Killington Resort’s Cooler in the Mountains concert series in 2023, you’re in luck because Killington is bringing them back this Saturday, April 19, outside the K1 Base Lodge, as part of Dazed and Defrosted at 1:30 p.m. They share the bill with Diggin Dirt.
The Dirty Water Dance Band is a six-piece band fronted by husband and wife duo Josh and Melissa Ayala.
Speaking with Josh Ayala, he described the band as high-energy.
“We adapt classic covers,” Ayala said. “We play stuff like the Grateful Dead but make it our own. We don’t play it like you hear on the radio. We make our own adaptation of it. We’re working on our first album, so we’re pushing some of those originals. We’re a big band of talented people. Anyone on the stage could run their own band, but we all do it together.”
DWDB consists of Ayala on vocals and guitar, his wife Melissa on vocals,
George Smith on organ/keys/vocals, Jake “One-take Jake” Goodwin on guitar, Carl Hedin on bass, and a fill-in drummer Alex Brander from BIG D and the Kid’s Table, who tour all “over the world.”
“The band has three lead singers, all of whom are songwriters too,” Ayala said. “There are a lot of harmonies going on. The guitar players give you an Allman Brothers feel.”
Although the DWDB has been together for eight years, many band members have played together for up to 20 years.
Because DWDB’s approach to covers is not to merely imitate the original, Ayala said it’s caused the band some hiccups in the past.
“I was so stubborn in the beginning when we started to play music. We couldn’t get jobs because we wouldn’t play all the Top 40 stuff. It took a long time to get to that point of ‘Oh, this is what these guys do,’ and then for people to expect it. Now, they would be shocked if we played a straight-up tune. We haven’t even played a song the same way twice. Some of these we’re recording as our own version.”
DWDB has been putting together an album in their Ayala’s basement recording studio for a while now, but they plan on releasing a single or two this spring.
“Every member of the band has two kids each, all under the ages of 10, so everybody is in the thick of it, plus with us all not being in the same town, it’s hard to get it all together,” Ayala said of the long-gestating album. “Having our own studio makes it the slowest process ever, compared to renting somewhere and going in for a weekend. We’re trying to do it all ourselves. Melissa has written a lot of lyrics for the album. The style we made fits the way we cover a song. That’s definitely our sound for the originals.”
Ayala’s been writing music for nearly 22 years and playing guitar for almost as long. One of his major influences is Bob Dylan, and his favorite type of song to write is one where people interpret his words and come up with what they think it’s about.
“I have a song that sounds like you lost your best friend, but it’s about missing a place we used to play with a community of musicians because we lost that place. It sounds like a love song, but really, it’s me missing this bar.”
DWDB calls what they do musical therapy, and they’ll be on call to administer plenty of it this Saturday at Killington.
For more information, go to: thedirtywaterdanceband.com.
