Dropsonic will perform at Kirby’s Beer Store on Friday, Sept. 12, on a bill that includes its longtime friends from Oklahoma City, Traindodge, as well as local acts Daikini and Milkwave.
The trio was formed in Atlanta in the 1990s by middle school friends Dan Dixon (guitar, vocals) and David Chase (bass). The longest-running version of Dropsonic solidified with the addition of drummer Brian Hunter by the early 2000s.
That version of the band recorded a string of albums, including “The Big Nothing,” “Belle” and “Insects With Angel Wings” before calling it a day in 2010 after the LP “VI.”
Dropsonic’s songwriting stood out on those early albums, but it was the incandescence of its live shows – where its fusion of Led Zeppelin, Radiohead and The Jesus Lizard was on full display -- that truly cemented the group’s status as a must-see act.
From roughly 2003 until 2010, Wichita became a regular stop for Dropsonic as they performed at now-defunct venues such as The Eagles Lodge and The Cedar as well as numerous gigs at Barleycorn’s (both at its 608 E. Douglas location and its temporary home in Delano where The Monarch is today).
The band’s breakup was sudden, and for some unexpected. A reunion never exactly seemed in the cards. Dixon busied himself with a variety of recording projects for other artists as well as forming PLS PLS (pronounced please please), with Chase joining him in both the live and recording process, and NRCSSST [pronounced narcissist] with his longtime partner Stephanie Luke, known for her work with The Coathangers.
Hunter and Chase both found their own projects, including the latter issuing music that was in the vein of ambient music in recent years.
COVID-19 found Dixon at home and unable to carry out his regular schedule of recording at the studio he keeps outside his home in Atlanta. He revisited the bulk of the band’s catalogue, ultimately reissuing the core releases on vinyl and offering up a rarities set “The Best of The Rest,” which featured material that initially appeared on “Xerxes,” a split EP with Traindodge, and other pieces from a mid-2000s EP sold at shows.
Though he says he was initially reluctant to reform the group, Dixon ultimately booked a hometown gig somewhere in the hazy window of time during which it seemed as though the pandemic was winding down. In the end, Hunter didn’t perform with his old bandmates and Chase and Dixon recruited Chandler Rentz, who played on the latest Dropsonic album (a self-titled affair released earlier in 2025) and is now installed as a permanent member.
Dixon recently spoke about the band’s breakup, reunion and making new and vital music from his home in Atlanta.
The following interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Let’s start with band reactivating. When you broke up over a decade ago, I kind of assumed that was it and there wouldn’t be a reunion. What happened?
We reissued most of our back catalogue in 2020 on vinyl, all the stuff I had the tapes for. I remixed it and remastered it. I have my studio, and with COVID I had to cancel sessions. I started remixing those old records just to play around with them. We ended up putting them out and, obviously, when you go through your whole catalogue like that, you start thinking. Dave and Brian had talked about it with each other and with me. I just did not want to do it. I was the hold out, I guess. I finally said, “All right, I’m in.”
We were going to do one show, but it ended up that Brian did not do the show, and we got out our new drummer Chandler to fill in for him at that gig. It was awesome to play with him; it sounded great. We decided we wanted to keep going. I didn’t want to keep rehashing and playing those old songs. So, the next thing was to write something and see what happened. It took us a couple years between other projects to just chip away at it. I’m really happy with the way that it turned out. I didn’t want to be the old guy band that got back together and made some half-assed record.
Can we talk about your reluctance for a second? After the band was over you did PLS PLS and NRCSSST. Neither of those featured the guitar in the same way; it was almost anti-Dropsonic.
[Laughs.] I like that that’s the M.O. How do I do something completely different? It was 15 years of doing the same thing. I wanted to do other stuff, and I couldn’t do it in that band. That was part of the reason the PLS PLS thing started. We had a mandate on what [Dropsonic] is. But doing that one-off show and having to go back to playing guitar and not just playing guitar but playing guitar like that … I’ve been playing. In NRCSSST, I play guitar, and on PLS PLS records, I play off and on.
It’s not like I don’t play but the way that I played in Dropsonic and having to sing and play that stuff at the same time it was a rude awakening to go back and have to do it. It’s way harder now than it was for me then. It was second nature, but now it’s very difficult. [Laughs.] I’m fine now. I’m getting better at it, but that first show, I thought, “Damn. These songs are complicated. Why did we write it like this?”
As for my reluctance? I’m not the same person. That’s part of it. Part of this new record was getting my head back into that space I used to live in the aughts. I don’t write the same way. Lyrically, I’m not the same. I didn’t want to give into middle-age nostalgia, but it sounded good and having Chandler involved brought some new blood into it. Maybe I wanted to go anti-anti-Dropsonic. [Laughs.]
I always wondered about the breakup and if it was a case of, “We’ve done this for a long time. We hit it really hard. We got this far and it’s hard to see where else we can take this”?
This is my feeling on all of that stuff because I’ve had plenty of time to reflect on whatever I did right or wrong in terms of careerism back in those days. My goal was never to be famous. I never had that as a goal to be rich or famous or to be on a major label. My thing was that I wanted to make records, and I wanted to be respected by my peers, and I wanted to, ideally, make a living in music. I wanted to do what I wanted to do, and I didn’t want to have to go work a day job outside of it. That was it. That was as far as I thought. Even when we had a label with us and the big station in Atlanta was playing “Summer’s Gone,” all that nonsense, I never put much stock in it.
We never sounded like the stuff that was on the radio. I knew that we weren’t going to be a huge band, but I had this thought that it made more sense to make records the way I wanted to make them, write the songs the way that we wanted to write them and not pander or have somebody else change our thing so that we could be on a big label or be more attuned to what was on radio because 99 percent of records don’t become huge. Even major label albums back in those days would have money thrown at them and 99 percent of it would tank. I thought that if I made a record I wasn’t 100 percent behind and then it fails -- which most likely it would if the goal was to be on a big label and sell a million records or whatever -- then what have I done? I’ve made a thing that I didn’t like, and other people didn’t like it either. Great. I have nothing at that point.
That just never made sense to me. It had to be on my terms if at all.
You brought in William DuVall of Alice In Chains as co-producer on the new album. He’s been a friend of the band for a long time.
He was in a band called Comes With The Fall, and we toured with those guys years and years ago. More than anything, Will has always been a huge advocate for this band. He would pitch us to [Alice In Chains guitarist] Jerry Cantrell when he was in the band Jerry had before Alice In Chains started up again. He’s just always been into the band, loves those records and knows them really well. I was afraid to make some old guy record that was not going to be great. Knowing that he knows the band and what the band’s about, he wouldn’t want to change what we’re good at. I used him more as a sounding board. I would send him stuff and say, “Hey, man, are we going in the right direction?” If you’re a real fan of the band you’ll know if this is cool or [think], “Hey, man, maybe don’t. Maybe put this away.” I knew Will would be honest with me.
You’re doing a quick run of shows with Traindodge. You’ve toured with them, or done individual shows many times over the years, and you’ve worked on all their records since 2011. Do you remember meeting them? Was there an immediate bond?
For sure. I think the first time I met them was in St. Louis. I think we played with them at Rocket Bar, early on. Probably ’02 or ’03, when we were first getting out to the Midwest. We must have heard of each other somehow. I met Andrew Elstner [Riddle of Steel, frequent Traindodge tourmates] the first time we went through St. Louis as well. He was working at a record store and had just started the first version of Riddle of Steel with an EP that they’d put out.
But, yeah, right off the rip those guys were homies. I thought they sounded amazing. I loved the band right away. They liked us. They’re such great guys so we just got along. We did the math once, and we did something like 60 or 70 shows with them over the years, which is a pretty hefty amount to do with one other band. I really like being around those dudes.
They drove down to Atlanta and did the album release show for the new album. Just the one show. They came in from Oklahoma for that. I called them first and said, “If you guys want it, you can have it. I know it’s a long drive. I’ll pay you whatever I can pay you to cover it.” They were willing to do that. We’re tight.
You’re coming back to Wichita to play Kirby’s Beer Store, which is where I first saw you in late 2003, I think. I had interviewed you for the free weekly newspaper “F5” and then came out to the show, which I have very specific memories of. What do you remember?
I remember it felt like being inside a coal miner’s lung.
[Laughs.]
I remember that. The smokiest bar I’ve ever been in. You should have a good, fat amount of credit for this: We were on the cover of “F5.” That room was pretty tiny, and it was pretty full if not full. I remember it even kind of spilling out to the outside and it was a weeknight. It was surprising to us because we’d never been to Wichita and there were all these people. I remember that the cat from Ricky Fitts called me at the bar. They were the hot band in the area at the time. They were, like, “Come over and party with us.” I thought, “What is going on in Wichita? Never been here before, and I’m getting calls from some band that’s apparently really cool. This club is full, and we’re on the cover of this thing.” I owe that to you for sure, that was nuts and really cool for us. And, uh, what was the question? [Laughs.]
