“My dream bill would require a time machine and several venues,” says longtime Valley rocker Mike Dumont, aka Dr. Liv Damage, when asked who he’d most like to share a stage with.
“Iggy and the Stooges with James Williamson live in Detroit, 1974. The Ramones, live at CBGB’s 1978. ‘Dio’ Sabbath, original ‘Heaven and Hell Tour’—any venue. It wouldn’t matter. And Peter Tosh, live at The Bottom Line in NYC, mid-’80s.”
Dumont takes his rock—and rock history—seriously. His latest venture, The Immolators, is a testament to his passion formed alongside a group of similarly displaced local musicians: guitarist Bryan Parsons, keyboardist Chris LaPlante, and drummer Buddy Runstrom.
“Everybody was doing their own thing in other bands and, due to various transgressions, we were all sent to the island of misfit musicians, or as I like to refer to it, ‘the circle of not good enough,'” he says.
“I wanted to start a new band and I knew my best bet was to round up all the rock and roll rejects who were recently sent packing from other bands. It was like going to the orphanage and rounding up some children: ‘Okay, you, get in the car, and you—can you play drums? Okay, get in the car. And how ’bout you?’ The whole thing is bound to implode.”
Most of Dumont’s past projects, like The Probates and The Plague, relied on hard-rocking riffs and the standard guitar-bass-drums formula. He contends that the Immolators rock to a slightly different groove, influenced in equal parts by the moody Joy Division and the swaggering Stooges, with a touch of Guns N’ Roses thrown in for good measure.
“I ran into Chris Laplante at the Sierra Grille one night and mentioned to him that his whole drum machine/keyboard thing was great,” he says. “I originally had delusions of a rapid-fire drum program combined with distortion-driven 16th notes on the bass. You know: music to relax to. When we first started practicing, it morphed into a more har monic, mid-tempo, Attractions-type groove. The first time we all played together we stopped after the first song and all kinda looked at each other like, ‘Wow, this is a lot different than what we’re used to doing.’ It was just a huge sonic alarm.”
Dumont says the band quickly coalesced in the practice space. “When we first started, I came with some of the songs I had written for the Probates. I had to tweak them slightly because of the keyboards. Writing songs with keyboards is slightly different because you want to leave space for the sustaining notes and the ‘boop boop boop’ fills. Lately Bryan has been coming in with some great guitar riffs and we work around those. It’s really a collaborative effort, and then I come up with some lyrics and it somehow comes together.”
Dumont also daylights as a school teacher. Are his young pupils aware of his music and Liv Damage alter-ego?
“My students know about the band. Some of them have even attended all-ages shows [of mine],” he says. “There is an element of duplicity—you know, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde—but for the most part, I’m just another old man who can’t play Guitar Hero.”
The Immolators play with The Malarians June 10 at 10 p.m. at the Sierra Grille in Northampton.
