Dusty Santamaria’s name flashes across my phone right as I set foot on the porch of the Lakeview home where he’s rented a room from a friend since November, 13 minutes late for our 4 o’clock myself. I answer, letting him know I’ve just arrived. “Angie! The vampire has just awakened. My alarm didn’t go off.” The “vampire” (who is also a troubadour-painter) invites the human in, and I sit in his studio as he freshens up quickly in the next room, explaining what had gone down: an all-nighter to facilitate an early morning airport run in exchange for the use of the departing friend’s car, a bit of cartoons, and an alarm set for the wrong 3 o’clock. It happens.
The studio is filled with little glimpses into Dusty’s world: posters for bygone art and music shows, records and cassettes strewn about, his natal chart on a wall and The Moon tarot card tacked reverently to a filing cabinet. Of course, there are his own paintings and collages, often featuring abstract human forms, some musical in nature, some erotic. The most prominent piece, composed on a 5’x2’ wooden structure, features an actual knife affixed to the boards, in the hand of the painted subject. Gluesticks, twine, paint tubes, and palettes on surfaces and poking out from drawers hint that it’s an active studio—Dusty’s currently preparing for a show at NOLA ‘Nacular that will open in July. The proceeds from the art show will go toward finishing High Art, Heavy Trash, the album he’s been recording over the past few months at Lil Squeeze Studios.
He emerges, presentable, and we get started.
When we first started talking about doing this it was in relation to your album coming out in August, but you’ve also got this art show coming up, you had a recent trip to Santa Fe, you’ve generally had a very eventful year…
I have! The album is the most important thing to me in my life, I think. Another reason that I overslept is ‘cause I got the first round of mixes in last night. I wasn’t just watching cartoons. At first I listened to the mixes of the album and took some mental notes, and then I felt overly exhausted because at that point it was six in the morning! And I was like, “OK. Cartoon comedown.”
So you got the first mixes back—are you done in the studio, or are there more parts you want to put down?
There’ll be like two more days. And I’m not hellbent on releasing the whole thing on my birthday [August 24] anymore… Last year around this time in June, I went to the Big Island of Hawaii to work with my brother on a fruit farm picking and harvesting and selling avocados, a variety of citrus, bananas… There was breadfruit, there was lychee, there was rambutan.
Four out of the six weeks of that were heavenly, and then two of them kind of shifted into this alternate universe with a lot of family karma bubbling up, and I had to leave there without a lot of moneys… And so I went to stay with family in Southern California, and I was very sheepish about it and very kind of psychologically distraught. But I sat still and just drove Uber for a three-month period, and in that three-month period is where the majority of the songs that comprise this record were born. And it was like, really healthy, fertile ground for songs. Because there’s nothing out there.
Uber driving—I do it too—you get into that driving headspace and just kind of zone out on the highway. I do a lot of songwriting in my car!
Yeah. The very first time I was on an Amtrak train, I was reading a story about Willie Nelson in Uncut magazine and he was like, “When you’re songwriting it always helps to be moving.” And it does help to be moving. Cars or trains or whatever. It’s a different focal point kind of thing. Your attention is primarily fixed on your own survival when driving a car. But once that’s locked in, the brain wanders. This might sound cheesy but I mean it so sincerely: It feels like the songs themselves were kind of angel overseers, you know? To come save me.
How long had it been since you’d spent any substantial time at home with these family members?
It was like 10 years prior where something strangely similar happened. The context was different, but basically I thought I had my life pretty well together and then it kind of exploded and [I] had to go crawling back for that shelter for a period… My cousins are there, that part is cool, and my parents are getting older, seeing them is cool. But it was essentially predetermined that I would just inherit the family business of fruit peddling… It was a three-generation thing and that’s just what happens in my family. And I left, kind of in a rage and kind of with grace, when I was 20. Me and my band moved from Southern California to the Pacific Northwest with, you know, change and a hope.
What was the band called?
We were called the Commercial Rockstars. We had trash cans and an old washtub that we used as drums. My favorite thing that we had on our drum set was this industrial saw blade wrapped in chains that we geared up on top of a broomstick, and that was our cymbal, our dramatic cymbal. It had the biggest crash, and the chain on it would rattle for a long time. It was a great band. Very industrial-sounding, like car crashes. And then there would be attempted rockabilly stuff on top of it. But not like cheesy pompadours. Just old rockabilly sensibility, these wild reverb hooks.
And you said “Southern California” but where specifically were you?
I grew up between two places. I lived in this really kind of enchanted unincorporated community called Rainbow, California. It depends on the person and how you want to look at it, but I loved it out there. It was an unincorporated community so it was basically just homes and a general store that I worked at briefly… A lot of people who just don’t want to be found, a lot of migrant workers and nurseries. There’s no police, there’s no authority system really at all? There’s just the general store. The first place I took mushrooms with my friends. So I got this immense sense of freedom and wandering and comfort from living in Rainbow.
I’ve also had this experience of returning home periodically throughout my life, for different reasons. And I think there can be this element of ego death to it, but there’s also this comfort in having a place to return to.
Yeah! And it should be so normal. The reciprocity of just being a human being with family, or if somebody has shelter and space to shelter people, and a relationship with them—not even a responsibility—then why the fuck not? Multi-generational homes are healthy, taking people in is healthy, helping people when they need help is fucking healthy. Every single thing about [our] cultural values has been so backwards, and I think that’s unwinding and exploding into this big conversation about what the future even looks like.
Your life is the project, you know? You can make things throughout—and need to, like Leonard Cohen said: ash from the fire. You need to make things. But really, the way one lives one’s life is the poem. That is the fuckin’ thing. I’ve always been so anti-capitalist in nature in the way that I view the world, I’ve just doubled down on every type of traditional fuck-up you can make just to be like, “There’s other ways, man!” [laughs] I don’t know if I’d recommend it to other people. It’s exhausting. But I feel like I’m well aware that I’m leaving a small paper trail of mythology for a certain kind of psychology to follow. Because people have commented on it. It’s not my own vanity or grandiose notion of importance, it’s just I’ve listened when people have said what they have to say about the things that I make.
And you said your songs were like “angel overseers.”
[laughs] I was a mini-Odysseus on a budget for seven months, trying to get back home. But one of the things that kept me going was this amazing correspondence I had with someone here back in town who was interested in art and music and we just started writing letters to each other, and it was pretty consistent, like a letter a month. And just getting these handwritten letters, it really fuckin’ saved me. I would sit with them, the letters, for a long time, just kind of absorbing the shapes of the handwriting, the smell of the envelope. Small, potential rituals that really helped me. And there is one song on the record, it’s called “Letter from Louisiane,” about that. And I started doing this thing, just as an exercise in sanity, where I just would write a song a day because I didn’t have anything else going on. Some of them were just kind of goofy, some of them I wouldn’t want to share with anyone, but it really started getting the creative wheels going.
[One of the happiest] places I think I ever am when I’m in my own company is being halfway into [knowing] that there’s a really cool song that needs to come into the world, but not knowing how. Trying to find my way through the maze. I love that.
Yeah! And then when you find it, it hardly feels like something that you did. It’s just like you found the right opening in the maze that was there the whole time.
Yeah! I always loved that saying that the sculpture already exists within the granite, it’s just how you carve it out. I love that, it really resonates with me. That is kind of pinnacle consciousness there.
Have you found an engineer you work well with?
Oh yeah. Ajai [Combelic] is mixing it and I love working with Aj. Aj is a professional. Wears a lot of hats. Super easy to communicate with on all the levels. I’m stoked on it. He’s got Lil Squeeze Studios over there. He plays guitar for Sabine McCalla. He plays guitar for Riley Downing on tour… Bruisey Peets is also an engineer, really fun to work with. That studio has a vibe. I’m really flattered to be working there actually because a lot of cool records have been made there already and it definitely has its own stank to it. And it’s a real pleasant area to hang out and work.
Who’s in your band with you?
They’re sweet people! Chad Ray Turner—when I got back to town from my sabbatical, this dude just walked up to me at BJ’s. Kind of brazenly was like, “I’ve seen you play solo. I’m a badass drummer. I wanna play drums with you.” I’m like, “That was easy!” So we kind of bro’ed down together. We have a very specific rock’n’roll dude type relationship. He plays drums and has got chops. He’s got his own band called Not Exotic that plays around town. And then on bass is this loyal homie of mine who’s been around forever. He’s a father, and playing bass with me gives him a chance to exercise that type of thing. His name is Reese Douglas. He’s a lovely person… He’s amazing with building shit.
On the record there’s a lot of guest appearances. Sari Jordan does a duet. Avery Island BCE is on there. Jeremy Kelley, who plays saxophone in Bon Bon Vivant, is featured on there. There’s gonna be a few more before it’s over. Definitely want some New Orleans names to get into the gumbo of the record.
Absolutely.
So the whole purpose of doing an art show at all for me was to raise funds to actually put the record out on vinyl and tape. Or just finish it. I have a lot of reservations [about] crowdfunding at this point. I interrogate myself about why that is, and the closest I can get to is that I just hate internet culture.
It’s hard to see people crowdfunding for like, necessary medical expenses and then want to do it. I get it.
Exactly. I feel like it’s super important to be creative and bring beauty to the world. I think that that is fundamental in a way. [But] asking for this seems to be like playing into an old trope, an old con, an old trap that is not really working. So I’m like, what other ways are there? And the best thing I could think of was to throw a really accessible, really cool party at one of the coolest galleries in town [NOLA ‘Nacular], with a bunch of stuff… It’s called Feed the Light. With painting, it’s all about light, right? And there’s a line on the record that I’m pretty proud of that says, “All we are is a trick of the light.” And I work at a magic store and people are asking all the time about what to “feed their spirits.” It’s a turn of phrase: What do you “feed” the entities you’re working with? So, Feed the Light, I feel like that’s where we’re at. Feed the light so the light gets stronger. Feed the light nutritious stuff.
What are some of the themes you explore? What inspires your paintings and collages?
For me, the compulsion to paint is just… finding that sweet peace or whatever. What comes out is less of a concern, but when it works I know it works. The paintings are essentially ways for me to see color patterns that I want to rub my face in. [laughs] I have such a physical response to art that I like. If I know I like a painting I have a compulsory desire to rub my face on it.
And when you do the collages, are there specific types of objects or images you like to include?
I have a lot of repeating imagery because when I resonate with something strongly, I like to include it over and over again… I have all of these saint charms that I found at a cathedral in Mexico City that I’ve replicated over and over again via Xerox machines. And I have this book of prizefighting from the 20th century that I really love the texture of the images. These dudes, the movement of these bodies. I love the combination of those things a lot. But yeah Feed the Light is the name of the show. It’s a joint show with a very talented painter Ingrid Luna that I actually work with at the shop.
At Marie Laveau’s [House Of Voodoo]?
Yeah. It’s a cool place… People are aware that it’s a world-famous store, and yeah there’s a lot of dumdum foot traffic that comes in that happens to get kind of “whoa,” but it’s shifting.
So you’ve worked there a long time then, on and off.
For about six years. They really value their relationship with their employees if the employees have an outside life and outside endeavors that are related to things that they care about at the shop. The owners are sincerely like, “Let’s put magic into the world!” Which is great, and necessary. But I wasn’t aware of that. I just thought it was a store for money. Which, it’s both. It can be both.
I wanted to talk about your name! Because it seems almost too good to be true. But you’d mentioned to me before it’s at least in part your real name?
Do you want to see my driver’s license? I could show you my birth certificate, actually. It just came in the mail. [Retrieves birth certificate]
I feel like a cop or something.
You’re not a cop, you’re a journalist. See? [Motions to first, middle, and last name on birth certificate] “Dustin.” “Santa Maria.” And then “Bevell.” …When I left I was pretty at war with the paternal side of my family so I just dropped the last name… I feel like names should be like training wheels on bicycles or something. Or like baby teeth. You get the first ones, then you lose them, then once the new ones grow in they’re yours. Once you’re cognizant enough to know what you want your name to be, it’s like a rite of passage to choose it, even if it’s in context with the rest of your name.
Yeah. And I guess it hasn’t come up yet but—you are so tied to New Orleans at this point, and it appears in your songs, and when you leave, you know this is the place you’re coming back to. How did you end up here?
My relationship with New Orleans began before I ever came here at all. My old man—he was much older when I was born—when he first became a father he was only 19. And he was working hard to be a professional athlete at that point. He had a lot of clout as a football player in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where he was living. He was working on that, and then he and his high school sweetheart got pregnant, and this was the 1960s so it was just kind of, “OK, this is what we’re doing, we’re getting married, we’re doing this.”
But he took that as his one stab to be a professional football player, and he responded to a tryout ad in the newspaper for a new professional team that was starting in New Orleans. So he took a Greyhound bus from New Mexico to New Orleans to try out for the [Saints]. He didn’t make the team, and didn’t have enough money to get back to Albuquerque. [laughs] But I guess he had four days in town where he just gathered the funds. He wasn’t that well-traveled at that point. It didn’t work out, but he had this consolation prize of how enamored he was with this place. He’d talk about it all the time when I was a child.
And then my older brother—he’s 10 years older than me—he came here a lot in the ‘90s with this project called Crash Worship, which was a pretty incredible music project. It was the first show I ever went to, blew my fuckin’ mind… My brother would come back, and he would talk about it… This place was already mythologized to me. So the first time I came here, I was 25. OK, I’ll just say I had a sugar mama who worked for the airlines and gave me free flights to places. I always like to caveat the sugar mama thing with this: She was married to somebody who got put in a wheelchair and she loved this person a lot, but certain things he couldn’t do anymore. And we met on a train and we made this agreement. I was in my 20s and she was in her 40s. I learned a lot.
Sounds very educational.
It was super educational. In so many ways. But anyways, I went to Chicago, I went to New York, and then the first time I came to New Orleans it was on a plane and I got off and walked out of the airport. It was pretty humid, I think it was in April. And the air was so heavy, it felt like velvet. And there was a voice like here—back of my neck, beginning of the nervous system. I hadn’t really experienced this before but a voice was just like, “You live here now.” I was like, “What the fuck?”
I didn’t know nothin’ about nothin’. All I knew was this was a place people came to party… I flopped around for a week, that week seemed like two years, and then I made the decision to settle my affairs and come back. But I did it pretty clumsily the first time, so I didn’t have hardly any money or anything. But in that week I made money busking and I think I made a couple drawings and sold them on the street. I was so naive and I was just convinced that that was what I was doing forever now. Gonna play music on the street, make art, and that’s where everything would come from. Everything would take care of itself pretty naturally… That was in 2009, and that was my first stint. And some of the friendships that are lasting now were made in that first little rendezvous.
And then life went a whole different direction, touring and in a relationship for a long time. I was on tour with a band called Sex Magick, with my partner at the time. It was a two-piece. It was cool. She just played a floor tom and a snare. Small, small setup so we could just tour in our car. And we did that pretty much most of the time… And we were getting tired of it, and it was 2017, and we had a show at the Circle Bar and then we had three days off to just chill in New Orleans. And in that three days found out, just through the network of folks that I know, there was a housing situation that was too good to pass up… So we basically again settled our affairs and moved here, and lived in the 7th Ward for a long time. And then in 2020 when COVID hit she decided… She never really wanted to have a rock’n’roll lifestyle. She was fundamentally an introverted painter who liked the idea of going on touring adventures and opted to learn the drums for a while. But she opted out, she didn’t want to do it anymore. But for me it was like, that’s the only thing I want to do, so.
So you’ve just kind of been on your own, doing your own thing here since 2020 on and off?
Yeah. There’s no other place I’ve been that’s felt as much “home,” fundamentally. I feel like I have to honor that.
Yeah, and just to the community you’ve referred to—you needed somewhere to live and your friend had a house. You took a friend to the airport and now you have a car for two weeks. There’s a sort of system that works.
Yeah, this sort of mutual aid, reciprocity thing is sort of unheard of anywhere else… New Orleans definitely teaches you that you are part of a collective organism in a really fundamental way… It’s interesting to see what other avenues and options and solutions there are when you take away all the structures of why you can and cannot do something and get down basically to, is this harmful to anyone? No? Is this helpful? OK, let’s just do it.
Not to sound fucking “cool” or whatever, but I just really don’t get the rules. I’m like, “WHY? Tell me like I’m a four-year-old. Why?” Everyone’s humanity has seemingly been kept from them for so long it just leaves us in the position we’re in where everything’s exploding. People seem pretty similar to me. They just want to feel unthreatened, unbothered by unnecessary things, and just have the chance to court, make love, dance, and play, in whatever way that looks like. Like how do we serve that? That’s my main fuckin’ thing.
Feed the Light, featuring original pieces by Dusty Santamaria and Ingrid Luna, opens at NOLA ‘Nacular gallery on Saturday, July 12, with selected performances by Roselit Bone and Willy Gantrim. Singles from Dusty Santamaria’s forthcoming album High Art, Heavy Trash will start being released from August 24 onward. For more info, check out dustysantamaria.bandcamp.com and @dustysantamaria on Instagram.
Photos by Angela Calonder
