By: Krista Spies
“I always refer to us as an emo band,” said Matt Chapin, guitarist of St. Louis emo-ish band Dialogue. “Whatever that means anymore.”
The four-piece group met—two members in person and two on the phone—with me in Chapin’s home in South City to talk about their new EP, Everyone Is Waiting For You. Dialogue was one of the many rock outfits that bloomed soon after Covid-19 first hit, and they now regularly perform at many local joints, like Platypus and the Sinkhole.
A classic combination of stormy vocals, passionate guitars, calculated bass and fierce drums makes up the band. Daniel Bradbury, on vocals and guitars, and previous drummer Kyle Cooper wrote and recorded their first EP, Bicycle Music, entirely together, released in September 2020. The two had collaborated in a different band with Derek Read, who became the bassist of Dialogue. Finally, after Cooper moved away from St. Louis in 2022, Chris Wright, who has drummed in several local groups, joined, wrapping up the current lineup of the group.
Though these musicians’ personal influences cross over one another, each member brings his own taste within the overarching genre of rock.
“Chris was a metalcore kid growing up; I was firmly an East Coast emo kid; Dan grew up on classic rock; and Derek’s a big Manchester fan,” said Chapin.
Bradbury said he thinks, “It’s the combination of those influences that gives us our sound,” agreeing that they “fall somewhere in the camp of emo.”
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Dialogue’s new EP, Everyone Is Waiting For You, includes three songs: “Fix Bayonets,” which starts off sounding like it’s out of a rock opera, “Cutthroat,” which reminds the listener of pop punk/emo’s heyday, and “All Work, No Play,” which brings those trademarked sad-but-rocking vibes. As the subtitle is “A Party EP (I),” this work exists as the first of a two-parter.
“The whole intention behind it was to find some way to have consistent releases over a period of time,” said Chapin. When the band releases follow-up singles and a second EP, both works will go together as a fuller record. The guitarist went on to also explain that, after their friend Calvin Tigre took photos of Dialogue, the imagery that most stuck out to the band was of parties, leading to the overarching vibe.
In terms of making the EP and songs in general, Bradbury said that their songwriting process is intensely collaborative.
Aside from a few polished songs that he or Chapin crafted, “Everything else has been a process of evolution,” said the singer. “We’ll bring in [to the group] an idea and either flesh it out or change it completely.” For example, he said that “Fix Bayonets,” the first track off of Everyone Is Waiting For You, “is utterly unrecognizable from what the first whispers of that were,” with the changes coming from that process of collaboration.
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From growing up in the Lou, to moving here recently, the members of Dialogue all spoke positively about the area in terms of its music. Read said he feels “privileged” to be a musician in this local scene, which Bradbury reflected.
“The scene feels super healthy right now,” he said. “I feel very privileged to participate in any capacity in what we’re doing here.”
Wright said that, after leaving St. Louis for a few years and coming back to his hometown, he noticed a new flourishing of the scene, especially after Covid-19’s lockdown period.
“It’s great. There’s no ego,” he said. “If you’re a musician and you want to play, whether you have friends you can play with or you don’t know anyone, just go to shows, make friends there, and start bands that way.”
Echoing that, Read said, “We’re grateful for our position we’re in, and I think staying humble if you’re going to be in this scene is a big deal because, right now, what’s working for us is that the egos are out the door.”
“The music scene has become a space for people who aren’t like other people and people who feel on the outside, so I think if you bring a negative energy into the space that’s supposed to be positive, then it’s going to ruin what we have going on.”
Chapin also stressed the importance of humility. “Be humble, be kind because nobody knows everything, and we’re all doing this.”
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Each of the members of Dialogue repeatedly expressed gratitude to local venue owners and workers, in addition to listeners. Their excitement over Everyone Is Waiting For You only became eclipsed by their excitement for just being a band.
In response to their 2024 year recap of streaming, about 1,650 listeners and 9,320 streams, Bradbury said, “I’d be perfectly happy if we just played these songs for Dottie [Chapin’s dog] and nobody else, but the fact that people seem to connect with these songs, the fact that anyone at all is listening to what we’re doing and enjoying it or finding solace somehow is absolutely mind-blowing to me. It feels like such a blessing that that happens and that we get to experience it.”