Interview: D-Tension Is Ready to Make His Presence Felt at The Town and The City Festival
On April 26 & 27, The Town and The City Festival will once again be taking over the city of Lowell, Massachusetts with art, culture and live entertainment. The event doesn’t take place in a central location, but rather in a variety of establishments that range from proper music venues to art galleries to an old school Greek dining hall and even a bar that was once a place where hometown hero Jack Kerouac hung out at with his Beat Generation comrades. It’s purely a one-of-a-kind experience and one of the many musicians who’s taking part in this year’s edition is D-Tension a Lowell native and a fixture in the local scene. He and his backing band The Secrets are going to be performing during the initial evening with Boston alt-rock legends Orbit at Warp & Weft on 197 Market Street at 9pm. During the second night, Tension is hosting an array of storytelling & poetry at the Luna Theater within Mill №5 on 250 Jackson Street starting at 5pm followed by stand-up comedy at Cobblestones on 91 Dutton Street beginning at 8pm.
We had a talk ahead of the festival about him doing hip hop for over two decades and recently shifting over to a guitar-driven sound, his thoughts on The Town and The City Festival and a whole and his plans for the next few months going forward.
Over the past few years, you’ve been exhibiting this fusion of old school hip hop with power pop driven rock & roll. What initially inspired you to go down this artistic route with your music?
I did hip hop for over 25 years full-time as my job. For much of that time I did not have a day job, I was just always traveling, and then a couple things happened. Generally, when you do something for that long you get burnt out and people often get put in a box where they’re just a rapper and there’s a lot more to me than that. When you’re a sample-driven hip hop producer, your reference point of music is not only a singular genre. I’m a huge jazz fan, I’m a huge rock fan and anyone who does what I do in the field of hip hop production, people who are famous like Pete Rock or DJ Premier, they’re all going to be fans of a wide variety of music.
I had always wanted to play in a rock & roll band, but there was just never time or the opportunity to sit down, take guitar lessons and switch my focus. Then the pandemic gave me that opportunity, but to be completely honest with you, by the time lockdown happened I hadn’t performed a rap show in like four years. I was already burnt out by that time and my last gig was at the University of New Hampshire where I was opening for a rapper named Lil Xan, which is short for Xanax. At that show, there was a couple things I started to notice with mumble rap starting to be a thing, the music sounded different, and that generation seemed to have no desire to know anything about the history of the culture. That’s very different because ’70s, ’80s and ’90s hip hop always gave props to the old school.
You could ask a rapper from those decades, even from the early 2000s, and they would know, but that started to change into this whole new thing. It’s like what happened to punk when the corporations took over. To make a long story short, when I opened for Lil Xan, I felt old. I’m in my late 40s and the whole audience is in their 20s, I asked to them “Are you ready for Lil Xan?”, they all said “Yay!” and then they all started popping pills. Then Lil Xan didn’t come on for an hour because as it was explained to me, they needed the time for the Xanax to kick in and this was a big Xanax scene.
I then realized that this wasn’t for me at all and then mumble rap started getting big enough where hip hop doesn’t even sound the same anymore. Then I started to realize that I was on a greatest hits tour where a lot of the songs I was singing in my late 40s were ones that I was wrapping in my teens and 20s when they were current. I’m not even that person anymore, so I couldn’t stand by the lyrics and some of them embarrass me. It’s not hip hop itself, but the rap game changed, and I got burnt out. When I was taking four years off, I wasn’t sure what my next creative endeavor would be and then the lockdown happened.
I won some guitars on an Instagram contest, and they shipped to me as soon as the collector was locked down because they had nothing else to do. I went on YouTube, taught myself how to properly play the guitar and then I recorded a rock album. Now I have three of those and it’s all rock & roll songs with harmonies. I like big hooks, I like singalong choruses and I like short songs.
I definitely get that vibe from listening to your latest material. Along with guitar, you play a bunch of other different instruments such as bass, drums, keys and percussion. Did you learn all of these instruments during the pandemic just to pass the time?
I actually grew up playing the saxophone when I was a kid, so I could read music a little bit, I have a musical background and I come from a musical family. I was playing bass on my rap records long, long ago while playing percussion in a couple of bands, so guitar was last. Of all the instruments I play, guitar was the last one I learned and I’m self-taught on all of them.
That’s incredible. As a Lowell native, what are your thoughts on The Town and The City Festival when it comes to the role it plays in the city’s community?
It is the greatest. This is the fifth year and I’ve been involved with it the whole time, but I haven’t played every year because the organizers are smart, and they don’t book the same bands every year. My band is playing this year, which means that we probably won’t play next year, so it’s not the same festival every year. It’s been great for the music community and it’s great for good young bands who might not have a point of reference when it comes to knowing how to function in a professional environment and how to take it to the next level. When you play this festival, you’re going to be seen by people who aren’t just from Lowell.
You can grow, learn, network and have an amazing gig. The headliners are all great, I have a friend who is opening for Clap Your Hands Say Yeah and that’s going to be an amazing show. It’s a godsend and it includes local bands. This festival is all about local, independent and original music. You’re not going to see cover bands playing “Mustang Sally” or “Brown-Eyed Girl”.
I’ve attended The Town and The City Festival for the past few years, and I’ve definitely gotten that vibe where it’s very genuine and original. You mentioned that you’re going to be playing with your band The Secrets during the first night and you’re also going to be hosting some storytelling & poetry along with some comedy during the final evening. Did you have any sort of input on the curation of these aspects of the festival or are you strictly hosting and introducing people who come on stage?
I curated both events that I’m hosting and there’s a lot of poets in New England. We have 10 of them for this year and we had 10 different ones last year. We mix it up with some storytelling, I used to be part of Lowell storytelling, which is defunct now, so we combine the two things. What I love about curating this event is that I get poets who are working hard, putting out material and playing events involved, but with storytelling it’s a little bit different. You can be someone who isn’t a performer but has a great story to tell, it’s almost like a TED Talk.
One of my storytellers for this year is a stand-up comic who will not be doing comedy while another one is a person who went through a tragic event who is not a performing artist at all. An event like The Town and The City Festival has to include young people and local people or it’s not worth it. You can throw money at it and bring in headliners, but it’s got to be more than that.
I couldn’t agree more. After the festival, what do you have going on into the summer?
After The Town and The City, I’m going to be performing at the Lowell Folk Festival in July and then my band and I are going to be working on a new album. We’ve been playing together for a couple of years, but we’re going to record as a band for the first time and I’m looking forward to it. The upcoming show at The Town and The City Festival is also our t-shirt release party because nobody buys records anymore. (laughs)
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