Photo by Patrick DuPlagaLiz Gomez (AKA Dromez) moved to Dayton, Ohio for love and noise. She grew up working the door for punk shows at a bar in Houston that Townes Van Zandt owned, established herself in Austin as a force to be reckoned with in noise (Thurston Moore asked to play her venue), and then fell in love while on tour and moved to a tiny city—where she continues to kill it. She started Dromez in 2005 as a solo project after spending years playing in "noise, rock, punk, experimental, jazz, all kinds" of other bands.Dromez is at the top of the hardworking, perpetually touring, young American noise scene. Like much of that world, she is full of positive vibes but disgusting sounds. She has played hundreds of gigs all over the country in the last few years, and it shows when you see her perform her twisted mess of tapes, pedals and contact mic’d scrap metal.This interview was one of the most real conversations I have had with a stranger in a while, as Dromez obviously gets it. We talked over tacos at Tamale House in Austin, Texas about battling depression through dark music, cooking dinner for bands, and making art out of knives.Noisey: What did you play in a jazz band?
Liz: I played bass in my mom’s band. She’s a pretty old-school songwriter, jazz guitarist, bassist, singer. She does all her original stuff and then some covers, like Screamin’ Jay Hawkins and stuff like that. She doesn’t really play a lot as of recently, but she did a lot of recording in the last ten years. She put out an album, and had all these pretty prominent Houston artists on it—the accordion player from Oingo Boingo was on it. She’s been a pretty big inspiration to me in terms of sticking with music no matter what. She’s had a lot of hardships and stuff. She’s a pretty fantastic musician, and she definitely got me started in the right direction by getting me a guitar and a practice amp when I was around ten or eleven.Who are some other influences on your sound?
Definitely the Houston noise scene started me out in the right direction. Austin Coley of Concrete Violin had a really awesome radio show at the University of Houston and played all kinds of experimental noise music. Concrete Violin was an amazing project. It’s over now, but it was pretty quintessential harsh noise, and pretty powerful and a lot of movement, and you physically felt the noise. That’s pretty inspiring to me, physically feeling the sound. My mom also took me to an experimental noise workshop when Keith Rowe, and we all collaborated and shit. It was really cool.Is there a recording of it?
There probably is online, but I wouldn’t know where it is. This guy Dave Dove put on all these workshops then, and still does, and is big in the experimental scene. And then for sure punk rock is a huge thing for me that inspired the feeling. It was really a savior for me when I dropped out of high school. I dropped out and worked at my mom’s friend’s bar for a while. So I worked the door for punk shows when I was fourteen for those Gulf Coast dudes, they were all like thirty and falling apart doing these punk shows. Those were my buddies when I was a teenager. So I helped with the booking, and one of my first real jobs was working the door at punk shows. It was also a famous country bar—The Old Quarter. It was co-owned by Townes Van Zandt. He kept going until he died. But there’s a big portrait of him on the wall and stuff, and all these portraits all over the place of famous country or songwriter Texas music folk musicians.What do you think about dark music?
I think it’s necessary. I have a really positive personality, but I’m able to be positive because I have an outlet for being dark. For a while I didn’t know how to do that in my life, and I was pretty depressed. So as cliché as that is to say, it’s definitely an outlet for getting into the darker parts of my head that if I didn’t let them out I’d be way more fucked up. I’d be a way more fucked up person. So dark music is essential.
Photo by M. NukkaSo you recently moved, what’s good with that?
I moved to Dayton, Ohio after touring through there a couple times a year for the last few years, and enjoyed the time spent there. And I met John there while touring—it’s pretty sweet, it’s like the sweetest love shit I ever had. It’s been a big change to be in a not specifically "music town." Even though there’s bands from Dayton, like Guided by Voices, and there’s a pretty dedicated noise scene. Guys like Developer, real fast harsh noise scratch DJ stuff almost, these crazy soundscapes. Nate Tandy does Diaphragmatic. He’s one of the best American junk metal dudes. He plays with big pieces of metal and a contact mic. Tell me more about the house you guys live in and the goat shed in Dayton, Ohio.
[John and I] do shows at our house Smiles For Miles. Jon lived there for years with Diaphragmatic. It’s been one of the main places for noise shows for years, now we’re like the only place doing them lately, but a few other people are picking them up. We make dinner for everyone in a crockpot or something, and then people come in and donate $5 for the touring act. We have a good dedicated group of people that come to every show and support the scene. It’s a different dynamic than here or probably New York. Doing shows where you spend a little money on food or something, and showing people that you care, goes a long way.It’s interesting because noise usually only involves one or two people, so there’s this whole wider spectrum of what you can do; you get in a car to go on tour instead of a van, and you can just go places and throw a noise show. There are less logistics.
Yeah, I’m trying to get a European tour going next year. I don’t have a passport yet, and that’s fucking it up. I’ve had some cool offers so I want to make it happen. I need to go international— I’ve played hundreds of shows these past few years, in 2013 I played around 200 shows. It was insane. Traveling has been the best thing for me, ever. Even though it’s just been the United States. I feel so lucky to be able to travel so much in the period of time I did because I got to witness so many people’s stuff that way. All the microscenes, group community DIY people out there. I got to be pretty intimate with the scenes in other places because I was there every couple of months. There’s a few places I’m just so happy that I got to do that and meet those people.What was your favorite town?
I have a lot of them, It was hard to pick a place to move. I really love Minneapolis, and I like New York a lot, and western Massachusetts out in the Hadley area. Weirdest place I liked was Chatanooga. Weird scene, there’s a lot of pop-punk. I like finding small towns that are supportive scene-wise. Weirdest show last year was Salt Lake City, Utah. I mean obviously there’s the punk stuff, but the noise stuff, I found this dude who gave me a pretty decent guarantee at this Top 40 dance club where the downstairs was a goth dance club.Do you foresee trying to do this for a long time? Make music forever, and tour forever?
I think it’s for sure something I gotta keep doing. Visual art is something I want to be working on a lot this year too. I did an art show in LA at this place Mata Noise; it was a sort of installation type thing with a lot of pieces of metal. I went with John Borges to get all the materials. He does Pedestrian Deposit. He personally has been active since he was twelve or something, his mom supported him doing noise and he’s been touring since he was a teenager; he's definitely a master of modern American noise. But he took me to this junkyard and electronics place in the Silicon Valley, and we went around and found all these metal pieces and took them back. It was all knives, these sculptures made of metal and knives: this amorphous knifey thing sticking out of an amorphous blob. So I went in and recorded the process on a field recorder, so it was bending metal sounds and banging around and shit, and the recording was part of the piece too.What do you want to accomplish as a noise musician as we enter 2015?
Weirdly, I’m kind of wanting to do non-noise stuff this year. It’ll still probably be noisy to an extent. My concepts always come up noisy, even pop music when I do them secretly in my room. They’re pretty shitty. No one’s heard them. It’s the soft inner part of me.Anything else you want to say?
I probably should mention someone, Matt Lacomette of Aunt’s Analog. I played my first show with him here as Dromez. And then Jonathan Cash of Breakdancing Ronald Reagan, he’s infamous. He’s done a lot for the scene, did a lot of tours with me. Lots of love. Gotta keep it real for my buds. I’m playing in New York in May at Ende Tymes. It’ll probably be at Silent Barn. It’s the best fest, like probably the best I’ve been to in years. It’s amazing. Even if you don’t care about noise it’s amazing.
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Liz: I played bass in my mom’s band. She’s a pretty old-school songwriter, jazz guitarist, bassist, singer. She does all her original stuff and then some covers, like Screamin’ Jay Hawkins and stuff like that. She doesn’t really play a lot as of recently, but she did a lot of recording in the last ten years. She put out an album, and had all these pretty prominent Houston artists on it—the accordion player from Oingo Boingo was on it. She’s been a pretty big inspiration to me in terms of sticking with music no matter what. She’s had a lot of hardships and stuff. She’s a pretty fantastic musician, and she definitely got me started in the right direction by getting me a guitar and a practice amp when I was around ten or eleven.Who are some other influences on your sound?
Definitely the Houston noise scene started me out in the right direction. Austin Coley of Concrete Violin had a really awesome radio show at the University of Houston and played all kinds of experimental noise music. Concrete Violin was an amazing project. It’s over now, but it was pretty quintessential harsh noise, and pretty powerful and a lot of movement, and you physically felt the noise. That’s pretty inspiring to me, physically feeling the sound. My mom also took me to an experimental noise workshop when Keith Rowe, and we all collaborated and shit. It was really cool.
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There probably is online, but I wouldn’t know where it is. This guy Dave Dove put on all these workshops then, and still does, and is big in the experimental scene. And then for sure punk rock is a huge thing for me that inspired the feeling. It was really a savior for me when I dropped out of high school. I dropped out and worked at my mom’s friend’s bar for a while. So I worked the door for punk shows when I was fourteen for those Gulf Coast dudes, they were all like thirty and falling apart doing these punk shows. Those were my buddies when I was a teenager. So I helped with the booking, and one of my first real jobs was working the door at punk shows. It was also a famous country bar—The Old Quarter. It was co-owned by Townes Van Zandt. He kept going until he died. But there’s a big portrait of him on the wall and stuff, and all these portraits all over the place of famous country or songwriter Texas music folk musicians.What do you think about dark music?
I think it’s necessary. I have a really positive personality, but I’m able to be positive because I have an outlet for being dark. For a while I didn’t know how to do that in my life, and I was pretty depressed. So as cliché as that is to say, it’s definitely an outlet for getting into the darker parts of my head that if I didn’t let them out I’d be way more fucked up. I’d be a way more fucked up person. So dark music is essential.
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I moved to Dayton, Ohio after touring through there a couple times a year for the last few years, and enjoyed the time spent there. And I met John there while touring—it’s pretty sweet, it’s like the sweetest love shit I ever had. It’s been a big change to be in a not specifically "music town." Even though there’s bands from Dayton, like Guided by Voices, and there’s a pretty dedicated noise scene. Guys like Developer, real fast harsh noise scratch DJ stuff almost, these crazy soundscapes. Nate Tandy does Diaphragmatic. He’s one of the best American junk metal dudes. He plays with big pieces of metal and a contact mic. Tell me more about the house you guys live in and the goat shed in Dayton, Ohio.
[John and I] do shows at our house Smiles For Miles. Jon lived there for years with Diaphragmatic. It’s been one of the main places for noise shows for years, now we’re like the only place doing them lately, but a few other people are picking them up. We make dinner for everyone in a crockpot or something, and then people come in and donate $5 for the touring act. We have a good dedicated group of people that come to every show and support the scene. It’s a different dynamic than here or probably New York. Doing shows where you spend a little money on food or something, and showing people that you care, goes a long way.It’s interesting because noise usually only involves one or two people, so there’s this whole wider spectrum of what you can do; you get in a car to go on tour instead of a van, and you can just go places and throw a noise show. There are less logistics.
Yeah, I’m trying to get a European tour going next year. I don’t have a passport yet, and that’s fucking it up. I’ve had some cool offers so I want to make it happen. I need to go international— I’ve played hundreds of shows these past few years, in 2013 I played around 200 shows. It was insane. Traveling has been the best thing for me, ever. Even though it’s just been the United States. I feel so lucky to be able to travel so much in the period of time I did because I got to witness so many people’s stuff that way. All the microscenes, group community DIY people out there. I got to be pretty intimate with the scenes in other places because I was there every couple of months. There’s a few places I’m just so happy that I got to do that and meet those people.
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I have a lot of them, It was hard to pick a place to move. I really love Minneapolis, and I like New York a lot, and western Massachusetts out in the Hadley area. Weirdest place I liked was Chatanooga. Weird scene, there’s a lot of pop-punk. I like finding small towns that are supportive scene-wise. Weirdest show last year was Salt Lake City, Utah. I mean obviously there’s the punk stuff, but the noise stuff, I found this dude who gave me a pretty decent guarantee at this Top 40 dance club where the downstairs was a goth dance club.Do you foresee trying to do this for a long time? Make music forever, and tour forever?
I think it’s for sure something I gotta keep doing. Visual art is something I want to be working on a lot this year too. I did an art show in LA at this place Mata Noise; it was a sort of installation type thing with a lot of pieces of metal. I went with John Borges to get all the materials. He does Pedestrian Deposit. He personally has been active since he was twelve or something, his mom supported him doing noise and he’s been touring since he was a teenager; he's definitely a master of modern American noise. But he took me to this junkyard and electronics place in the Silicon Valley, and we went around and found all these metal pieces and took them back. It was all knives, these sculptures made of metal and knives: this amorphous knifey thing sticking out of an amorphous blob. So I went in and recorded the process on a field recorder, so it was bending metal sounds and banging around and shit, and the recording was part of the piece too.What do you want to accomplish as a noise musician as we enter 2015?
Weirdly, I’m kind of wanting to do non-noise stuff this year. It’ll still probably be noisy to an extent. My concepts always come up noisy, even pop music when I do them secretly in my room. They’re pretty shitty. No one’s heard them. It’s the soft inner part of me.Anything else you want to say?
I probably should mention someone, Matt Lacomette of Aunt’s Analog. I played my first show with him here as Dromez. And then Jonathan Cash of Breakdancing Ronald Reagan, he’s infamous. He’s done a lot for the scene, did a lot of tours with me. Lots of love. Gotta keep it real for my buds. I’m playing in New York in May at Ende Tymes. It’ll probably be at Silent Barn. It’s the best fest, like probably the best I’ve been to in years. It’s amazing. Even if you don’t care about noise it’s amazing.