Episode 88: An Afternoon with Lance from Dogman Devices

Episode Transcript

Note: a machine made this, so it’s not perfect, but if you’re hearing impaired and have any questions about what we said, please feel free to ask us in the comments or send us an email with the form below. 

An Afternoon with Lance from Dogman Devices

[00:00:00] Emily: welcome to the, get offset podcast. My name is Emily

Andrew: and my name is

Emily: Andrew and we’re here to deal with Lance from Dogman Devices.

Andrew: Welcome,

Emily: welcome.

Lance: Hey.

Emily: Yeah. So, how’s your month been?

Lance: it’s gotten suddenly really been pretty busy. Things have been going pretty well for me lately, really, but it’s all kind of tinge with all of the other bad things coming around the world.

So it’s, it’s a little weird, honestly.

Emily: Yeah, it’s definitely it’s, it’s, it’s kind of a time where it feels weird for anything good to happen, even though good things are woefully overdue for a lot of people.

Lance: Yeah.

Emily: Yeah. So, for those who are listening, Doug man devices is based right now out of Ohio. I love personally.

And, recently kind of got into, at least my, circle of knowing about things I became aware of you all. after Jason, Isabel tweeted about you. Cause someone asked him if he knew any pedal builders who were people of color.

Lance: Yes, I do. Yeah, it was, I think how he had probably heard of me is that earlier that day I was looking for other black owned guitar pedal companies to kind of see what sort of things they were doing that I like.

I hadn’t tried to find any others in a while. And I found out Reddit posts where that was from like the other day where people were doing the same thing. And I saw that there were no. Black owned companies listed. They had native audio on there, which is also in Ohio. And they’re pretty cool. But, yeah, but I, posted about my company there and had like a little link to my site and my reverb site.

And I didn’t really think much of it, but then. I’m guessing. That’s how he had heard of me. Cause it’s not like he’s a friend of mine or anything.

Emily: Yeah. In fact, did you even know who he was?

Lance: No, I didn’t. That I, all of the sudden have a bunch of things at once. And a few people messaged me that they had heard of me from Jason Isbell on Twitter, and I had to look up who he was and then was really excited.

Emily: I think it’s easy to forget that Jason is bill for being as famous as he is, is still niche. It’s just a big niche.

Andrew: Yeah. I definitely a niche. I hadn’t really heard of him much. I’d like just a little bit in gear circles, but I’ve never made a point of listening to his music or really looking at what his history in the industry is or what he’s been up to.

Lance: So it’s

Andrew: really just kind of know the name and that’s about it.

Emily: Well, he’s a phenomenal lyricist. So

Andrew: that’s what I hear, but I mean, I’d never really heard of him before this kind of stuff anyways, so Lance, you’re not alone.

Lance: I’m right there with you. Cool.

Emily: Yeah. Nice. So it’s great. Great to meet you. it’s it does seem like kind of a small community of people, Of color who owned any sort of business and in the gear industry, which is sad

Lance: to me.

Yeah.

Andrew: Well, before we jumped too far, too deep into the topic, why don’t we start with, let’s just talk about what’s new for everybody this week. We’ll take it a little, just take it a little easy for a few minutes here and then let’s and then we can jump right in.

Emily: Okay.

Andrew: Sure. I’ll have you start, but I really want to hear from Lance, like no offense to you, but like, Lance sounds like a rad dude.

I want to hear what’s going on with him.

Emily: Yeah, totally.

Andrew: I’ll try to pay attention.

Emily: Okay. All right. Well, I got the, Falco blood buzz pedal. Bye. Eastwood guitars. I won that in a contest. I’m shocked. I was very surprised to, to win it. It is really nothing can prepare you for how enormous that guitar pedal is.

I think it might be bigger than my milkman, the amp. I, I thought I thought the surfy bear compact was, was big. The BALCO blood buzz makes it look like a very reasonably sized sized pedal. It’s.  how big it is. I can’t stop laughing. It opens up like, so you can store things in it. [00:05:00] And it just keeps making, I mean, That’s where one would DOR marijuana

Andrew: naturally,

Emily: naturally that we don’t need to hide it in, in, in the Pacific Northwest, in Seattle. It’s very legal. So no point in hiding it, I guess, but, it’s cool. I was playing it on base and I did a demo that launched last Friday. Of, me going through it on the bass guitar, any overdrive sounds like okay.

On bass, but the fuzz is really fun, especially there’s one setting that’s like gated for us, which I guess is the left left pedal or is it love pedal? I love

Andrew: tone,

Emily: love tone. A big cheese kind of sound is what the manual says. So I’ve been having a lot of fun with that, with that pedal for sure.

Yeah,

Andrew: I’m definitely stuck with the image of Adam Sandler being like, and that’s where he put your weed.

Emily: What’s that from?

Andrew: What movie was that from? Hi, I’m blinking.

Emily: Or was it a later for your movie

Andrew: earlier career nineties? I think I w for some reason I want to say wedding singer, but that doesn’t sound right at all.

Emily: Oh, that’s my favorite Adam Sandler movie.

Lance: I haven’t seen that in such a long time, but

Emily: I remember when my, my, my best friend was getting married. We had kind of like a little bachelorette party at her house. And we were going to watch movies and her sister really wanted to watch the wedding singer, like right before the wedding. And I’m like, maybe we don’t watch the wet movie about a wedding where they don’t get married.

Like let’s watch an actual wedding movie where they get married at the end.

Lance: It

Emily: just seemed a little weird that girl loves her Adam Sandler.

Andrew: Adam Sandler is great. Waterboy, I think is one of the greatest movies in the last couple of decades. But you know,

Emily: the last 30 years,

Andrew: I think in terms of like proper like American comedy, that’s definitely up

Emily: there where you alive.

When that movie came

Andrew: out, you know, that’s a question I’d prefer not to answer. I think the answer is yes, but I really don’t. I wouldn’t bet money on it, off the top of my head

because

Andrew: I’m 25. Thank you. I’m not that young little young, but not that young.

Emily: A water boy came out 98. So

Andrew: there you go. There we go.

I’m safe. I have not been voted off the Island.

Emily: Yeah. So, so Lance what’s that what’s new with you.

Lance: Bunch of parts for that. Just some pedals, which I’m excited about. I also got a new soldering iron that the one I was using before, it was a, it wasn’t bad, but this one I’m like excited about it. It’s really

Emily: funny. The things we get excited about. It’s

Andrew: funny. I think it’s awesome.

Lance: I’ve got a shelf coming today, but I’m so excited about that. It’s like a little filter that you put little plastic drawers in that I put my like electrical components and stuff and, and, I have a few right now, but getting this other one, it will like.

Double up how much space I have basically. And I can organize things in a better way. I’m like so excited.

Andrew: No, I totally, that makes so much sense. I remember I was like, as a teenager, I’m like heard about the container store for the first time. Like that sounds dumb. Why would people be so excited? I’m an adult now, you know, adult enough to be considered an adult.

I still get credit for being 25, but Soviet. But, you know, I I’m moderately, moderately responsible and I have a home in things that I want to put things inside of. And I’m like, wait a minute. Yeah, that is actually kind of cool. Went back to hobby, to the container store, like a year ago. I’m like, I was a little upset with how expensive everything was, what I was also like there’s some cool stuff here.

I just walked around thinking of all the things I could organize.

Emily: You go there to get ideas and then you find the stuff cheaper somewhere else. That’s kind of my idea, but like, I have to convince my husband every time, like I want to like add a bookshelf or a storage to our lives. Cause he’s always like, we don’t need it.

We don’t need it. Then we get it. And immediately it’s like, I love this. Like, yes, yes I was. Right. That’s cool. So you had to re up your, Your, your supplies for your pedals?

Lance: Yeah, that, I had been making things in really small batches. And, now that there’s [00:10:00] kind of more people wanting to get stuff, I have the ability to make bigger batches than I have been, but just didn’t really.

There’s a, instead of building bigger batches, I had mostly decide to make a small batch of something. And then I would start kind of designing the next effect and yeah, which I’m still excited to do. I’m still planning on doing that, but right now there’s also just a bunch of people who want to buy stuff from me.

So I want to go ahead and get stuff made for them too.

Emily: Yeah, I know you do you do fuzz pedals? Is that primarily?

Lance: so that’s what I have right now. putting the kind of last touches on an overdrive. And then the next thing that I want to do is kind of more on the like modulation or, time-based kinds of effects, but those are the kinds of effects that I like the most that like got me into play.

It wasn’t really until like a couple of years ago, but I got into phys.

Emily: Yeah. You said before you recorded that you like, kind of like noise music?

Lance: yeah, but like not, not exclusively, but, noise music is like how I got into making effects and things that, I used to be an English teacher in Japan.

And, with some of the sketchy punk friends I made in the rural town that I was in were also into noise and they invited me to perform with them at this, like all day noise event called noise jam Berry. And at the time the music I was making wasn’t particularly noisy. But, a lot of the people there would have just like these weird devices and things, and I would ask them like, what is that?

And where did you get it? And they’d be like, Oh, I made this. And one of them was one of the people that works with, massive effects over in Japan. And, yeah. Yeah. And it was like, I had never, it had never occurred to me before then that like, I could just learn how to do this on the internet and start building stuff.

Okay. So like one of the first things that I did that just mystified me, that people mostly just make on their own. It’s this like spring instrument. I don’t really know how to describe it. Cause if you look at it, it’s just a spring on top of a box with an output Jack,

Emily: and then you kind of like hit it and it makes kind of a boingy sound and you put it through effects.

Lance: Yeah. And yeah. And that was just

Emily: a brand. I know that

Lance: there’s a couple of people that have things out that like that out too, but

Andrew: I’ve seen, I know Sarah lip state has something like that, that she uses for, for some experimental work. Really red. Yeah.

Emily: I don’t know why. I just want to say electric fetus, but I’m just getting a record store in Minneapolis.

Lance: I used to live like two blocks from that.

Emily: Oh, really? You used to live like two blocks from electric fetus.

Lance: Oh,

Emily: Oh my gosh. Did you just go there? Did you go there a lot?

Lance: Yeah. Cause like it was. It was in between my bus stop in my house. So I would walk past it on my way home and on my way to work every day.

So a lot of times on the way back from work, I’d stop in there and look at stuff.

Emily: Yeah. I love that record store.

Lance: That’s cool. I have one of their guitar picks. I still use,

Emily: I think I have one of their guitar picks and, I definitely have a shirt somewhere that doesn’t really fit me very well. I just like them a lot.

Oh. I have a pop socket on my phone from electric fetus. That’s my big electric

Lance: greatest thing. Pop socket.

Emily: I’m just a big, Oh yeah. So you stick on the back of your phone.

Lance: I do know, I guess I just didn’t know if that was called.

Emily: Yeah. And you could get little sticks to put like sticky things. So at my desk I have a little sticky cradle for the wall so I can get it off of my desk and out of my pocket, but still like I’m able to see it and charge it and stuff.

And I have one in my car so that I can go, hands-free what I’m using the Google maps. And then every time I see them like, Oh, Minneapolis, Yeah, sorry. I don’t even remember how we started talking about Oh, because I’m I’m misspoke. That’s right.

Andrew: No, I’m just judging Emily for having a pop socket and I’m going to do my best to put in my snooty.

I’m a purest face and cause I don’t have a case on my phone.

Emily: Oh,

Andrew: I [00:15:00] know. I don’t even have a screen protector.

Emily: I, I have a case because I use it like a wallet. Like I have a wallet case,

Andrew: and again, I don’t actually have a problem with you doing that, but this is a great opportunity for me to pretend like I’m snooty.

So I’m going to take it. It makes up energy. It makes up for being constantly mocked for being 25. Just a little bit,

Emily: a little buddy energy.

Andrew: I shouldn’t make a shirt that says

Lance: little buddy.

Emily: I went to a show with Andrew and ah, I kept asking the people around me, who, like, I knew that like, it’s kind of one of those fancy, like follow around and I’m like, does anyone seen? And I realized, nobody knew who Andrew was, my little buddy,

Andrew: and this is like a month before I started a new job and turns out like one of my soon to be new coworkers is at the show.

And like I showed up for my first day and he’s like, Hey, where are you at that show last month? Are you Emily’s little buddy. And I’m like, Whoa, buddy. I just, what are you talking about? It

Lance: forever

Andrew: solidified much to my chagrin.

Emily: I like people who ask when there’s a picture of the two of us together. If I’m really taller, you’re really short. I

Andrew: think we’re like exactly the same height height too.

Emily: I’m five, seven,

Andrew: five, seven.

Emily: Yeah. So I’m North of average, getting yourself a beverage.

Lance: I’m five foot three.

So I’m a bit below average.

Emily: Aw. Ain’t nothing wrong with that.

Lance: It doesn’t bother me

Emily: and everybody loves friends.

Lance: Yeah.

Emily: I love friends.

Lance: Emily

Andrew: loves Prince. Yeah. And I would say it’s like a frightening degree, but it’s all like, by far not the only person I know that loves Prince to set degree. And so, you know, there she is safety and the communal aspect of everybody loves sprints to that frightening degree.

And therefore it’s ordinary and therefore it’s not shocking.

Emily: Yeah, I could be a weirder,

Lance: Minneapolis,

Emily: Minneapolis. Did you ever go to a Paisley park?

Lance: No. I wanted to check it out. One of my old coworkers told me a lot about it, but I didn’t end up checking it out. But I remember that like, you know, sometimes when you start a new job and they’ll have you.

Put in the little bio thing, and they’ll ask you a little questions and I remember one was what’s your favorite Prince? And it was like, I wasn’t sure what to say. And I definitely judge,

Emily: do you have a favorite Prince song now?

Lance: See, that’s the thing is like, I. I’ve definitely heard way more Prince songs and have more in mind now would, I would still have to like, actually look up what they’re called and everything, but driving around in Minneapolis, the Prince is on the radio at least once a day.

So like definitely got a lot more prints in my system there. And then I have other places. I

Emily: know the current still does like Prince hours every once in a while.

Lance: Yeah, that sounds about right, but

Emily: you’re talking about the springy. I’m sorry, go ahead. I’m sorry. I don’t, I don’t, I don’t do we wanna talk about Princeton? Do we want to talk

Lance: about that? I guess we can talk about pedals and stuff. I wasn’t really going anywhere with that print story.

Andrew: Really? Emily. Clear Emily we’ve we’ve gone full circle and it was like couple months ago.

I just kept forgetting to ask you what’s new with you. And I think, I think the turns have tabled.

Emily: Well, the thing is my, my little buddy is that, I was talking to our guests and now I can ask you what’s new with you, Andrew champing at the bit.

Lance: There’s

Andrew: there’s actually not really anything. That’s terribly new with me.

just for the sake of principle, I wanted to give you a hard time for it,

Emily: principal.

Andrew: I think I finished my pedalboard build this week or was it last week? Oh, I’ve lost track. I’ve lost track of what time is officially.

Emily: No love for principal. Come on.

Wow.

That’s disrespect

Andrew: from the turns have tabled. You’re telling puns now.

Emily: Yeah.

Andrew: And

Emily: I’m not going to give you crap for saying that turns the table because I, I say that also,

Andrew: well, it’s a Michael Scott thing.

Emily: I thought it was a big Al thing. I thought that was my grandfather said

Lance: that’s not

Andrew: entirely unlikely.

I’ve never met big gal. I know very little about big [00:20:00] L so I’m not going to speak for a bit on, on the behalf of big Al.

Emily: Big Al is a man with a voice like Foghorn Leghorn.

Lance: Why do I feel like I know big ass.

Andrew: I was joking with Emily before we show that every time we have someone on the show from Ohio, there’s always a connection. And I was joking like. Like, she’s always going to end up like, realizing that you have like a cousin in common or something like that.

Emily: A lot of family in Ohio guy, like at least not ones that I know my dad kind of, cut off.

A lot of, he’s not close with them, I should say. So I wasn’t. So I don’t really, I know I have a lot of family and dating, but I know none of them.

Yeah, but a Loveland, Ohio is where big Al lived. So unless you’ve been to Loveland, Ohio, Lance, in which case you honestly might have come across big Al I doubt you’ve met big Al

Lance: I just feel like I’ve heard someone else describe someone known as big Al the exact same way that you just I’ve met him. But I think I’ve met someone who hasn’t had it before.

Emily: Do you ever figure that out? I mean, yeah. It’s, it’s he who he had a pet squirrel named Cuddy when he was a kid slept in the bed with him, quite a character,

a squirrel squirrel, Cuddy. What a weird name for a pet

Andrew: kid. Cuddy. I feel like I haven’t heard that name in a really long time. I don’t know where that just came from in my subconscious.

Emily: Kid Cutty. I haven’t, I haven’t thought about kid Cuddy in a long time. I feel like we’re getting farther away from it.

Andrew: Let’s do sponsors and let’s say, and let’s jump in head first.

Emily: This week’s episode is sponsored by surfy industries based out of Europe with an office in Memphis, Tennessee, they make us spring reverb units, real deal ones, including the surfy compact, which fits on your pedalboard. It’s pretty awesome. It has a three Springs in it.

So it’s a three spring model. With a two separate channels for mixing. So you can have that super washy sound for a couple of songs and a more subtle sound for a couple of songs. And yes, it will crash if you kick it. It’s pretty dope. Surfing industry is surfing, bare, compact. I love mine and you should try it.

I stand by it.

Andrew: Well, that’s typically what you do with pedals is you stand by them sometimes on them.

Emily: I usually sit by them. No, I don’t. Oh, I miss live shows.

Andrew: We all do any other sponsors.

I feel like we had another one.

Lance: Cool.

Emily: No. Oh. I’m like looking around and I would like to think I would like to thank surfy industries for their, their, their paid promotion of this podcast. the payment was a then donated to, some bail funds across the country because the only countries in the world that has a cash bail system.

And maybe we should rethink that.

Andrew: Yeah. I don’t like that. It frequently gets used as a bargaining chip to just force plea, guilty pleas so people can get back to their families, but you know,

Lance: what do I

Andrew: know about the systematic oppression of low income minorities?

Emily: It really more negatively affects low income people who can’t afford cash bail.

So

Lance: yeah. Yeah.

Emily: Yeah. Even it doesn’t matter because people they’re pulling plenty of innocent people, but in the end, like there’s still humanity. And in most people, unless you’re being denied bail because she did something extremely heinous, like a lot of these bail funds are going to protest. There is. So how it works is that, there’s a bail fund and then they bail out protestors.

And then when the cash bail is returned because the protestor has gone through the trial process and then. You get that returned. It goes to the next person. So it’s, it really is a fund, like a collective fund and that money, unless it’ll be skips bail, doesn’t disappear.

Andrew: That’s convenient.

Emily: Yeah. I am all that.

People don’t know how they work. So I looked it up.

Andrew: Yeah. The only thing I will say is I think people who put ketchup on stake definitely should be denied bail.

Emily: God. Okay. Yeah, that’s not, but it’s like top three worst things that you can do to a steak. [00:25:00] The worst thing you can do a steak, I think is over cook it.

Andrew: That is definitely up there.

Emily: Yeah.

Andrew: Nothing. My silly shenanigans about steak and my strong opinions on. Our cow brethren’s destruction,

Emily: our bovine brethren, because cows are ladies .

Lance: I

Andrew: mean, sure. I not really aware of the gender of my stake generally.

Emily: Right.

Andrew: This is getting really weird. I started with ketchup, which was a smoothie.

And now we’re talking about the gender of the food that we eat. I,

Emily: listen, I have a client who they, they sell smokers. And I was just today looking at a graphic that our designer did about that was like where certain meats cuts of meat are on the animal. And we were having this big discussion about like, is this even the kind of bovine that one would.

Eat or is it a milk cow or something else yet? Andy. Anna,

Andrew: not showing cigarette users. Okay.

You said smokers?

Emily: Oh yeah, no, like meat smokers, like pellet grill. Wow. Okay. We’re doing great.

Andrew: We’re just all over the map today.

Emily: Let’s get into the topics.

Lance: All right. So

Andrew: Lance, I, I’m going to open up and ask you a question that was posed by a pen named. Essay author. I’m not even going to call it journalism because the article itself was just absolutely garbage in terms of some outright bias, some lack of proper representation of all parties involved in the article.

But it was an article talking about,

Emily: we can call it an editorial, but it was phrased as investigational journalism, which is just a farce.

Andrew: It was irresponsible journalism at best in my, in my personal opinion, I think I can say that fairly and objectively, but in the article you, you were brought up ever so briefly.

And the article was about a full tone getting dropped from guitar center and some allegations that guitar center had actually already been dropped by full tone, plot twist, because guitar center own full tone. Something to the tune of like 60 grand and decided to default on it and just, and terminate their distribution agreement.

I don’t really have much to say about that other than I’m clarifying that that was the claims made in the article. And I don’t have any sources that I’m willing to stand on this point to deny or affirm any of those claims. But one of the things that got brought up is the author in his op ed to, since we’re going to be charitable here, made some claims about cancel culture and, brought up Jason Isbell tweet to you.

So, or tweet about you and Jason Isbell made a con made a tweet that essentially said full tone sex, and we should be supporting black owned businesses in the gear industry. You guys can start with doc man audio, and the author. So, and I thought that was really neat. My first reaction to that was like, this is great.

I like this. And the author said, dog,

Emily: man.

Andrew: The author in his op-ed posed that the owner of dog men audio should be offended, that he is being patronized and kind of accused Jason Isbell of treating you like the, like a, like a token black man in the room, kind of a thing. and I thought that was. A bold statement to make.

And I thought that was especially unfair given that the author hadn’t reached out to you. So in an effort to be charitable and fair, I wanted to hear what your response is to that. I want to feel like your honest response, whatever you have to say to that thought.

Lance: Okay. Well, one thing it’s, it’s talk man devices, but that’s not the takeaway there at the, so I.

Wasn’t for a second fended at all by Jason’s tweet that, it’s like it said, I hadn’t heard of 10 before and it wasn’t, I didn’t see it as him. Patronizing me is that like, I saw him as bringing up a salient point about supporting like businesses of color, essentially, because it’s. The whole situation just reminds me of like what I went through when I went to college and learned about feminism, is that like, if I want to hear the voices of women, I have to make a deliberate effort to do that because they are not represented.

And I think it’s people are understanding that it’s the same thing with black people, that if you want to find things made by black people, you can’t just search for the thing that you’re [00:30:00] looking for. You need to specifically search for things by black.

So, yeah, I didn’t, I didn’t think Jason was being patronized and I thought that he was be like, okay. Oh, I don’t like the term woke, but it’s the most that I can think of how to express what I’m trying. Yeah. That it, I, I interpreted it as a very supportive thing and almost especially cause one thing that he did say in that tweet.

Is that he has not used my stuff before. It’s not like he, like, he’s doing this based on my rep on my reputation of like, he’s probably looked at my website, saw that stuff looked good. And I had some things on sale and consignment and a shop in Minneapolis, but I don’t think that. I don’t think people have been buying stuff from me necessarily because I am black.

I think that they want to support black businesses and that I have a product that they actually like. So it’s like, I don’t know if that was making as much. Totally.

Andrew: Yeah, no, you’re making total sense. And I think that’s a, I really appreciate your answer there.

Emily: It’s it’s funny to me. How many times white people try to tell black people and people of color, what should offend them?

It’s amazing.

Lance: Yeah.

Emily: Yeah. As a, as a woman, like I’ve also get that end of the stick. So I like, I can’t emphasize with it directly, but tangentially, I can definitely emphasize with, someone telling you what should and should not offend you. Like, Oh, well you should be mad that you got this guitar gig because, because you’re a woman and they wanted a woman.

I’m like, no, Well, I don’t think that they would have hired me or bought my product if they thought I wasn’t at the very least good enough for the job and that they’re making to me always, it’s like, if they’re making an effort to diversify what’s on their stage or what’s on their record is extremely meaningful to me.

Lance: Yeah. It really meant a lot to me that Jason would tweet about me like that because. That’s simple action on his part has made an enormous impact on my life. Yeah.

Emily: Yeah. That’s awesome. So can you tell us a little bit about the fuzz that you have? I’m curious about it. I haven’t, I heard

Lance: it. Yeah. there’s a on Instagram, which I wish I had their usernames. Just ready to go, but I’m on Instagram. There’s a couple of guys. That had just bought one and had some little videos on, and actually next Friday, I’m going to be recording some better quality audio samples for the fire phys and also the earth overdrive that I’m coming out with.

So people will be able to hear it soon, but anyway, it’s, the DHEA for it. So I. I guess, let me back up a little bit. When I was first starting to come up with my own ideas for effects, I was using a five input Daisy chain to power my things, and I always use a loop pedal. So it was like, Oh, I have four things.

What kind of four basic things would I want to have? And then that got me thinking about like the classical elements and then. What kinds of affects would track to those sorts of things and like with a fuzz or with fire? I mean, fuzz just seems like the obvious choice. And, I was thinking that I wanted to make a kind of harsh fuzz, but I also wanted it to work well with like bass and kind of down tuned to guitars.

Cause I. In my like solo band, it’s just me. And like, God I’ll use an octave down pedal a lot. And I, I just think a lot of the kind of gain effect pedals that I have just don’t work super well with like the octave down or if I just have my guitar tuned super down. Yeah.

Andrew: I wanted to get pedals can get really fluffy on the low end.

Emily: Yeah.

Lance: Yeah, and I just want it to make it so that I got a nice, clear base response. And I don’t know, I played around with a lot of different ideas for a while. I wanted to keep the circuit [00:35:00] itself kind of simple too. And the art and everything on it. I wanted everything to just be kind of elementary for this first set of things.

And then I’ve got a bunch of other weirder, more complicated ideas I want to get into, but. the fire fuzz it’s it’s two Silicon transistors, and then there’s a one germanium clipping diode and one silicone clipping diode. And, by itself, it’s. Like you can get it pretty harsh. It almost gets sort of synthy, but it also cleans up a lot.

Like, especially with the volume only guitar with the flows all the way down and you roll the guitar volume back. You can almost be kind of like an overdrive type of sound, but,

Emily: it sounds awesome. yeah. W when you make some more, could you give me a heads up? Cause I would love to, I would love to buy one and.

Give a demo of it.

Lance: Definitely. That would be awesome. I’m I’m building some more right now that, right now there’s like just a couple that are built in this new style that I’m doing, where things are like polished and engraved, instead of powder-coated. I just have a couple of test things that I did with fat.

And then I think next Wednesday, I should have the circuit boards to actually. Make some more bio we’re going to do a run of some of those fires and also the new overdrive and a handful of other weird little devices that, like I was talking about earlier that sort of spring thing, I’m working on one of those and also got this weird feedback loop thing, but.

Those are, I don’t really know quite what to call those other than just weird devices. Cause they aren’t really affected. Yeah. But,

Emily: and I, I had, sorry, I actually remembered, I know I now feel not so bad that I kept thinking electric fetus because the brand that I was thinking of is electro Faustus.

Lance: Oh, yeah, that does sound familiar.

That they have a, let me look that up. So I think it’s a really similar idea.

Emily: I’m like 80% sure they have the spring thing and I’ve always been, yeah, it’s called the, the black fly. They have one called the black fly and it’s just so cool.

Lance: Yeah. Yeah, there it’s a, so my exposure to them was with noise, but you can also make some really like, kind of soothing, ambient type stuff with it too.

That like, if you don’t. Put it into a fuzz pedal that it doesn’t just feed back, but

it’s confusing really what the fuzz pedal. Cause it will sound just like so much chaos that’s happened and it’s like, nah, I was just hitting this little spring, but

Emily: yeah, I got a recording gig and all of the songs, they literally just wanted me to like, Use my pedals to make noise underneath, to like, like, give the effect of having a migraine headache.

So, I mean, there’s people who do it like underneath otherwise, very melodic sounds like I think. And that’s, that’s the reason I got that gig is because I had pedals that could do that. And so that’s something that people really love. I think I love it. I think in general,

Lance: I think it’s something that like noise music as a genre is like really like to see and hard to get into, but elements of noise are in all sorts of things.

And in my perspective, I think of noises like the cutting edge of music, where it’s like. So some things are so far out there that it’s hard to conceptualize them as music, but then you can take little parts of that, mix it into more of a regular song. And that can be just a cool texture. Yeah.

Andrew: I mean, I think of it like soundscaping

Emily: yeah.

Noise. Can, it can trigger such an emotional reaction in people.

Lance: Definitely.

Emily: Yeah,

Lance: cool. So

Andrew: I’m not super into like noise music, but I always kinda thought of it like stemming out of like shoegaze into post rock and then kind of just taking like the next natural step from there

Lance: and see who gave some post trochar.

Those are my bread and butter really.

well, I just

Andrew: kinda want to hear more of your thoughts and how that plays into things. And then also would love to hear your thoughts or like, what are your favorite shoe gaze and post rock bands? I mean, outside of like [00:40:00] my bloody Valentine and slow dive and ride kind of stuff and, you know, the, the, the staples, but moving up to contemporary stuff.

Lance: Yeah. well with shoe gaze, I listened to a Sobe sexier a lot. I just love that band. And then, I know that they’re based in America. I don’t think that they’re actually active anymore, but aye. I was a Japanese studies major in college and I used to live in Japan and I just really enjoy hearing Japanese.

And I think that it works really well with a few gays for some reason. So one of my name. Things that I will do if I’m in the mood to listen to shoegaze is there is a YouTube channel that’s just called the Asian shoe gaze and every video they have on there, it’s just so good. And, trying to think of another band off hand right now.

And. I cannot, but with postdoc, a postdoc is what got me into playing the electric guitar in the first place that a page lost like or PG gloss. I, I guess they’re a Swedish band, but I remember when I was like 16, hearing them for the first time and being like, what in the world? Like, how are they doing this?

And that’s like, how I. I had been interested in playing all sorts of instruments and stuff before then, but, and it’s not like I never heard people use effect levels or anything. Like I’ve listened to pink Floyd and stuff, Jimmy Hendricks. But, something about the way that they’re using it as like a texture just really got me.

And, I still like Ramallah and like indie held it. It’s like all my favorite bands to the extent where I don’t really like to talk about them with people, because someone tells me that they don’t like them. I’m not going to be able to talk to them anymore. Like, it’s just such a good,

Emily: some good love. yeah, just so you know, I don’t know if you’d be interested, but we do a visual thread for every episodes in our Facebook group.

I don’t even know if you’re on Facebook, but happy to invite you to that group if you want to be. And so you can drop some links to like, what you think are like the songs that people should listen to. Yeah,

Lance: that’d be cool. I’m not on Facebook a whole lot that, I don’t know lately I’ve been getting on it, but more partly because of the pandemic, but also like  before I had mostly just done all my business stuff just through like Instagram and the.

Why wide internet and people have been contacting me on Facebook about it lately, too. So I want to be a bit more attentive to that.

Emily: Nice. The other, you could also just email me some, some clips and I could post those for ya.

Lance: Cool. Yeah. Make a note. So

Emily: nice. Cool. So, The other thing I kind of wanted to talk about was we we’ve mentioned a few times that there aren’t a ton of, pedal companies that are own owned by, by people of color.

there’s you there’s native devices. And I know that there’s one, one other native owned, pedal company that is just, scaping MI

Lance: minor glitch electronics, I think is what they’re called.

Emily: That’s that’s exactly right. And I know that like, I’m typically generally of the opinion that, representation is so important because I just don’t think that I think it’s kind of common for people to not even have the idea that they can do something until they see somebody else who looks like them, or has similar background to them doing things.

Like I never really thought about guitar pedals until, Brands, like Earthquaker started advertising their pedals with, with women. And I was like, Oh, Oh yeah. Cause I just, I just had the memory of like Alison Robertson from the donnas doing a, an ad for Marshall amps saying that she didn’t play any pedals.

I’m like, well, maybe I don’t need any puddles. it’s kinda different, but I was kind of wondering like, how did you get in, into building pedals and whether or not you have any kind of. Thoughts about why it’s still so rare to see a fellow company that’s owned by someone who’s not a, a white guy.

Lance: yeah, so I think a big part of they’re just not that not being very many, People who just aren’t white guys, banking pedals is that you could say that chili, the case for just a lot of business owners in general, that it’s like, I don’t have any statistics here, but it seems like most businesses are owned by a white dude.

And then so in different [00:45:00] industries, it’s like, I. I think that tracks over to other industries as well. I think with the guitar pedals, I, I really don’t have a great explanation for why there are so few cause like there are black people playing guitar. There’s black people doing it. Like stuff with electronics that like a one really cool program that I heard about recently is Afro rack that they’re in Chicago and they teach, teach kids about like modular synthesizers and stuff like that.

And that’s, that’s really cool. And there’s yeah. And there’s people who are building other stuff. I’m not sure why they aren’t making guitar pedals. So I’ve been able to find some people making guitars that are like black owned companies, but. Okay. I really wish I had one of their names off the top of my head, but,

Emily: Cal bran,

Lance: there was someone that I had heard of just to get me there. It was like, I can’t find my phone anywhere though.

Emily: Design is the one that I know of. And I know that Layla, Layla city who built my, Latino, tell them she’s, she’s a woman of color. It was well, and I think that there are organizations like she shreds, who are trying to increase awareness of a brand center are owned by people of color.

And there’s a ton of guitar brands. And like South America is my general understanding. But in the United States, it’s still seems aggressively rare.

Lance: I think, I think part of it is also an issue of representation in the first place that now that it is known that there’s MI native audio and minor cultural electronics. I’ve been talking with those guys a little bit too, but I want to be like, Part of what I feel like I can do in the situation that I am to improve the state of like racial tensions, tensions is the wrong word, but to kind of improve things would just be too P E like to have my face out there to fit like a couple of, A couple of people talked to me on Instagram that have been like, they’re interested in getting into making pedals and stuff and are just excited to see that there’s other people who are white dudes that are doing it.

And I don’t know for me starting a company and stuff, I didn’t really think about all that stuff too much, but I also got introduced. To the world of building pedals and stuff in Japan. Like it’s not a bunch of white guys belts and stuff in Japan, it’s Japanese people. And, they weren’t like electronics engineers or anything that they were like that.

I remember some dude telling me that he built that spring thing and I was like, it’s like, are you some type of. Genius. And he was like, no, this is a contact Mike, you can, you can learn how to do all of this stuff on the internet dude. Like, wow. Yeah. And that’s that,

knowing that it actually has a kind of low bar to injury, just had meat, super intrigued. And I don’t know, I’ve always been into sorta weird music and stuff. And just a lot of just sort of hot things in general. So in a lot of cases, it’s like, there is not someone else who looks like me doing this, whether it’s as simple as like I am a straight man that likes knitting.

That people will get blown away, but sometimes

Emily: that’s cool. I don’t know why more men don’t know that it is so cathartic.

Lance: Well,

Emily: I, but I’m off. Just do it for days.

Lance: I started knitting

lost a hat that I liked a lot. Then it was just like this regular knit cat that had like the ear flops. And, but it also like a brim that would roll down, but like normally it’s one or the other. And I was talking and I was talking to one of my friends that, she just said like a lot of textile stuff in college and everything about like, do you think I could just sew some flaps onto a hat that’s like that?

And she told me, I should just learn how to knit. And I was like, yeah, shit. Got really into it for a while. Cause it is fun and it’s cool to build things for yourself. [00:50:00] And that’s a nice

Emily: thing to do for somebody

Lance: to it’s a nice, easy gift for people. Definitely. 

Emily: guitar pedals. Knitting is a very expensive hobby.

Lance: Yeah, you can, but it’s expensive, but you can also kind of get into it. Sorta cheaply to like, you know, you can get some knitting needles from the dollar store. They’re not kinda, you know, I wouldn’t start like an assembly line level organization with that stuff, but she can learn how to, and it’s kind of like, I don’t know, there was something else I was going to say, and I.

I don’t remember what got me talking about.

Emily: You’re used to there not being a lot of other people who look like you doing things that you enjoy doing.

Lance: Yeah. And so that was something I had already been kind of used to, I had looked up other black owned guitar pedal companies, and I didn’t find anything. I didn’t think that it’s like a, they’re not out there.

It was just that, like, I just must not be advertised in that. That’s one of the things that like, I don’t know who is behind most companies. It’s not something I normally look that deep into, but then, yeah, I’ve heard

Emily: rumblings that there are like guitar pedal companies that are owned by women, but they just don’t advertise it.

They’re owned by women because they think that might negatively impact something.

Lance: Yeah. I’ve heard of stuff like that before that. cause yeah, I’ve tried to find just women owned. Guitar puddle companies. I don’t know if that’s proper English there, but that’s how I heard about like she shreds media like a year or two ago.

Yeah. It’s I like them, but

Emily: she does great. I did some writing and marketing for them sometimes.

Lance: Oh, really? That’s cool.

Andrew: As someone who doesn’t have financial reason to say so I also think she says she shreds is great.

Emily: I mean, I said she tries her this grade before I started writing for them.

Lance: I

Andrew: know. I’m just giving you a hard time.

Joking about bias.

Emily: Yeah. I’m so biased toward great organizations. That’s my bias,

Andrew: as you should be in my humble opinion,

Emily: I’m biased towards good ish,

Lance: but another thing. The whole part of the whole problem of representation. I think why part of that hadn’t quite crossed my mind when I was forming the company too. Was that like, when I got in to playing around with the pedals, I got a loop pedal in a, in it like. Digitech multifactor unit. And I was content with those two things for like a decade.

And so like, I didn’t, I wasn’t like super into gear or anything that it was like, this thing does all the stuff that I want it to do. It didn’t really have any distortion channels on it that I liked that much, but I like,

and why I started to once to get other pedals was just because they’re like, Modulation effects. You can only use one at a time. So like, I couldn’t use an octave down thing and phaser at the same time. And it was mostly just to play around with that stuff that I started getting more, but it wasn’t really, till I move to Japan that I started actually getting more into gear stuff.

Cause I just moved there without any of my equipment. And so it was just kind of starting over and I was like, I don’t really want to get a. I’d rather, I just thought it would be cool to get devices that each do one thing. And then I heard about, pedals and effects on YouTube with Juan and Nick. That the first episode of that, that I saw was him interviewing Nick.

And I bought a line six deal for like midway through that video. It was blowing my mind.

But then yeah, it was after that, that I learning. Yeah, I’ve been wondering what’s going on with Juan, but I know he was in Lincoln coma and last I heard he was kind of getting better walking around and stuff, but I haven’t heard,

Emily: that’s pretty amazing considering they weren’t entirely sure if he had makeup.

So yeah.

Lance: Yeah. But like a lot of times, yeah. And I dunno, a lot of times things will happen with famous people and it’s like, Oh, that’s a person I’ve heard of that sucks. But like Juan getting in that accident was the first time that it was like, this is a person I’ve never met and I am like tour, [00:55:00] but I think he, despite him being a person I’ve never met his head, like it kind of, I’m thinking I’d be doing what I’m doing right now.

If I hadn’t started. Watching his stuff on YouTube. Okay.

Emily: Oh man. I think he would love that.

Lance: I mean, I’m not trying to fish to talk to them or it would be cool.

This is like one of my favorite bands too. It’s just cool. Him and Nick do that together then. Okay. Definitely. It’s been a, yeah. And they’re both

Emily: sweet, sweet people. Such sweethearts is just all I’ve ever heard about either of them.

Lance: Totally believable.

Emily: Yeah, I saw them. They did, a little pedal demonstration at this store that I would bike through sometimes called the guitar store, in Seattle. And, it was just so, so mind bending to see, to see them actually do that stuff live. It was so cool.

Lance: Yeah.

Emily: Yeah. Yeah. cool. Well, I, I want to be respectful of your time.

I know we’re closing in on about an hour. Is there anything else that you want to talk about? Promote get off your chest, shout out Walla while you’re on the podcast still?

Lance: I, yes, I do. I mean, I, I. One thing is I’m not on Twitter, so I’m not actually sure. If Jason was able to see my thank you to him that I had mentioned on Instagram.

So if he’s listening, I definitely do want to thank him for, for doing that. Cause it, despite what that, in air quotes, journalists may have said about the. About the Twitter or whatever. I think it actually is a good thing that he did. And not just for me that I think it’s like is a pretty clear demonstration of a way that people in a position of privilege can use that to lift up other people.

And, so yeah, I’m definitely really thankful for that. And for everybody who’s been buying my. Stuff and emailing me and everything. It’s been really cool. I, want to be available as a person, to other people in the like not white man community that want to get into making effects and weird stuff like that.

I dunno, I’m starting to ramble now. So I guess I’ll just cut it off.

Emily: No, that was great, honestly, like, no,

Andrew: I really appreciate that. And I think, I think since Emily runs our Twitter account, that she should tag Jason in this episode when it comes out.

Emily: I, well, I love Jason Isbell and I don’t think he listens to this podcast, but if he did, it would make me so excited.

Oh man. I seen them live so many times.

Andrew: Well, Lance, thank you so much for being on the show. We really appreciate you opening up sharing your thoughts, your honesty, your perspective, all very much appreciated, especially your eye, your, your kindness in dealing with the fact that I mispronounced your company name like five times at the beginning of the episode, I feel

Lance: so terrible.

Can

Emily: you give me, I’m really curious about the name. I always like to ask people about their, their brand names. How did the Doug van devices happen?

Lance: Oh, it’s a really interesting story that, in college, me and my buddy had a tendency to address each other as man or dog a lot. And after a while kind of wanting to change it up and started calling each other dog, man, and man dog.

And I started to just address everyone is dog man. And then they would start to call that back to me. So in my mind, everyone was dog man, but in their mind, I always just thought like, man,

Emily: that’s like rat boys and how that name came. There’s a band called rapport. Go ahead.

Lance: this isn’t quite related, but there’s a. At that same time, I was taking a lot of like metal art classes in college. And one of the little projects that we had was to put like Nick, like a simple 3d puzzle [01:00:00] thing, and I made a catfish, but it was like half cat, half fish.

And it was just talk man thing that it was just too physically complicated to try to cut. Oh like a man and a dog then makes them look like a, kind of like a centaur, but with a dog it’s kinda, it doesn’t really track. It looks kind of just like a little center

Emily: it’s like old. it’s like, those Egyptian hieroglyphs, hieroglyphics, I think how that’s supposed to be, whether they have like the dog heads.

Lance: Yeah.

Andrew: You like dogs, caravans,

Lance: fucking wheels. Sorry. Wow.

Andrew: Movie. I do that. That’s a good movie. Have you guys, you guys, do you, do you know the movie snatch?

Lance: No. Yeah, I’ve, I’ve seen it, but it’s been like. On well, like plants, settlers of Catan or something like it’s, I’ve seen like other people have seen it and love it.

So that has happened on in the background while we’re doing something right. It’s not the best way to first experience

Andrew: now. It’s I feel like you got to sit down and if you’re an American, you guys sit down and watch it with subtitles because some of the accents are just so thick.

Emily: Is that a guy Ritchie movie or something?

Andrew: I don’t remember who directed off the top of my head actually. Brad Pitt was in it though, and he does the most insane accent. It’s brilliant.

Lance: Yeah, I think that was why you were going to put it on was for Brad Pitt’s accent. And I’d be like, don’t leave it. And remember

Andrew: is a crazy accent is almost unintelligible.

Like even the subtitles, like you turn on the subtitles and it just listed as unintelligible.

Lance: Isn’t it kind of like a boom Howard talks on King of the Hill. If you guys are familiar with King of the Hill, Oh, it’s been a

Andrew: little bit, so

Lance: do yourself a favor. It’s a

Andrew: pro.

Lance: It is so funny. Still, definitely highly recommend King of the Hill.

Andrew: Now it’s coming back to me now. It’s the character that’s got that thick drawl. You can’t really understand

Lance: anything. Yeah. Wow. Yeah.

Andrew: Yeah. It’s kind of like that kind of thing. Except Brad Pitt shows up shirtless frequently and

Lance: 1,001

Emily: Brad, but no shirt,

Andrew: no shirt and fighting, fighting in the ring.

Lance: So

Emily: nice but less white male rage.

Sure. Probably still a lot. I don’t know.

Andrew: It’s one of the most intelligent movies on the planet. I think it’s super dry, British humor ever. Like literally there’s not a single line that is just filler. Everything plays into each other. And then the twist at the ending, because of course it

Emily: has to happen.

Okay. But saying that there’s a twist is kind of like a spoiler. So I didn’t say I wasn’t going to watch it.

Andrew: There also might not actually be a twist. I might just be saying that. And then you’ll be like, wait, wait, no, that was super predictable and get all

Lance: upset.

Emily: Wow. I just, yeah. I think people really need to learn saying there’s a twist at the end is a spoiler.

Andrew: Did you guys see the new movie? Did you see the twist? Like it’s an M night Shyamalan movie. Of course. There’s a twist.

Emily: Well, that’s, that’s the exception, like, you know that he has twists and sometimes they’re very bad. I don’t know, I haven’t watched those movies in forever, but we’re getting farther away from it.

Andrew: We’re getting it so far off topic. And this is my way of saying thank you. Really appreciate having you on.

Lance: Thanks

Emily: for responding to my weird random Instagram message.

Lance: It’s usually how I was

Emily: like, Oh, he’s, he’s getting inundated right now with requests for things.

Lance: Yeah, but it’s exciting. Got a lot of problems that I never considered were possible.

So it’s like they’re problems, but they’re like really good problems to have. So Katie and inundated with emails was one of them.

Cool. Well, good.

Emily: Good, indeed. Well, yeah, thank you so much, everybody. Please check out. Dogman devices I’ll include links and the show notes. Also, we have a Patreon, patron.com/getoffset. If you want to support us as we do the podcast, that’d be [01:05:00] super swell. Because of merchant get offset podcast.com or if you don’t want to spend money on us, if you could just rate and review this podcast on iTunes, it really helps us in our, in the rankings and get more, getting more listeners and things like that.

so if you do listen to this podcast, please, please, please, please, please leave a review. we really appreciate it. anyway, thanks for listening and thanks for understanding. Once again. I’m Emily

Andrew: I’m Andrew.

Emily: Goodbye.