Singer/keyboardist Eli Winderman digs into his band’s fifth studio album, MEGAGEM and their unorthodox decision to take a year-long pause while their popularity is still peaking.

FREEFORM FOCUS

We started working on MEGAGEM a couple of years ago. We like to let our songs develop on their own over time live and, once we have a bunch of songs, we’ll go into the studio. For the most part, our songs start with a demo of mine that’s 70 percent done and then the guys will add different riffs, words, lyrics and their own personalized touch to everything. A lot of times, [guitarist Rob Compa] and I will sit down and write the lyrics and, sometimes, we’ll put in weird words that our bass player [Chuck Jones] wrote down that don’t make any sense. [Laughs.] We always try to keep the process of writing very open to everybody’s ideas and explore every path possible.

I reached out to our fanbase on Facebook and asked if anyone knew of a place where we could record in Colorado because we were gonna have some time off there and, through that, I found Mountain Star Studio—a solar-powered barn in Black Hawk, Colo. The walls are lined with this recycled Styrofoam material that is sound-absorbent so we went in there and set up our gear and mics. Our crew helped us but then, for about a week, it was just the four of us up in the mountains—high elevation, a lack of oxygen. We started every day with some totally free-form improv, and we recorded everything. We ended up with 13 or 14 songs, plus a bunch of improv; “Buster Brown” came completely from that. So we already have enough for another album, but we decided to split it up so that it would fit onto a vinyl.

ONE STEP BACK, TWO STEPS FORWARD

We’ve been touring pretty heavily for the past seven years and are starting to feel a little worn down—not out of gas completely, but on fumes. We’ve been aware of this for a long time and, in the past, we’ve always tried these mini-breaks, but that didn’t seem to alleviate the pressure much. It just felt like the years kept compounding, and we couldn’t really catch up. We’d already recorded MEGAGEM and were having a band meeting in the middle of a tour—we were being honest about how we felt and about needing a break. Our drummer [Neal Evans] also showed us this TED talk— [“The Power of Time Off”]— about a guy who owns a design firm in New York City. Every seven years, he closes it for a year; everyone at the company focuses on their own personal projects and then, they reform. And the effects are profound—everybody involved is rejuvenated and has these new ideas, outlooks and attitudes. So that was our inspiration—let’s try a longer break that we know is gonna be a year and plan it out accordingly, come back with another new album and start touring at more of a reasonable pace so that we can sustain this for years to come. It’s normal for people who travel a lot to feel burnt out, so this is our way of trying to take a step back so that we can take two steps forward.

SQUAD GOALS

We’ve talked about something like this before, but this band has been our only income for years now, so the thought of not touring is just this huge life change, and it’s really scary for all of us in a lot of ways. It’s a risk and it opens up the possibility of not coming back. Part of the goal is that everybody can also start to develop their own ways to bring in some income so that we don’t have to tour all the time. Chuck and Neal have a trio called Mom And Dad, and I started this band, Octave Cat, with Jesse Miller from Lotus. I’ve also been messing around on drums. I’ve felt that, as a songwriter, I’m always critical of the drums and I want them to sound a certain way, and it’s been fun to drive the sound in that way.

Outside of music, I’m planning to spend a lot of my time doing volunteer work because I want to try and improve myself as a person. I also plan on doing a lot of yoga and meditation. There is a big shift when you end up back in normal society after being part of this tribal community where you’re with your brothers out there. It’s not as extreme as a PTSD thing for someone in the military, but it’s along the lines of having to completely change your way of life. And so I’m trying to take a bunch of steps to help that transition happen smoothly. “

HARDER, BETTER, FASTER, STRONGER”

Everybody’s at a different place on their journey, so there’s no rules for this break; we could come back in six months and play a show or it could end up being three years. We just need to regroup without having the pressure of trying to make this thing continue to succeed; we need to remove that to focus on other things in life and, eventually, come back to it as stronger people and, hopefully, that will bring it to the next level. We have almost a Dopapod East and West happening—we’re spread out, but we’re spread out into two units. I’m in Philly, Rob is in New Jersey and then Chuck, Neal and our light/sound guy Luke Stratton live in Colorado. They’re able to hang out, go on all these camping trips and have their soundchecks together. We use JamHub, which is a headphone mixer that you can plug like 7 people into, to practice remotely.

RETURN OF THE JEDIS

I compare [our scene of bands] to Star Wars. We are continuing the tradition of the past Jedis, while all these other people are trying to be DJs. We are all interconnected as bands, too. Dopapod originally started at the Berklee College of Music in 2008—inspired by the Benevento/Russo Duo and Soulive—with me and current Turkuaz drummer Michelangelo Carubba. Neal was in Turkuaz for a while and we were all simultaneously splitting time between the two bands for a few years. It’s a point of pride that we are trying to keep this thing alive because there’s something really special about people playing off of each other that you just don’t get from playing off a computer—this tribal group of friends that you watch onstage. You can see the changes every night.