Photo by Amy Mudagucci
dadlore — a band that celebrates the present to be thankful for it in the future
In the fading glow of college-town house shows and living room rehearsals dimly lit by fluorescent string lights, one of San Diego’s most unique up-and-coming acts has found its footing on cracked pavement and late-night conversations. Born not out of ambition, but out of a need to feel, speak, and scream something true, the band formed between bedrooms, stitched together by friendship and the unrelenting ache of coming-of-age.
A project which came to fruition in late 2023, dadlore initially began as a series of jam sessions between SDSU students Steve Metcalf and close friend/former Blank Space frontman Ryder Schwartz. Led by the songwriting duo, whose lyrics read like diary entries scribbled on the back of a show flyer, dadlore moves between moods with a kind of fragile confidence; one moment drenched in sheer fuzz and fury, the next unraveling in soft, echoing self-reflection.
Last week, I got the opportunity to sit down with the band prior to their final show at SDSU, and in sitting down with dadlore, I wasn’t greeted by a band performing for a spotlight — I met three close friends trying to make sense of the noise, both literal and emotional. And somewhere between the laughter, the metaphors, and the cigarette break tangents, I began to see what made their music feel so deeply human. Here is that conversation.
A Conversation with Steve, Walker, and Ryder of Dadlore
KSDT: How are you and who are you? Tell us about yourselves.
Steve Metcalf: Thank you so much for the kind introduction. We are very tired after setting up this entire show, but we're really excited because it's been such a long time coming, especially with our EP and it being our last show at SDSU. I'm graduating, and we’re really looking forward to branching out of the college scene. But yeah! We're dadlore, and I'm Steve. This is Walkie.
Walker Hubbs: I'm Walker. I'm the drummer of dadlore. Steve, what do you do in Dadlore?
Steve Metcalf: I'm the singer and I'm the rhythm guitarist, and I principally write the songs for the band or the skeletons of them at least. I was telling Walker the other night… I was like, “Walkie, I thought of this metaphor! The rhythm guitar of a band is the skeleton, the bass is the heart, the lead guitar is the–” wait, what did I say the lead guitar was?
Walker Hubbs: I have no idea.
Steve Metcalf: The drums are like the muscles.
Walker Hubbs: The drums were like the heartbeat.
Steve Metcalf: The drums are the heart. The bass is…
Walker Hubbs: Wait, this metaphor is awesome!
Steve Metcalf: The bass is the quads. The lyrics are the face. You know what? Whatever, forget it!
Walker Hubbs: It was cool. It was cool, and we're dadlore!
KSDT: Before we get into the more music-related questions, I have something more important to ask: what is your guys’ dream blunt rotation?
Steve Metcalf: I gotta say, Jesus first of all.
Walker Hubbs: That's the definition of Holy Smokes.
Steve Metcalf: I’d say Jesus, Messi, LeBron. I’m trying to think of artists. Well, Jesus is kind of like an artist. He's an inspiration. Probably my great-grandpa, whom I never got to meet. My dad. Oh, Graham Hancoc! He's the old civilization guy who made that theory about the civilization that got wiped out in the flood. He's a huge stoner himself. He's done DMT a ton of times. Basically, it would be super interesting, and Jesus would be like, “Yo, this guy's fucking sick.” And then Messi would be like, “I’m kinda Messi.”
KSDT: Moving on, how would you describe Dadlore to someone who’s never heard of y’all before?
Steve Metcalf: Alternative emo grungegaze with indie vocals.
KSDT: So, one of the first things I'm drawn to is your guys’ name. Online, the term “dad lore” is often used to refer to all the crazy shit our dads did or got up to before we were born. What drew you guys to the name when you first started out? Were there any other names that you were initially drawn to?
Steve Metcalf: This is all me. I had this solo project called Steve's, and that was super fucking cringy. Then, I started writing better music, and I got better at guitar, and my music taste changed, so I started writing heavier, more interesting alternative stuff. I decided, you know, with this new music that I'm writing, I think it's time for me to craft a new image, but I didn't want it to just be about me. I honestly feel like it's easier for people to support a band as opposed to a single artist; you've got to be really fucking good as a single artist. I just don't think of myself as being that good, and I rely so much on my bandmates as well. They just make the music 100 times better than I could have ever even dreamed of it being. I knew that I wanted to start a band, and I knew that if I was rebranding, the name had to hit, so it was months of me trying to come up with the right name.
It seemed like everything that I saw… could that be it? Is that the new band name? So I started this huge, long list of band names. One day, I'm scrolling on Instagram reels, as you do, and I come across this video of this kid knocking on somebody's door. They opened the door, and because he was a black kid, some racist white guy shot him twice for knocking on the door. He ended up surviving – thank God – and I went to the comments and the first one was something along the lines of “This guy’s dad lore will be crazy,” and immediately I was like, “Bro, that's it!” I knew right there. The first thing you have to do when you think of a cool band name is go on Spotify and see if it's already being used. Aside from that, my dad is one of my biggest inspirations. He has awesome dad lore, so it's sort of an homage to him as well for always being like a rock for me and really encouraging me to follow my dreams.
I remember when I played “You Should Call Your Mom,” the closer from the EP, for my family at this little get-together that we had. I looked up at my dad, and he was crying, and it made me really choked me up. I'm kind of choking up just talking about it right now, because his mom died about a year or two ago, and it was really hard on him. Once I had finished playing it, he pulled me aside, and he said, “I really think your music has legs. Keep doing it.” It was honestly just that little bit of encouragement from my dad that sort of helped me keep going.
KSDT: For this next question, I wanted to flash back a few years. August 31, 2023, at the Warehouse OC (a local venue instrumental to the OC DIY Scene), alongside fellow San Diego locals Blank Space, dadlore played their very first show. Tell us more about the origins of the band and anything specific that you guys can recall about that first show.
Steve Metcalf: So that was our good friend Grace Tom's birthday show, and that was probably less than a month into existing as a band. Ryder (lead guitarist) and I had been jamming all summer, and I had already asked Walker if he wanted to join our new band. That’s one of the main reasons I asked him to live with us. In my head, I was just thinking, “We need Walkie in the band. He can't be a drummer for anyone else, and he needs to be my roommate. We need to be best friends,” and that's exactly what's happened.
Walker Hubbs: More on that show, Grace Tom, our good friend who's a very talented photographer and videographer, invited us there for her birthday bash. She gathered all of her friends who were creatives and had just a huge concoction of creative, artistic people in the SoCal area. It was a warehouse, and they filled it with her artwork and photographs that she and her friends took, and I believe that was the only show we played with Blank Space.
Steve Metcalf: Super privileged to have done that. I mean, Blank Space is arguably the whole reason Dadlore exists, because of Ryder and how inspiring he was to me. We instantly clicked and became best friends when we met during our freshman year at SDSU. That was right when Blank Space was getting started, so I was along for that whole journey. I got to see the ins and outs of the DIY scene, how to start a band, how to make it successful. Blank Space is obviously a very special case. They're one in a million, basically! I sort of feel like we're their spin-off, which is totally fine. It's different, but they're a huge inspiration. Yeah, that first show was rough, man!
Walker Hubbs: Oh, we sucked!
Steve Metcalf: It was awful! I mean, at least compared to now. It was a great first show, though. I mean, you just have to get the reps in when you're first starting out. Especially for me, because performing was very new at that point, I had only performed maybe four or five times. Walkie was a little bit… well, much more seasoned than me in terms of performing. It probably wasn’t until about 10 shows down the line, where I actually started to feel comfortable and a little more confident. But nonetheless, it was a great experience.
Looking back on what must now feel like so long ago, with all the experience you’ve gained and having grown so much as musicians, what advice would you give to yourself at that point?
Steve Metcalf: I would say keep writing, keep playing guitar, keep learning new stuff. Don't stress if it's not coming to you. Firstly, I think of myself as a songwriter. I don't really think of myself as a guitarist or a musician, because I'm not that good at playing guitar, and I don't know anything about music theory, but I am a decent songwriter, and I feel like that's what has allowed dadlore to experience a modicum of success. I like to think that I have good taste, and I know that my band has good taste. I think… trust your bandmates and be okay with being rejected.
Walker Hubbs: At that point, I was just trying to play in as many bands as I could and just get as much experience as I could. I really wanted to just be a recording artist and start releasing music and Dadlore was the way for that to happen. I think just in the last year and a half, I've gotten so much better at drums. I was all right. I wasn't too good at that point. Maybe I'd tell myself, Hey, you're probably gonna get better. You're not gonna suck for this long. Just keep ripping, and eventually you'll be pretty okay. And we've definitely also gotten better as writers.
Steve Metcalf: Totally, our new songs in terms of complexity, they're just brilliant!
KSDT: Yeah! Honestly I’ve been listening to “Everlast” quite a bit since it dropped.
Walker Hubbs: That song is such a bitch to play, dude! That song is so brutal, but the writing on that song is actually unreal. That was our first weird song. I've seen people try to count it next to us. At the listening party, I saw people try to count it. That song switches between nine, eight to six, eight to four. It's so bizarre. I don't know how we did that with all our limited knowledge and theory.
KSDT: On the topic of writing, could you guys give us some insight into your creative process? What does bringing a song from start to finish look like for dadlore?
Steve Metcalf: So, it varies. There's been some songs like “lil homie” and “everlast” where Ryder writes the rhythm, or he writes the lead, and then I fill in whatever’s left, and then we sort of write the lyrics together. For “lil homie,” we wrote the lyrics together and played it together. For “everlast,” he had this guitar part, and he was like, “Dude, we need to use this for a dadlore song,” and I found some lyrics for it, and eventually I did that song. Those two are examples of where Ryder takes more of an initiative in doing the first part, and we work around it.
Once me and Ryder have a strong part together, we bring it to the band at our next practice, and we sort of figure it out and see how it sounds, and then structure it from there, play it through. Okay, do we like that? Well, maybe let's change this. Maybe let's try that. But for the majority of our songs, it goes like, I'll write something on rhythm, I'll take it to Ryder, if he likes it, then he'll write the lead. Once we have the lead and the rhythm and the lyrics, then we take it to the band. I don't want to oversimplify your and David's (bassist) roles, Walker, but I feel like it's easier for you guys to write parts to a song that we already have, a rhythm, a lead, and lyrics for.
KSDT: Which song in the process of writing it, would you say was the most fulfilling or enjoyable, something that really gave you that sense of satisfaction?
Walker Hubbs: Well, “lil homie” was funny, not because it gave us a sense of satisfaction. Steven and Ryder wrote that song at like 1 AM or 2 AM one night, they wrote the main melodic line, and filled it all in with lyrics about me. They were just laughing their asses off, and they come into my room while I'm sleeping, and they turn on the light, and they start singing the song to me and woke me up with the song.
Steve Metcalf: Personally, for me, I had the most fun arranging ‘You should call your mom’, because that was a really meaningful song at the time that I was writing it, and when we brought it to the full band, and things started getting pieced together, it just felt really special. And I know that it's a really hard song to play live, but I knew that if we recorded it, it would sound so good. And Walker actually didn't want to record it initially.
Walker Hubbs: We were arguing between “walls” and that song because we wanted to set a five-song minimum. I fought so hard for “walls,” but Steve fought super hard for “call your mom” and we ended up just doing both of them
KSDT: So seeing us tonight marks your final show here at SDSU, which, over the course of the past few years, has served as a home of sorts for you guys. How are you all feeling? Nervous? Sad? Excited for this next chapter in the band’s story?
Steve Metcalf: Yes, it is the end of an era, but it is the beginning of a new one. It is the beginning of an unknown, which is exciting but scary. You know, I feel like it's sort of similar to the jump from high school to college, or the way that jumping from college to real life is scary but exciting. I am excited to get out of the college scene, because it's kind of suffocating. Everyone is playing the same shows, the same bills, the same houses, and it's just oversaturated at this point. It’s pretty repetitive, and I don't want to speak for you guys, but I can say that I think we we did as well as we could with, with the circumstances that we had, and I think after Blank Space, we're probably the biggest State band. At least we have the most momentum/traction, at least in terms of fans. Statistically, from house shows and stuff like that we weren't selling 300 tickets, like Blank Space would, but we got more people than the average band, and it was all ticketed. We were a successful State band. Not that I think about everything in terms of metrics, but I am very proud of what we've done and what we've created, much of it trailblazed by Frontseat (a San Diego Media agency started by members of the band) and by Blank Space, and then we sort of just got to follow in the footsteps.
KSDT: That’s actually a perfect segue into my next question, you guys frequently work alongside local organizations like Frontseat Media and SDS Records, Could you tell us a bit more about those relationships and what it's been like fostering a community here in San Diego, where, in comparison to, cities like LA, OC, or even SLO the scene isn't necessarily as prevalent?
Ryder Schwartz: I think Frontseat is pretty interesting, because I mean… we are Frontseat. We started the agency freshman year as an opportunity for Blank Space to play more shows, because there just wasn’t a lot going on at the time. It was originally just a name to throw shows under, so it wasn't just like “Oh, Blank Space is throwing a show,” and then it eventually transformed into a much bigger scale project. It's a full-blown production agency now, which is really cool. It’s definitely been the rock under everything, helping us push through. Just being able to be a part of that and start that company, as well as play the bands that are featured by it, is really special.
In relation to other scenes, I don't know if it's comparable, just because we are fighting for a totally different demographic. I think me and Steve specifically have a really big appreciation for the OC scene and hardcore zones, and Frontseat started off as primarily proper indie stuff. I think where dadlore sits in that is kind of interesting, because we blend that harder scene that we have stretched into Frontseat, and now Frontseat has become just a melting pot for all the new sounds in the area. For the longest time, it was just indie music.
Steve Metcalf: I think we're a great blend between indie and… I mean, not even hardcore, because we're not hardcore, but indie, and I don't know, it's hard, it's to put a label on, right?
Ryder Schwartz: I don't know, there are so many fucking labels you can put on it at the end of the day. It's just not necessarily something you would expect at an SDSU show.
Steve Metcalf: More on Frontseat, SDS, and organizations like that, I think there's one up in more of the LA/Orange County area, Coded, and even Magnol Collective at UCSD. They're all organizations that are ultimately dedicated to the same thing, which is giving kids like us the ability to, one, showcase our talents and our passions, and two to create memorable live experiences.
I wasn't even particularly fond of live music for a very long time. I went to Outside Lands once when I was 16, for one day, and it was amazing. I went to a Khalid concert at Oracle Arena and that was about the extent of my exposure to a live music scene. And when I came here and I finally got the chance to go to a couple house shows I just thought “Wow, this is the coolest thing ever. It's just a bunch of kids in a backyard listening to a sick band. Like, how do I do that? How do I become a part of that?”
Ryder Schwartz: I think that's interesting, because it's the same for me, and I think most people in our scene, it's just kind of something that we all stumbled into. We didn't come to SDSU with the mindset that, “Oh, we're going to do this.”
Steve Metcalf: Now, it feels like people go to SDSU because they want to be in the music scene. SDSU has such a vibrant music scene, I think, in part because of organizations like Frontseat and SDS that are putting on high quality, high production, fun, safe, house shows. I can't tell you, a show where anything bad really has happened other than maybe getting a little too drunk and they're early too they don't attract anything or anyone scary.
KSDT: No, I feel that completely, the scene in LA/OC for example is alive, well, and full of great music but if you find yourself at the wrong show it can get a little nerve-racking.
Ryder Schwartz: It’s heavy man, it's heavy. It's also just a whole different world. Being in a college area, it's pretty safe, and you're pretty certain that everyone who's going is either in college, friends with someone in college, or in the area we're in.
Steve Metcalf: Don’t get me started on some of those OC shows.
Ryder Schwartz: Yeah! Like when we went to Chain Reaction. I mean we always joke, because we're not hard at all that whenever we're going to a Boycomma show or just going to play up there in general, it's always like, “Man, we're gonna stick out like a sore thumb.” We feel so indie and lame in that scene. It’s kind of fun though we get to try and channel our inner Boycomma or whatever. It's just a different world.
KSDT: Do you guys have a favorite memory of playing here? Any shows in particular that stand out to you guys? This is like a great memory of your time here.
Steve Metcalf: I think that one of my best memories was our end of the year show that we played last year, which was with Veto and Misfire. That was the first show where I really felt like everyone, or most of the people there, were there to see us. Now going back to metrics, statistically we had 100 presale tickets, 80 of them were for dadlore.
Ryder Schwartz: But I think it's less about us selling tickets and being happy with that, and more finally being able to see that it got through to people. I feel like dadlore’s music is risky in a lot of ways. That show was the first time that we felt like our music had space there. Same with Veto and same with Misfire, because all three of us have a different sound that isn't indie. Not everybody can enjoy our music, which is fine it's supposed to be like that. That show, I think, was a milestone: one, we're getting better, and two, that people understand it.
Steve Metcalf: It was really comforting to see that people could resonate with it, especially at a show like that, which is by no means like an indie rock bill. Really thinking about it, we only really played at State four times this whole year. Every single show, there were at least 200 people there, which isn't like an incredibly insane achievement. When you think about how these aren't just, “Oh, free show, come listen to my band,” it’s not even a $5 show. It's like, “No, people are coming and spending $10 to come and see us.” It's just special for me to think that our hard work, which I don't even really think of as hard work, is paying off in the way it is.
KSDT: Before we move onto the EP, I want to ask, how has coming up within the San Diego scene influenced Dadlore as a band, and are there any favorite local acts you guys are currently excited about or which have made an impact on you guys sonically?
Steve Metcalf: I mean, Ryder probably doesn't want to hear this, but the biggest inspiration for dadlore is undoubtedly Blank Space. Not even in terms of sound, but just the rapid growth that Blank Space experienced kind of proved that it was possible in our scene, because we had never seen any bands get that far.
Ryder Schwartz: I think it's a special case for you, Steve, because you were part of Blank Space, you know, not being in the band, but still part of it. It definitely inspired you to get out into that world.
Steve Metcalf: At least for me, because I wasn't even really listening to the music that I currently listen to two years ago. I feel like we're inspired by each other at the end of the day. I mean, just look at all the music I listen to now, it’s all the music that you listen to!
KSDT: Moving on to your newest release, nothing ever lasts, which dropped just a few days ago under San Diego label, SDS records. With six tracks coming in at just over 25 minutes. The project encompasses everything from surf, indie, and garage rock to shoegaze, emo and alternative. Tell me about the inspirations for the project and what if anything ultimately sparked its creation.
Ryder Schwartz: In my head, the straight, simple answer is just Steve's first year experimenting as a songwriter, and us learning how to work with what he gives us. I feel like through the last year and a half, in which all these songs were written, each one just got a little bit better in a different way. It was really an experimental time for us. We'll continue to experiment, obviously, but I think this EP is special in the way that every song was a completely different process, and we're just trying to figure out where we want to go with our sound and how we want to create music.
Steve Metcalf: I would agree. I mean, like the first song, for example, “my landlord andy scammed me,” which used to just be called “Intro” because it goes into “walls,” which is in the same key. That whole song came when we were practicing, and we were trying to figure out how we should start our next show. Like, “Oh, let's make a cool intro, and it can go into ‘walls.’” I did the stupidest little chord progression, and then everyone else wrote their own little parts.
Ryder Schwartz: I think it's special, because we didn't have a plan. Most bands that have been around for a while go into an EP, an album, a two-piece single, or any project with intention. We were just like, “Let's write one if we like it, great. If not, whatever, throw it aside.” So when it came down to choosing the songs, it was just kind of figuring out what our best ones were.
Steve Metcalf: Each song on the EP is so unique. You listen to the first one, you're like, “Okay, that was interesting. Wow.” And then the second one's completely different, and then the next one's completely different, and then the next one's completely different. They don't really make sense together. I mean, to me, they make total sense, because it's all that we've been playing for the last year. But, they're all pretty different songs, and I think it just all ties back into the experimental phase of my first go at serious songwriting. Just that mindset of well, you're gonna find something that works, and you're gonna fucking do it.
KSDT: Take me through each track on the EP and tell me a little bit about them.
Ryder Schwartz: Okay, our landlord Andy actually scammed us. It's a real story. Well, it doesn't matter. The point is we hate our landlord.
Steve Metcalf: It does matter, we're in an ongoing legal battle with our fucking landlord, and that's it, period.
“walls”
Ryder Schwartz: “walls” is the oldest song on the EP, honestly, one of the oldest songs in the dadlore quiver. It's super old, and we're so sick of it, but it's a classic. It is the song that bridges the indie stuff that we started off with the heavier stuff that we got to in the end. I think “walls” is our perfect example of alternative rock.
Steve Metcalf: Rats actually ate our couch. So this is tied to “my landlord andy scammed me” because the rats ate my couch. The rats also ate my washing machine and dishwasher and refrigerator, which caused thousands of dollars of water bill usage.
Ryder Schwartz: But the reason it’s called this is not because the song is about that, but it's an angry song, and we feel a lot of anger towards our whole housing situation with the rats. The song is actually about something completely different, but we didn't want to name it after what it was really about. It’s actually our first song that we decided to name something funny, and now we're never gonna have a serious song title again.
“everlast”
Steve Metcalf: It's the title track of the EP.
Ryder Schwartz: I think “everlast” was one of the breakthrough songs that we were extremely happy with, and was a big step in the direction we wanted to go. We were just so amped to record that one. “everlast” was one of the first songs that we finished, where we just felt that it was really special.
Steve Metcalf: Yeah, I will say that it felt almost impossible to try to write lyrics to a song that's in 9/8, because naturally, you want to write lyrics to a song that's in 4/4. It makes sense, but I can't even explain it. The beat was falling on the wrong spot. I would try to sing to it, and I just couldn't, and so you'll notice, at least in the second verse, “you are always on my — brain” the end of the line is the beginning of the next line. I had to play the audio recording in my ear, and then sing some shit out loud. It was just really hard to get down. It's cake now, but that was, like Ryder said, a breakthrough song for us. You would never go to a college house show and hear this song.
Steve Metcalf: “lil homie” is one of my favorites. It's called “lil homie” after our drummer Walker, who we nicknamed Lil Homie because he's two years younger than us, but he's taller than all of us. It's sort of like this, “Oh, like you're little, but you're big, so we're gonna call you Lil Homie.” The song initially was inspired by me and Ryder. We were high as fuck one night, just up super late and started playing some stuff on the guitar. It's one of my favorite songs to play live, because I love doing the back and forth with Ryder. I feel like Juice Wrld and Lil Yachty on that one track. It's just like it's a cool feeling to be singing with your best friend. It was a meme. The simple answer is, it's a meme.
Steve Metcalf: The best song on the EP, the most emotional one. It's the song that in the past two days has gotten the best reception. The most amount of people have come up to me and been like, “dude you should call your mom.” That's my favorite. It made me feel like some type of way, which is interesting, because we almost didn't record it. I was never gonna allow that to happen.
I knew when we finally got it worked out last year that if we recorded this song, it would be amazing because I'm super proud of the vocal melody and the lyrics that I wrote. It came to me at a great time, a very emotional time. There's a bar about Ryder in it, which is the only reason he likes the song. I would help him with some of his video shoots. Shout out @ryder.schwartz on Instagram if you ever need any videos.
KSDT: Throughout the EP, sonically, you guys explore a really diverse variety of textures and tones. Could you guys walk us through each of your rigs, tell us about any pedals or piece of gear in general that you love or would consider essential to your sound.
Ryder Schwartz: This will be easy, because Steve's pedal board is just like the smaller version of mine. Well, we didn't even use my pedal board on the actual record. The sounds that we got recording actually were just a better version of the sounds that we can get live, just because we can't afford the nice shit. The first one that comes to mind is Way Huge Swollen Pickle. It's this green fuzz, and it is just the only fuzz that we like. There's this one reverb pedal called the Walrus Audio Slo, and it honestly just totally made the more gazey sounds that we wanted, so we use that a lot.
Steve Metcalf: I know that there was an EHX Small Clone Chorus pedal on my guitar, at least. Experimenting with chorus stuff was really fun and then there were three amps that were mic’d up during the recording process
Ryder Schwartz: In all honesty, though, the recording process for getting our tones was so much different than what we do live, just because in the studio we had access to a wider variety of high-quality gear. Our recording engineer, mixer, producer, could probably talk about it all day, because he loves that shit. But I think this year, specifically, or at least in the time leading up to the EP, I stepped away as a lead singer in another band and started focusing on lead guitar. It really helped give me time to craft what we want it to sound like. So, I mean, my board is huge, and I don't use all the pedals, but it was just a lot of experimenting with different things.
I think the biggest inspiration for our tone came from the music we listen to. Our harder stuff, you know, more chord based, fuzzier stuff comes from Title Fight and these bigger bands, and then how we decide to use, the reverby stuff comes from even indier bands. We find a lot of inspiration from bands like Pinegrove and even Americana. On the shoegaze side, Wednesday was a big inspiration for how I wanted to sound these kind of long shoegaze trails with some delay and reverbs on top.
The inspiration for our tone and how we found it was a mix between us experimenting and us trying to emulate the bands that we like. The first time we heard “Je Ne Sais Quois” by Boycomma – that tone where it's like an overdrive crunch, but not fuzz, and it's like right in the middle, we were just like “Yeah, let’s do that”.
KSDT: So moving on to our final question. So now that SDSU is out of the picture, could you tell us a little bit more about what's next for Dadlore?
Ryder Schwartz: I think our next goals are much more focused on perfecting our sound and recording, because we are a little bit in the dark about, you know, where our geographical location will be. We're definitely gonna be in San Diego at least for another year. In terms of playing shows, and what our trajectory is, because it's been so straightforward being at SDSU we don't really know yet we're gonna have to figure it out as we go, but in the meantime, we have the music to work on.
Steve Metcalf: I think it's more important that we focus on recording high quality songs. I think that the better our songs are, the more opportunities will lay up for us, rather than going to search for things. That being said, we do get emails. We get hit up about a lot of different stuff. We do have our fingers in a couple different honey pots. Can't really announce anything yet, but we do have some cool stuff on the horizon in terms of live shows. With this EP being out, it'll only add to the demand of people actually wanting to come out and see us. We've proven to be able to pack a 500-cap venue, at least in San Diego, so we'll branch out somehow. But yeah, I guess we don't really know what that looks like yet.
Dadlore is not a band chasing polish. They are raw edges, inside jokes, unresolved feelings, and whispered lyrics that hit just a little too close to home. What they offer, perhaps unknowingly, is a soundscape for growing pains, stitched with fuzz and feedback and the kind of honesty that can't be faked. In a scene often saturated with aesthetic over substance, dadlore leans in the opposite direction.
In the days since our conversation, I’ve continued returning to their songs; not for clarity, but for company. Their music doesn’t promise answers, instead, it offers recognition: of loss, of youth, of memory, of transition. Their departure from SDSU isn’t just the end of an era for the band — it’s the end of a world they helped build, and the beginning of something uncharted.
And though nothing ever lasts, there’s something lasting in the way this band exists, imperfectly, passionately, together. Dadlore is the kind of project that reminds you why local music matters. Why stories shouted into a mic at a house show can feel more permanent than any studio gloss. And if their recent release is any indication, what comes next won’t just resonate, it’ll echo.
Bands to Check Out if You like dadlore:
Veto - Introspective Post Emo straight out of SoCal
Love Letter - Gut-wrenching alternative rock/hardcore from LA
Misfire - Hypnotic Julie-esque Nu-gaze from San Diego
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