Dehd refuse to live a dead life

Lyrics about the state of one’s heart have existed as long as songwriting itself. There is no dearth of love songs, or breakup songs for that matter. Throw a rock and you’ll hit a band penning hooks about heartbreak — some to successful ends, some not so much. As listeners, we consume said tracks seeking to relate, connect, and to feel. I indulge in them myself, probably more than one should — but I’ve found that most hit me like a sugar high, quick and addictive, sweet until the taste dissolves on my tongue and I’m crashing, weepy, and unsure if I need another mouthful, a lobotomy, or a long nap. 

This isn’t the case, however, when it comes to Chicago indie-rock trio Dehd. Made up of ex-partners, now friends Emily Kempf (vocals, bass) and Jason Balla (guitar, vocals), alongside Eric McGrady at his revelatory stand-up drum kit, the band have amassed a well-deserved audience over seven years that’s grown well beyond the Windy City. Bright but stripped-down, their unique lo-fi sound hinges on McGrady’s toothsome but simple snare and floor tom, the slippery snap of Balla’s guitar picking as it meets bluesy overtone pedals, and Kempf’s powerful vocal prowess, which includes yelping and, at times, impromptu comedy mid-set. Fearlessly, they’ve taken on uneasy subject matter with a level of unseriousness that’s few and far between — as evidenced clearly by Water, the 2019 LP that bore lyrical and sonic witness to Balla and Kempf’s breakup — somehow unpacking the most ravaged of emotions while hanging onto a hefty dose of hope. The saying goes, pain is inevitable — but suffering is optional. Dehd know this, and encourage you to dance about it. 

Read more: Bnny’s Jess Viscius picks her favorite love songs of all time

After their last album, 2022’s Blue Skies, the band were set on sourcing their next inspiration away from home. Together, they journeyed from Washington’s Bainbridge Island to Taos, New Mexico, where Kempf now lives in an Earthship — a round, soft, and ancient building technique she describes to me as “an off-grid type of housing that's built with trash and adobe,” and features passive solar heating and cooling, with a cistern that catches rainwater to be reused through the house. In the solitude and focused togetherness, the threesome steeped in their own emotions. And with writing as their sole “desert island” tool, they put together Poetry. 

Zooming in from Chicago, I spoke with two-thirds of the band — first Balla joins, and as we wait for Kempf, who is working her other job as a tattoo artist today, I decide to fill the area reserved for light small talk by blurting out, uncharacteristically, that my week has been chaos, who knows what’s going on with my interpersonal life, and I’m sure something must be in retrograde. After spending the last 24 hours listening to Poetry, I had been cracked open, and this band had become an ally. The album, ironically, is truly fun. It has a full, strident sound that carries weight without dragging you down — a fine line to walk with a tracklist that takes on self-doubt, relationships ending, questioning one’s sexuality, mental collapse, trauma, and more. It’s packed to the brim with color and carefully placed motifs, each song a photograph of a real place, person, time — the unveiling of a harbored crush, a lone pair of Gucci sunglasses, the trembling of hands around a lover. Rather than claiming each story as their own, Poetry’s intricacies are a humanizing force, and a grounding one — not unlike McGrady’s two-piece kit. Laid bare in the album bio, Dehd’s ethos was best summed up by Bukowski — “You can’t beat death, but you can beat death in life.” 

The process for Poetry, I hear, involved a wild road trip.

JASON BALLA: We've always been a Chicago band, recording and writing in Chicago. This was the first time since Emily had moved to New Mexico where we had to figure out how we'd actually get together. Originally, we were going to Taos to set up where she lives, but when we were leaving, we thought, “Let’s make this a bit more of an adventure — head up into Seattle and finish it off back at home.”

It’s funny to think of a band hitting the road willingly while not on tour.

BALLA: We realized that afterwards. Like, “Wow, we spend a lot of time in the car.” But it was way sicker. Eric did all the driving, Emily was bopping around to meet us, and when you're not on a schedule, you can really appreciate the vastness and the beauty of the zone. At one point, me and Eric got stuck at this mountain pass, and we just had to wait for an avalanche to be cleared. There was no turning back. It was an hour- or two-long detour, so we just walked around in the snow to kill time. It was a lot of that.

EMILY KEMPF: You couldn't pay me. I flew to meet them at each stop.

You guys would write when you all met up?

BALLA: Yeah, I have built up a little mobile recording studio over the years that can be moved around, so I threw it in the car, and then basically everywhere we would go, we would set up. Emily lives in this Earthship — a cozy, adobe, off-grid type of housing — in New Mexico, and we were there for two weeks and just fully dug in. It was cold and snowy in high desert, and I was freezing my ass off every night under eight blankets. The only thing to do there in the middle of nowhere was to just write music. At the cabin on Bainbridge Island, it’s just trees and water and our instruments. It was easier to be lost in the process than at home. We really live in the songs and go through our own feelings. It was a really helpful way to process all the life events that had been happening to us individually. Out there, you’re not in your normal comfortable place, and you can look at things a little bit more objectively.

So you’re on this intense road trip, spending concentrated time really feeling things. What was the process and dynamic like, between you three, during all of this?

BALLA: Rather than the mentality of, “We have to keep playing guitar until the song is done,” there was lot of time we were just fucking around. It was more easygoing — you might just pick an instrument up and play. 

For one song, Eric was playing acoustic guitar, I was playing bass, and Emily was actually doing chores — but when she came in, she just started singing. It was this thing where someone would be making something in the background, and if it sounded good, it would draw people from the other corners of the yard or the house. This is actually one of these cosmic trends that I've been experiencing — we've been a band for seven years, but it felt very much like writing music from the beginning. Fresh, joyful, and pure. It was playful because there weren't really any rules.

Did you go into it with some sort of concept or theme for the album? Or was it a true reflection of what was going on, in real time?

BALLA: It just found us. I had just been through a breakup and, at the time, didn't have anywhere to live for seven or eight months. Meanwhile, Emily and Eric were simultaneously going through crushing and dating land. So I would be stewing in my one corner, and Eric and Emily would be on their phones texting.

I know that feeling. Would you say that your music and writing are entirely personal, or do you feel like there are altar egos, characters, or world-building involved?

BALLA: It definitely comes from processing real stuff. For me, writing music is like a diary — understanding and processing your feelings.

That definitely translates in the level of detail on the album. The honesty is heard. And it’s a funny paradox, because it seems with your work, somehow the more realism and specificity there is, the more relatable it becomes — at least to me as a listener. It represents true human experience. That’s difficult to achieve, without alienating the audience.

BALLA: These kinds of things — love or doubt or loneliness or whatever — it’s about putting it all down in a way that people can recognize themselves in it. That's what I get out of music that I really love. Solidarity in things that are hard to handle, or feel so much that it seems no one could ever know what you’re going through.

KEMPF: Especially when it’s a weird feeling. One you didn’t think about until this person sang about it or wrote a poem about it. I think poetry — not our record, the subject — that's its job. To express things that languages fail.

Wow. If you had to say what your band's mission statement would be, what would you say?

KEMPF: Make people feel and relate. And also have fun. We're really into having fun — despite tragic, painful, weird life stuff. 

BALLA: We try to talk about things honestly, in a way that acknowledges how complicated life is. There's just no black and white, and especially with emotions and the way that we go through life. 

KEMPF: Choose your adventure. 

That's definitely represented in how many different stories and experiences are touched on just across this album. Which goes back to that idea of offering an authentic human experience.

BALLA: This is how the Bukowski poem came into it — which we put in our bio. Life is about going forth and actually living. It's not all good, and you shouldn't try to guard yourself so you only experience nice, comfy things. Feel the stuff that sucks; feel the stuff that feels amazing. The poem is basically just about agency in your life. Don't live a dead life — know it and own it.

KEMPF: Don't live a Dehd life.

BALLA: Oh shit. 

And there’s my headline. If you had to describe your live show to someone who'd never seen you, how would you describe it?

KEMPF: Fun, wild. A lot of movement. We go all over the place onstage. I try out my career as a comedian in a deranged way because everyone's forced to listen to me. 

BALLA: Physically, we’re like the car lot inflatable man.

Which show are you most excited about on the tour?

BALLA: I don’t know. We're definitely more popular now than we've ever been, and we're playing rooms that I never would've really imagined. But it's still sick to just go do the thing that is unpaid and just a little fucked up. So many people that are so fucking jaded and burnt out. This is a fun job! So we just try to keep enjoying it.

KEMPF: Fucked up and free for everyone is arguably more fun. That's how we came up. The day I stop wanting that is the day that I need to have a talking to. For us, Dehd is actually just about making music.