Falling In Love With Music Again: Mat Dauzat Of Dauzat St. Marie On Facing & Overcoming Challenges

The band Dauzat St. Marie, featuring the work of Mat Dauzat and Heather St. Marie, recently released the new single and rather fabulous video for “Common Ground”, a song that was selected for the Now That's What I Call Music! collection, volume 75, which is out now. 

Dauzat St. Marie is a band that sprung from the origins of a college band, then a more developed LA-based band called Hydrovibe, before guitarist Mat Dauzat and vocalist Heather St. Marie settled on a more focused project for their music and life partnership. After putting out their album Falling Again in 2014 and keeping up with their accustomed energetic touring, Heather was diagnosed with breast cancer and she and Mat spent 18 months focused on fighting cancer and bringing Heather back to full health. Now that Heather is cancer-free, the duo have returned to music.

Despite the pandemic, Dauzat St. Marie are committed to continuing to release new singles during this time and build themselves up toward a brighter time when their beloved way of life, touring, is back on the books. Both Mat and Heather appeared on our Tower Instagram Live show, which you can still check out right here, and Mat Dauzat spoke with Tower's PULSE! about their journey toward "Common Ground".

[Dauzat St. Marie play Red Rocks]

Hannah Means-Shannon: Do you think that your work shows influences from your native Louisiana?

Mat Dauzat: I think there’s a little bit of a Southern feel to our music, and I think that’s what’s shining through. It’s a lot of influences that we didn’t even know we had, but there’s some good Southern Rock, and sometimes there’s even a Bluegrassy feel with the tight harmonies. A lot of talent there, and a lot of honesty in the music, so I think that we try to keep that tradition alive.

HMS: What brought you out to the West Coast to work on music?

MD: Heather and I met just out of high school when I was 18, and she was going to college in my hometown. She came up there for graphic design and we both enrolled. We went to college together. That’s how we met. I was looking to put a band together and brought her in to audition. I knew there was something very special about that voice. We started touring and branching out. We’d go to the West Coast to play shows and play The Whisky [a Go Go] every few months. One of the times we played at The Whisky, the guys from Limp Bizkit came to the show.

Shortly after that, their guitar player left and they hired a musician referral guy to replace him. He called me to audition and I was reluctant, but I ended up going because Heather and my Dad were pushing it. At that time I was gung-ho about having my own band. There was actually a debacle where the band wasn’t available when I went out, so I didn’t end up doing it. The referral guy just kept calling me all the time asking me to do stuff. He didn’t understand that the “LA” in my address wasn’t “LA” but Louisiana, so I had to keep telling him that I couldn’t do it.

Then our band in Louisiana kind of dissolved when people graduated, but Heather and I weren’t ready to do that. Really it was when 911 happened that changed things. We thought, then, “Tomorrow is not a given.” We knew that if we didn’t do something radical to give our musical talents a chance to shine, we would regret it. We picked up and moved to LA quickly after that.

When I got to town, I called the musician referral guy, telling him I was finally in town. This was Labor Day Monday, and he said he had Kelly Osbourne on Wednesday. I went down and I ended up getting the gig. My first show in town was the Tonight Show with Jay Leno. I flew out to tour Europe that night. That’s how our introduction to Los Angeles went and it was pretty crazy.

HMS: That must have been a huge validation that you had made the right decision that it just immediately took off.

MD: I have a very close relationship with my Dad. He’s always been supportive, but you don’t particularly want to see your kids chasing after music dreams because it’s a crazy thing. People on the outside know that it’s a crazy life. Literally when we were pulling out of the driveway, he didn’t really know what to say, but he said, “I’ll know that you’ve arrived when I see you on Jay Leno’s show.” Literally, I was able to call him and say, “Dad, turn on Leno!”

HMS: That’s remarkable. That's a great story.

MD: So I was off touring Europe and doing big shows and Heather was trying to put the band back together. Things started winding down with Kelly Osbourne when she started taking more TV stuff. Heather rounded up some players and we wrote some music. We got a song in the movie Saw III.

HMS: This is your band Hydrovibe?

MD: Yes. That thing exploded, and Heather and I dove into that. That first year we did 9 months on the road never coming home after that movie launched. Those were some years of hard touring and building a big grass-roots style fanbase. We’re so glad we did that then, when fuel prices were lower. Shows started being more selective and fans couldn’t do the roadtripping and coming to multiple shows. Heather and I such road-dogs. Touring is such a big part of our life.

HMS: How used to touring were you when you joined Kelly?

MD: When we first started the band in college, we started touring right away. We’d just hitch up a trailer. So that was not new. Things were different with the European touring, with the five star hotels and tour buses. I’ve seen both sides of that and it’s good to have a grasp of the business. But for Heather and I, touring is our business, as much as 95% of our business. So when the pandemic hit, that was gone.

What we should have done, we realize now, was diversify more. We had never really paid attention to our Youtube channel. We’ve been so busy. You’re too tired to do that when you’re on the road. So we’re catching up on that, and Youtube is probably the best stage that we have right now. That was our immediate pivot.

When our Chicago tour got crushed, we knew that we could either sit in a corner and cry or do something. So that was our immediate pivot and we’ve focused on Youtube hard.

HMS: So many musicians are facing this right now, and I know that’s not much comfort, but it’s not surprising that touring has been the heart of the financial side of things so far. Especially since the rise of digital media when physical media sales went down.

MD: Yes. We missed the boat on music sales by a few years. We can’t rely on music sales so much, but at our shows we can sell just fine. When we did a tour with Pat Benatar, we were selling 200 CDs a night. That still exists on the road, but can I sell 200 CDs now online? Probably not. If the shut in continues much longer, we’ll have to decide whether to release CDs or put out singles and do the streaming thing? We don’t make much money on streaming at all.

During the pandemic, we’re committed to putting out new singles every four to six weeks.

HMS: Oh, wow, cool!

MD: We’re committed to staying productive, but we’re betting the farm that touring will come back and when it does it will come roaring back. Before that time, we hope to grow our presence online and emerge much better than we went into the pandemic.

HMS: You’re getting ready for battle.

MD: That’s right. It’s not that we weren’t already, but we want to challenge ourselves and be growing.

HMS: That’s admirable to find that positive aspect.

MD: That’s been our battle-cry through the cancer battle that we just emerged from. That was our deal too, saying, “We’re going to come out of this better.” And we did.

HMS: Your story, and what you all have been through, is terrifying but incredibly inspiring. I think it’s wonderful, because this is a painfully common story that many people don’t talk about, that you have been so willing to talk about it.

MD: We had to. Because we have so many tour dates usually, we knew people would know something was up. We knew that our fans have come to love our openness and honesty, so we decided to share it. We didn’t know what that would mean to others. We started getting messages from women saying that they hadn’t done mammograms before, but because of our story, they went and did mammograms and found out that they had cancer. Then they were able to get an early diagnosis and it saved their lives.

After getting the messages, we understood the purpose of this platform more. We could spread this message that one in eight women are going to be diagnosed, so go and get that mammogram. And also, the idea that if someone is diagnosed, it is not the end of the world. You can beat this and turn this into a beautiful thing. It’s our responsibility and privilege to spread that message. We’re doing to be doing more with that soon.

HMS: Did music play a role in helping you to get through this yourselves? I’ve heard, and I think it’s probably true, that the mental state of people going through this is important to the outcome. If you can avoid stress, you can be stronger physically.

MD: Absolutely. Stress is the enemy. Generally, in life, stress keeps you from making good decisions. The mood is crucial. We rediscovered that we are actually fans of music during this time. With a cancer battle like this, there is this core of stress that’s always there, so you’re just tired all the time. Creatively, we weren’t able to do a lot, so we just started listening to more music and falling back in love with that experience. With listening to whole albums. Who does that?

HMS: What were you listening to?

MD: We revisited stuff that we were listening to in college at first, older Rock stuff. But Heather finds hip new stuff and she curates Spotify playlists. She has one that’s called “Feels Like Friday” with cool Pop, fun stuff, like Robyn and 1975. She has another called “Low Key Week” and it’s all instrumental stuff.

HMS: You should release those on Spotify!

MD: Maybe we should do that. She is really great at curating. It’s great for me.

HMS: When, in this process, did you realize you were able to work on music again?

MD: Once Heather was out of chemo, I think, and we got into the radiation part which wasn’t quite as intense. It wasn’t something that we talked about, but I could just see it in her eyes that she was getting her creativity back. I was the in the caregiver role, which is intense as well, but when I saw her eyes start to light up, I felt like I could get back to the creative partner role. But it really came back. We wrote a song and sent it to the Susan G. Komen foundation and went out into the desert to film a video.

HMS: That’s right, “In It Together”.

MD: Yes, we were going to be launching this campaign with them on this tour that we were supposed to be going on with Rick Springfield right now. We were going to play this video on a massive LED screen. We were even going to be filming a documentary. We are still going to be able to do the campaign, but we are going to push it to October, which is Breast Cancer Awareness Month. This year we’re going to leap into action on that to raise awareness and funds.

HMS: It seems like you and Heather are very theatrical. Is that fair to say? It seems like you’re really into design and aesthetics. I was interested when you said that you both had a graphic design background.

MD: Yes. You called it. We do pay attention to the aesthetic. It’s a package. We couldn’t just show up looking slouchy and perform. We want to put in the effort. We’re kind of revisiting our art roots during this time. This music video that we just did for “Common Ground” really brought us back to our art days. We went back to our team, Alison Roberto and Sébastien Paquet, who we’ve teamed up with the “In It Together” video. Psychologically, it goes back to what we were talking about, about revisiting things and falling back in love, so we wanted to do a classic 90s era MTV music video.

HMS: [Laughs] That is so true! That is exactly what you did. Wow, you really hit the nail on the head. But with better production quality!

MD: That’s right. We said that we wanted better production quality, but we wanted “Losing My Religion” where there was a photo shoot and set. Ali really loves Labyrinth.

HMS: That is totally what you did! I can see that.

MD: [Laughs] That was the concept. Often Heather and I have these ideas that are way bigger than our pocketbooks, so when we got some quotes back, we didn’t just walk away from the idea. We just dove in. I had a friend with a warehouse space not being used, so we borrowed that for a week. Heather and I had to clear out mountains of construction material, but we built those big set walls. Heather did all the costuming.

HMS: Oh my goodness. What a great job she did!

MD: It was like freaking arts and crafts world, with hot glue guns everywhere. We loved it. It took us back to college days. This is what we were doing when we first met, pulling all-nighters on projects.

HMS: It’s a beautiful video and I never would have known it put together on a shoestring. It really looks lavish.

MD: Thank you. We’re going to do a behind-the-scenes. We have time-lapse videos of the set walls going up. People assume we have a record label doing this with a whole crew, but we do this ourselves because we have chosen to be independent. There’s a reality behind that which we want people to see.

HMS: I think people will be nothing but impressed to see that behind-the-scenes.

MD: Our previous video, “Where Were You” was also one that we did 100% ourselves. We had a street date set for it when the pandemic hit. And we were advised not to release music, according to conventional wisdom, until we could tour to support it. But we had just been through a year and a half cancer battle, so we said, “Screw it.”

We were also adamant that people needed to have that visual to experience the song. At first, we couldn’t get anyone to help us with the video, because the pandemic had just hit. So we had to dive in and learn video making and video editing. We bought green paper and made a green screen. We made a video! It gave us a new appreciation for that art.

HMS: That’s amazing.

MD: It came out exactly how we wanted it and people loved it.

HMS: You’ve now tremendously expanded your skillset during this time. That seems like it can only be a good thing.

MD: It’s our dream to have a music video for every single we put out, and we may not be able to do that, but now we can put out more videos. On videos where the concept is beyond what we can do, we’ll continue to work with Ali and Sebastian. We want to bring back the awesome music video. We think that’s an art that’s started to slip away.

HMS: I feel like other bands are realizing it more during this time because videos are a wonderful way to engage if you can’t tour, too.