“Ask me a week and a half into this tour if I still want to be in the van,” Dave Simonett laughs, already gearing up to hit the road in his side project Dead Man Winter. While Trampled By Turtles rolls like a finely tuned machine, Simonett’s solo outfit is still in the duct tape and dashboard coffee phase—which, surprisingly, he’s into. “I’m kind of excited about it, but I might be the only one who says that.”
He’s bringing Dead Man Winter to Louisville on April 23rd behind Furnace, an album that brims with emotional wreckage and cathartic release, dressed in deceptively upbeat tones. “You’ve pulled off the Smiths trick,” I told him. “Singing about despair with bright riffs.” His response? More accidental than intentional: “That’s just how it worked out.”
And it really worked out. Furnace emerged in the wake of personal upheaval, the kind of real-life fallout that makes headlines in press releases. But rather than wallowing, the album manages to shimmer. “I did go through a lot, yeah,” he admits, “but there was still beauty happening. I have two kids. I was recording with close friends in a beautiful spot. It wasn’t just one note of darkness.”
Still, he’s wary of romanticizing the “sad songwriter” trope. “When I’m in the worst parts of that, I’m worthless,” he says. “I don’t create anything. I can’t even get out of bed, let alone write a song.” But he acknowledges that hard times can be fertile ground eventually—just not always in the moment.
As for the music itself, Simonett’s less interested in micromanaging and more into capturing spontaneity. “We recorded ‘This House Is On Fire’ and ‘You Are Out Of Control’ the very first time we ever played them,” he says. The latter spirals out into a chaotic jam that sounds like a train losing its brakes in the prettiest possible way. “I just knew I wanted it to go on for a while and get chaotic. That was the only direction I gave.”
That looseness is intentional—and rare. “I love when artists keep a first take, but a lot of people talk themselves out of it,” he says. “We didn’t feel the need to do it again. It was done.”
That search for the live feeling in a studio setting is an eternal chase for most artists. Simonett just might have caught it this time. “Recording and live shows are almost two different occupations,” he tells me. “But this one… this got close.”
And so Dead Man Winter hits the road, with a raw, beautiful record in tow and a van ready to creak its way across the country.
Listen to the interview above and check out the first single, Destroyer, below.
