By Austin Henderson
On Saturday, a soulful Des Moines band, the Maytags, will make the trip from the capital to Iowa City for a night of entertainment at the Blue Moose Tap House, 211 Iowa Ave.
The 9 p.m., 19-and-over performance will showcase the smooth style the seven-piece band used in the construction of its début LP, Love Lines. The album was recorded in Nashville’s Bombshelter Studios, a favorite of such act Alabama Shakes.
A growing infatuation with analog recording led the group to make the trip to the home of country music.
“We first used analog at [Rock Island’s] Daytrotter Studio,” said lead singer and de facto bandleader Dustin Smith. “We cut four songs in an hour and loved the way they sounded. From then on, we were on the hunt for analog.”
The group, consisting entirely of Midwesterners, coalesced in Des Moines’ thriving music scene following Smith’s return from music school in New York City.
“The group just kind of evolved,” he said. “Some of us grew up in Des Moines. Studying under the same people, it was kind of a collective.”
Like Smith, much of the band has formal musical training, with members coming from St. Louis and Minneapolis to study music at Drake University. Smith, who studied jazz as a drummer while attending school, believes “any musical training will benefit us.”
The stress-filled environment of music school forged Smith’s songwriting skills.
“I began as a closet singer-songwriter when I was 17 or 18, but it was in New York, playing music for 10 or 12 hours a day, that I began writing in earnest,” he said. “It was something for me to do as a broke college student that was outside the bind of teachers, rules, and expectations.”
Smith noted the shift in instruments and genre — from drums to guitar and vocals and from jazz to soul — as one of the more exciting decisions he’s made as an artist.
“It was nice to get out of the corner and really begin producing some music that made people dance — not background music,” he said.
After returning from New York, before joining forces with the rest of the band, Smith cut a solo album.
“A lot of my earlier music was acoustic, folky,” he said.
The subsequent founding of the band Dustin Smith and the Sunday Silos led to a major stylistic change.
“I started listening to a lot of soul,” he said. “What attracted me was that there were so many styles that went into it. American roots, blues, groove, little bit of everything.”
The addition of the horn section during the era of Dustin Smith and the Sunday Silos came to define the sound that evolved into the Maytags.
“I think that with background vocals and horns, there will always be a level of stylistic consistency,” he said.
However, despite the new-found sweet spot, the band is by no means stuck in a sound.
“We have a lot of music working,” Smith said. “Stylistically, we have grown a lot closer in what we want to achieve, but we never have a full idea until we start [recording]. We are going to try to push ourselves every time we write new music or have a recording session.”
