Dalmatian
Dogwood Tales Interview
by Wilma Ampomah-Sraha
25 September 2026
Ben
Kyle
Congrats on the new release, Every Star in Rockingham County. Is there anything you want people to know or keep in mind before going into their first listen?
I want people to take whatever they receive the album as whatever they receive it as. But this album is almost like a love letter to where we're from and our families and our community.
I would also add it's probably the first time we made something that was overtly hopeful, and outwardly expressing a desire to be hopeful about things in life and to believe in whatever keeps us going. I feel like that was new territory for us. If anyone wanted to know anything about it, be ready that it's hopeful and earnest.
Do you think that recording at home makes the process more grounded?
We do everything in a home studio at Danny's house, but we definitely use things beyond GarageBand. We do everything within the confines of our town, which impacts everything, and it definitely keeps us in a place of wanting to push ourselves in our own ways of what makes a Dogwood Tales song a song; trying to elevate it in that sense. And there's not a lot of outside noise from anyone. We're just in our own space doing it. It's kind of simple and clear what we are looking to achieve, and I like that grounding experience of being home while we do it.
In Soundcheck Infinity, you said, "All my mistakes caught up this morning." Are there any mistakes lately you've made that you've been thinking about?
I definitely felt that when I wrote it, and felt like maybe a lack of taking care of myself is what I'm referring to, and how that can catch up and really end up challenging my psyche later on, even though in the moment it feels good to keep doing things that maybe aren't always the best for me. I don't mean anything extreme, normal challenges of life, but I've been healthier lately. And I've been making less of those mistakes lately than what I was referring to.
Do you two make music naturally when you hang out, or set time aside for it?
We do both. Kyle will bring an idea to me, and then me and him will work it out together, and then maybe bring it to band. It's like you bring it, or I bring it in the rare instance, and then we bring it to the band together and then work it out as the band. It's at least a three-step, three-tier, process, manufacturing.
I would say there's times we're hanging out and we're like, "Hey, I've been working on this." But we do both. We definitely take time, and we'll intentionally hang out certain days during the week to work on things. And then there's times we're hanging out. I feel like often that's, like, when we actually end up catching something meaningful. We'll be like, "Hey, I just, like, worked on this today. What do you think?" And show each other something while we're hanging out. So it goes both ways.
Since there are four of you, who came up with the idea to become Dogwood Tales?
Me and Ben made it up together when we were pretty young. I was eighteen, and he was sixteen. I'm thirty-one now, so thirteen years ago we came up with the idea of being the band and having the name and everything, but it took some time to get it together. We didn't perform a lot or anything. We were kinda working on music, and we had different iterations of the band, kind of finding what was gonna click, but I met Jake when I was eighteen in my freshman dorm. We met Danny shortly after that. Probably when I was nineteen or twenty, and Ben was eighteen, in Harrisonburg.
And immediately we all had some very connecting energy. And we were working on either Dogwood Tales or other bands together. And slowly, as that process began of working on everything together, Dogwood Tales became the obvious thing to work on together. So we just became a band out of everyone being around Harrisonburg and wanting to make music.
What are your plans for the rest of the day?
I'm cooking. I pickled some stuff from my garden. I made some bread pudding, and I'm gonna get ready to make some dinner.
Ben is one of the best cooks ever. I mean that; anything he makes is delicious. So makes sense that he's doing that. I'm going to visit family. I'm gonna drive an hour north of i81 in the valley to Stephen City, Virginia, and go see my parents and my sisters and my nephews and eat dinner with them. And I'm looking forward to it.
Dogwood Tales on Instagram
Every Star in Rockingham County on Spotify and Apple Music.