Artist Profile: Dirt Buyer

Although Dirt Buyer originated as simply another foray in the playful experimentations of founders Joe Sutkowski and Ruben Radlauer, it quickly took on a life of its own, serving as an outlet for the constant musical energy and slowcore-tinged riffs the pair exuded. But for Sutkowski particularly, the band (and the release of Dirt Buyer III) have become a sort of baseline— one that, as he exits a long-standing battle with addiction, represents a goal of a comfortable and intimate creative space to return to.

As a child, music was a refuge for Sutkowski. He grew up surrounded by the jazz, swing, and big band records of his father— who had worked as a singer with the Glenn Miller orchestra before his own personal struggles had forced him to step away from that profession. For Sutkowski, however, it was his love for guitar, and for bands like Blink-182, My Chemical Romance, Muse, and Korn, that propelled him through his childhood.

“I was always surrounded by music. But I always kind of used it as a form of self preservation, because I grew up in a really chaotic home environment, and [music] was a place that I could go. It was the one thing that made sense, that was consistent and predictable… As a young kid with ADHD in the Ritalin boom of the early 2000s, it was so hard to focus on anything. So when I found this one thing that I could just spend 10 hours doing, I just took it and ran.”

As he got older, and his tastes spread further and further outwards into the sprawling tendrils of math and experimental rock, his interest in guitar remained absolutely central. When it was time for him to go to college, therefore, he knew that music school was essentially his only choice.

He applied to Berklee College of Music with the intention of honing his technical skills and, in some hazy future, pursuing a career as a professional musician. His time at Berklee was foundational for his growth as a musician. But he describes his experience there as a slow, painful conversion into a world of jazz-supremacy, and he largely lost touch with the passion he once had for the raw emotion of the music of his youth.

When he graduated Berklee, therefore, he still had no clear picture of what the future looked like. He stayed in Boston and, with his new-found free time, began jamming with Ruben, who was completing his final year at Berklee. The two had a (humorous) plan to create a fake, self-run record label with bands of virtually every genre and, under pseudonyms, write and record for those bands themselves. Dirt Buyer began as part of this elaborate inside joke, springing forth from a simple riff that Sutkowski had originally planned to discard. 

“I was gonna just disregard it. But [Ruben] was like, ‘Yo, what was that? We should record that.’ So we recorded it, and there's no other reason that Dirt should be a band. That was a total accident. From that moment, it just kind of took on a life of its own. And Dirt Buyer became our emo band, our fake emo band… But [Dirt Buyer] was just a passion project that we recorded on iPhone. I honestly have no f*cking idea how we've gotten here [laughs].”

That riff later became the foundation for “Josephine”, the second track off Dirt Buyer, the band’s debut album. Dirt Buyer is certainly DIY in its production and execution. But it is, in many ways, polished in its intentions, blending an intimate understanding of the emotional gravity that certain strains of midwest emo are capable of carrying with a technical refinement that leaves the project hovering somewhere between the spheres of influence of Elliott Smith, Sparklehorse, and American Football.

Shortly after the release of that first project, the duo moved to Los Angeles, where they quickly ingratiated themselves into the scene and gained traction as an up-and-coming act in the area. They worked their way into a studio and began capitalizing on this momentum with their work on Dirt Buyer II— which would ultimately carry many of the same sonic strains that the first record did into a more hi-fi sphere. Things were taking off quickly. They had garnered interest from PR firms and even one or two major labels.

But before they could even finish their work on Dirt Buyer II, the whole world stopped with the onset of the COVID-19 Pandemic. The project was done, but it wouldn’t even be mixed or released until 2023.

In the isolation of the Pandemic, Sutkowski wrote and recorded Of Wisdom & Folly, a project that he calls one of the proudest achievements of his artistic career.

But in that same isolation, Sutkowski fell upon habits that he had worked his entire life to avoid. Throughout that period and for years afterward, he struggled to break himself free from the strangleholds of addiction— he lost much of the joy and the energy he once found in creating and performing his music. 

As the release cycle for Dirt Buyer III was approaching, Sutkowski called his manager with a confession he had long tried to reason his way out of. He had decided to check into a rehab program, and he had finally realized the sacrifices getting clean would demand of him. 

Sutkowski, now having graduated from his program, is taking things one day at a time. But as he has navigated the healing and the re-wiring of thought processes that getting sober requires, he has also felt some of that former, fervent creative energy begin to creep back into his life.

“I am very understanding of the fact that recovery, there's so many aspects to it— like neuroplasticity, the brain takes a long time to heal, and it takes a long time to build good habits. The program is my way back to a baseline, to a time when I did have that really strong [creative energy]. I want to make things all the time, but I'm still building that executive functioning piece to make a decision that is out of the norm and the follow-through that happens with it.”

Dirt Buyer III is, therefore, the closing of a period, both personal and creative, for Dirt Buyer and Sutkowski alike. Everything moved so quickly in the early days of the band and his artistry that there was never a true lull in his output. For the first time, he is setting out with essentially a clean slate.

“Every time I’ve had a record come out, I’ve already had one in the chamber, or songs at the very least. But this is the first time I feel like I'm fully starting over. And that's pretty exciting, too. Because I know… there's so many other options. And I think that [Dirt Buyer III] was kind of a bridge to doing more of whatever I want Dirt to be. I feel like I pigeonholed myself a bit with the second record. Not that I want to stray so far from the path, but I'm excited.”

Now, as he attempts to reingratiate himself into the N.Y. scene and regain the creative stability he once possessed, the songs are coming slowly, but the love for music (and for life in general) are back in full force. It is a triumph of the greatest proportions, and the next Dirt Buyer record aside, it is the start of a new journey for Sutkowski in the fullness of its definition.