Dirt Buyer’s Songwriter on How They Handle Preshow Anxiety

Photo: Dina Litovsky

Dirt Buyer’s Joe Taylor Sutkowski, 31, gained a small but dedicated following for their emotionally raw emo-folk performances, especially in New York. These days, they’re playing with former Berklee classmates Isaac Wang and Tristan Allen and readying a new set of songs, which they’ll be performing on September 13 at Baby’s All Right.

I think the venue I’ve played at the most in New York is Baby’s — they’ve done a lot for me. Baby’s was the first venue that gave Dirt a nice headlining show. It didn’t really make sense, but they did it anyway. That was huge for me. I’m friends with all the people there, and they’ve been incredibly kind and generous. I’m comfortable there. It feels like home.

I’ve gotten better over the years, but usually before a show I’m debilitatingly anxious. It’s not that I’m nervous about playing; it’s just that the time in between waking up in the morning and playing the show is this really uncomfortable purgatory place. All day, the show is the thing — that’s the only thing in the world that exists. Anyone who knows me knows that it’s difficult. I’ve been known to sit under the table in the green room.

I’m from New Jersey, but I didn’t come into the city much growing up. I was late to music — I became a show kid when I was 19. I met these hipster kids who put me onto all of this cool shit and showed me this world of music that I had no idea existed, but the shows we were going to were all in New Jersey. It was a lot of indie rock, just classic basement shows. Bands like the World Is a Beautiful Place and LVL UP. I was always really into emo, the theatrics and the drama of it.

I’m not consciously trying to bring that basement feeling to my concerts, but I was really influenced by basement shows, so I’m sure it’s there. And Gerard Way of My Chemical Romance, that stayed with me. The thing I really liked was the way it looked like he was purging his entire soul — putting everything he’s got into his vocal performance and his physical performance. It’s dramatic and theatrical, but it can be cartoonish at times. I also try to put everything I have into the thing and not feel weird about it. One of the biggest themes of my new music is being okay with the fact that you have needs, being okay with expressing them. I made a point to do some serious work on myself over the past few years. Mental health can be so complicated that you might need to hear something 1,000 different ways before you hear it in a way that you can understand. So it’s important to me to try to articulate these things.

I’m not trying to make the audience feel any kind of way, but it’s really cool when someone is like, “Hey, I totally get it.� Sometimes people hate it, and that’s totally fine. It’s like when you go on Rotten Tomatoes and you see a movie has a 50 percent approval rating. There’s a chance it fucking rocks.