The Dawn Drapes are one of Fishtown’s most notable duos, and that’s likely because Dan Rice and Mike Sanzo play in literally every other Philly band you can name. The best part about that is the fact that they’re not even originally from here, they’re from Virginia. These two dudes took the city by storm and are a must-see if you want to educate yourself on our local scene. We talked about who we could drink under the table (hint: nobody), what happens in Walmart parking lots, and their weird connections to both Conor Oberst and the ICP. If you don’t know who either of those are, you’ll want to find out.

Give us The Dawn Drapes elevator pitch without using any music terms.

Mike: Oh man.

Dan: Can we take it to, like, the 80th floor? Can we have a long elevator ride?

Emily: Of course.

Dan: I think a lot of people have said that we sound similar to other bands, but don’t do the same things. WE’ve gotten a lot of comparisons to My Morning Jacket and Pink Floyd, and I think Mike and I are kinda like, “Where’d that come from?” I love both of those bands but we’re not trying to emulate anything. I think we just sound like ourselves. I’m trying to say that in the most non self-aggrandizing way. I don’t really think we sound like any other bands, which is kind of good and bad because people don’t know what they’re gonna get. We have a wide breadth of music we can explore.

Mike: I agree.

Bre: Is it easier or harder to find bands to play shows with? Do you mesh well enough with other music that you can play with anyone?

Mike: I think we can adapt our set to the bill, yeah. If we’re playing an acoustic/folk show, we can play material that leans that way. Or if we’re playing with a heavy hitting rock band we can play material that leans that way. So I think it leaves us more open to opportunities. I think just getting into a venue is kind of a crapshoot, regardless. It kind of comes down to the gatekeeper of those situations when it comes to booking, but we’ve been at it long enough to know how to shift the set to fit in with the night.

Dan: We definitely try to curate our set a little bit more. We try to play gigs with friends of ours, but we also change up the sound a little bit. We did a residency recently, and we toned it down for the first night, and then the second night we dug deeper into our set, which is a little bit heavier, and then we’ll try and pair bands with the vibe we want to bring. But we want to curate a good show for everyone, including the audience, so the music has to fit in some way.

Finish the sentence: The Dawn Drapes are the perfect soundtrack for _______?

Mike: I think it depends on The Dawn Drapes again, but it could be a haunted house ride at a circus.

Dan: I was going to say driving a classic car on the beach - like actually on the beach. And you might get stuck.

Emily: Such different answers.

Mike: Driving that car from the beach into the haunted house.

Bre: That sounds like the movie “Us.”

Mike: You could say The Dawn Drapes are the perfect soundtrack for “Us.” I can’t believe Jordan Peele didn’t get in touch with us.

Dan: Their people were trying to reach our people but we didn’t have Zoom then.

Emily: Apparently you have too many people. Will Brown said you play with every other Philly band, essentially.

Dan: By extension, Mike and I are in The Dawn Drapes, obviously, and then I play in two other bands, and Mike plays in two other bands. And then everyone who plays in those bands also plays in other things. It’s like the telephone game but for projects.

Mike: It’s when everyone lives in the same neighborhood, that’s how this all happens.

Dan: We moved to Philly on the suggestion of Kirby (Sybert) and our drummer, Keaton (Thandi). We toured here quite a bit and they said to just move out of Virginia. It took like two years of heavy touring for us to commit to the move, and that was probably the best decision we ever made. If you wanna talk about playing in a lot of bands - Keaton plays in the most bands on earth.

Bre: Give us a rough estimate.

Dan: It’s a never-ending list. I think he joins a new one every week. Like, is it 20 this week? Is it 30?

Emily: What’s the Virginia scene like?

Mike: They don’t even have the Internet down there.

Dan: We lived in a small college town, kind of adjacent to a lot of farmland. The road outside our house would get littered with chicken feathers because the chicken trucks headed to Tyson would drive by. Just stuff like that.

Mike: Our house was exceptionally shitty. Harrisonburg is nice, but our house wasn’t.

What’s the most “Philly” thing that’s ever happened to you?

Mike: Well I haven’t been hit by a car yet.

Bre: One time I was shooting with Mo Lowda, and a random woman walked through the shoot, and looking back, I realized that she had no shoes on, her pants were falling way down, and she was being super intrusive so nobody really said anything at the time. But she did hop in some of the pictures which was cool.

Dan: Wait - a staple of Fishtown. “Rocketman.” If you live in Fishtown you know Rocketman. He walks down the street every day, just ripping snot rockets every two feet. He might be the cause of the Coronavirus.

Emily: Patient 0. I’m gonna be sick.

Mike: Sometimes he’ll do it while you’re dangerously close.

Bre: I wonder if anyone’s ever been hit.

Emily: Nobody’s ever told me this before. I’m upset.

Dan: We also used to hang at Kosta’s a lot, by Front and Girard, and that’s like the gnarliest place ever. That 7/11 is like the portal between that planet and Philly, so you’re bound to see some stuff.

Emily: I’ve been to Kosta’s. The one time I went, my friends and I took a bunch of pictures of us making out with each other in the photobooth and sent them to random people from college. I think some were sent to the president’s email. I hope he never saw them.

If you were stuck on an island with two other Philly bands, who would they be and why?

Mike: I really love Scantron, I love everything Jimmy does. He’d probably be resourceful on an island. His music is also great.

Bre: We wanna know who’s gonna be able to build you a fire or something. We don’t care about how they sound.

Dan: I’d pick Ali Awan. There are so many homies in that band.

Bre: What do they bring to the table though?

Dan: Someone could definitely build us some kind of entertainment system. Ali would be good at hunting, and he could pick one of us to go with him. Kyle could play lap steel and bring the Hawaiian vibes. Keaton could make a drum set. We could definitely still make music and have a nice homie hang.

What’s a flex story that you tell to impress people?

Mike: We played after Insane Clown Posse in West Virginia one night. They destroyed the club we’d played at, too. They have an entire cleaning crew that follows them in an eighteen-wheeler just because they throw Diet Faygo everywhere.

Bre: I thought that was a gang.

Mike: The Juggalos are their followers.

Dan: I thought this was a music blog…

Emily: Hey.

Bre: One time my friend got jumped by some guys in clown masks and they called them the Insane Clown Posse so I just always assumed they were a gang.

Mike: No, your friend just got jumped by two kids who like Insane Clown Posse. Two Juggalos.

Dan: That was pretty weird. We took a picture of the setlist and we were next to the ICP. But one of the cooler things that has happened to me was when we were in Omaha for the first time. I’m a huge Conor Oberst fan, and we went to his bar called Page Turners. We were playing some dumb place called The Pizza Lounge, so I was like, we have to do something cool. We went, and I wasn’t expecting to see him, but he was actually there. We flagged him down, and he just kinda shrugged us off. And I was like, “Oh fuck.” Then his wife at the time turned around, and I had met her before, and we exchanged a look and then she tapped Conor and he came over to us. He asked what we were in town for and he asked if we wanted to hang with him after the gig. He ended up coming to our pizza gig, and he was truly the only audience member, so we played for like three hours for him and his wife.

Mike: Yeah, and after we did go back to his place and we drank a lot of tequila and listened to Dire Straits.

Emily: I’ll flex. I booked Anthony Green for a Key session with WXPN back in 2018. It was all like happenstance through Insta DMs because my boss kind of made me Anthony’s resident journalist. He was doing a ton of shit that summer and I’m completely obsessed with him so John was like, “It’s all you.” So to make a long story short, I got to sit in on this private session and talk about the album with Anthony and just totally geek out. I credit a lot of my career to him.

What’s the weirdest fan experience that you’ve had at a show?

Dan: We were playing a gig toward the end of a tour, and we were out of merch and definitely broke, and I must have made a joke onstage, like “we’re selling our clothes after the set because it’s all we have left.” And I didn't hear any reaction from the crowd, but after the show I was hanging by the bar, and some guy came up to me. He goes, “Hey man, if you were serious about that, my girlfriend would really like to buy your underwear.” And I was like, “Uhh...no she doesn’t.” He was really insistent though, so I asked to meet her. And he goes, “Oh no no, she’s at home.” So she wasn’t even there. She didn’t see the show. “But she’s gonna love it, trust me,” he kept saying.

Emily: No, she did not want his underwear.

Bre: Did he say how much he would pay?

Dan: No, I cut it off at that point. I didn’t even want him to buy me a drink.

Bre: He doesn’t have a girlfriend.

Dan: And if he did, that would be the worst gift ever.

Mike: Maybe he just needed underwear. That would be even funnier if he was like, “this guy looks like his pants would be the same size as mine.” Like he’s just literally trying to buy some clothes off you.

Emily: Well maybe they’d be worth something someday.

Mike: How do you prove stuff like that, though? Like on eBay, how do you prove this is Justin Timberlake’s hotel room towel? It could be my towel for all they know.

Have you ever dated other musicians?

Mike: Not really, no. I’ve been with my girlfriend now for like six, seven years. For the majority of the time I was touring, I’ve been dating her.

Dan: Nope, I’ve never dated any musicians.

Emily: I guess that kills our follow-up.

What do you order at a bar to show that you can handle your alcohol?

Emily: I like whiskey gingers. “The wedding drink.” Tequila sours. Dark beers.

Mike: I like all of those things.

Bre: Then if no one was watching, what would you drink?

Dan: The bottle.

Mike: Straight tequila. I just genuinely like it. So I just am cool.

Bre: I love whiskey gingers, but if a boy buys me a drink and I say that, they’re like, “Oh you like whiskey?” And I’m like, “Yes???”

Dan: Is there a negative connotation to that?

Bre: It’s just not really a girly drink. Like a vodka cran or a seltzer or a spritzer. So boys tend to be “impressed.”

Emily: I was on a tequila sour kick for a long long time. I was intent to find the best one in the city. But I’ve had some terrible ones. They’re kind of hit or miss.

Bre: Are you for or against drinking onstage?

Dan: I’m for it if that’s your vibe.

Mike: I’m neutral, but I’ll do it.

Bre: I remember when I saw The Districts at World Cafe Live, and the singer had a PBR and I was like, “I’ve never seen this before.”

Dan: Some bands have drink shame and they’ll pour it in a solo cup to hide it.

Emily: The 1975 used to have a bottle of red wine on stage with them at all times.

Dan: Conor Oberst used to do that too.

Can you describe Fishtown or Philadelphia’s music scene in 10 words or less?

Mike: I think being a part of the Philly music scene is so great because of the community aspect.

Dan: 10 words or less, Mike.

Mike: You can live and work as a musician together and you can still afford to live in Fishtown with all the other bands and that doesn’t really exist anywhere else in the country. Having so many people who live and work professionally in an arts capacity doesn’t really happen in many other places like it does in Fishtown.

Emily: Yeah 10 words.

Mike: It’s the arts community. It stands out to me. I’m sorry. It’s different than any place we’ve ever been. I’m not sure how you can compact this.

Emily: I’m going to say “The Dawn Drapes and all the other bands they’re in” to credit our new best friend Will Brown.

Dan: That’s exactly right.

So: would we buy Dan Rice’s underwear at the end of tour? Yes. Would we be able to out-drink Mike during rounds of tequila shots? No. But would we die trying? Absolutely.

You can stream The Dawn Drapes’ latest single, “Facts,” below, and read our review here. Their next single, “Oxygen,” is due out in July.

The Date Where The Dawn Drapes Almost Sell Their Underwear