Music Bugle Exclusive – Q & A – Domenic Dunegan Of The Ghost Club

Music Bugle – What inspired the name “The Ghost Club”?

Domenic Dunegan – The name of this project was basically formed around my own self-reliance. Whenever I was trying to get this started, I pulled every friend I knew that was into music into a group chat, because all of your music friends are always saying “Oh hey yeah, let’s work on some stuff and jam,” but that never comes to fruition and I’m incredibly annoying and don’t stop texting people. Eventually, I got frustrated because they just eventually stopped responding, so I renamed the group chat “The Dead Club” and I was like, “Geez, that’s kinda morbid, let’s make it a little less depressing” and changed it to “The Ghost Club.” All of a sudden, the people in the chat were like, “Hey, that’s a cool name” and thought I was pitching a band name. I personally thought the name was kinda dumb, but I’ve rolled with it ever since and couldn’t see me making music under any other name.

 

Music Bugle – How have you felt about the feedback for the latest single “Isolated” so far?

Domenic Dunegan – The feedback on “Isolated” has been very good. This is more of a song for the diehard supporters of this. It’s more experimental and slower than the rest, but felt relevant. We’re going to be returning to form beyond this, but it was nice to try some different sounds out.

 

Music Bugle – Looking back on ‘This Bird Has Flown,’ would you change anything about it if given the opportunity?

Domenic Dunegan – If I could change anything about that song itself, I would change a lot of the instrument sounds on it. The piano on the beginning is the first piano you get when you turn up Logic Pro X. I used a lot of stock sounds on it, but people don’t really notice that much, more of an “inside out looking” thing.

 

Music Bugle – How do you feel about the music video for “Isolated”? What was shooting it like?

Domenic Dunegan – Shooting the video was a complete blast because Alex Zarek is such a fun guy to be around. All of our other videos were very tedious and physically demanding and were in cold conditions, so it was a nice change of pace to shoot indoors with heat.

 

Music Bugle – Which of your musical influences do you feel shine the most in your music?

Domenic Dunegan – This is a hard question to answer because I feel like I’m still so all over the place and still trying to find my footing. I want to be able to pull modern alt-pop elements like The 1975 and Twenty One Pilots into the mix, but have lyrical depth the way Bruce Springsteen does. I’m still incredibly new to writing lyrics. I want to really hone in on my words the next go-around.

 

Music Bugle – To you, what’s your most meaningful song or set of lyrics?

Domenic Dunegan – “Maybe I’ve pushed away everyone by 21 to let me see them vulnerable“ from “Hate Me Too.” The switch from high school to college was an incredibly difficult period of my life and my character basically took a nosedive. Mix that with A.S. and you get someone who’s just straight up a dreadful person to have around that’s more or less hyper fixated on one subject. Eventually one day, I kinda just had clarity of everything and it was just a sudden realization for me that maybe I’m the issue. We as people like to always put ourselves in the right and believe it for the most part, but the truth is always going to be the truth and there’s no bias to it. It was basically like being hit with a freight train in that moment I knew I needed to make a change. I have since sought out treatment and have been going steady with it. The amount of support I’ve been given isn’t deserved if I’m not going to try to be the best version of myself that I can be. The first step of that was recognizing the things that I do wrong. I wish I could go back and apologize to everyone I’ve ever wronged, but instead, I’m just going to carry that along with me as a reminder. I’m fortunate to even exist and I’m fortunate to even be supported by anyone at all even if it’s just one person.

 

Music Bugle – How has the Coronavirus outbreak affected you directly?

Domenic Dunegan – Coronavirus coincidentally didn’t affect me as much as it could’ve. I had my tonsils taken out the day before the lockdown happened and was actually really lucky to not be cancelled on by my doctor, so I’ve just been recovering and I have a bit more time to do that, so at least this didn’t happen after I recovered.

 

Music Bugle – What do you look to accomplish that you haven’t already?

Domenic Dunegan – Well, the first thing is to get ready for touring. I’ve yet to do that and it’s all I can think about. I’m just hoping this whole debacle can end soon.

 

Music Bugle – Do you feel it easier or harder to stand out in the Alternative Pop genre these days?

Domenic Dunegan – I feel that it’s very hard to stand out because we’re at a point where most sounds have been heard and we’ve yet to find that “new” sound that’s a jump. Like, how whenever Elvis and The Beatles came around, everything before that was Sinatra and jazz and instrumentals, but there was that musical landscape shift and a whole new world opened up, but they were saying the same thing that I’m saying right now before Elvis came around, so I’m sure that there’s going to be another huge shift eventually. I’m excited to see what happens.

 

Music Bugle – How would you describe the music scene in Pittsburgh?

Domenic Dunegan – If I had three words to describe it, “Pittsburgh go hard.” Seriously, these are some of the most devoted, communal, tightly knit people I’ve ever seen committed to anything. It’s like a giant family and I don’t mean like normal family closeness. I mean like, Corleone crime family closeness. The second you do anything bad to anyone, you better move states and go into witness protection because the Pittsburgh music scene will have you sleeping with the fishes. If you’re a fixture in the Pittsburgh music scene and you’re reading this right now, please don’t hurt me. You can take my wallet, just please stay away from the face.