After Lawsuit Woes, Dumptruck Rides Again

During the weekend of the big spring music conference in Austin, Texas, the lines were too long to see a band called Death Cab for Cutie at an upstairs billiards hall. So you wander all the way down 6th Street to Opal Devine’s Freehouse, where on a porch thoroughly chilled by the Texas evening, Dumptruck was playing its heart out.

That’s right, Dumptruck, which captured an indie-rock audience and toured incessantly in the mid- to late-’80s.

Nearly stopped cold by a vindictive label that filed a $5-million lawsuit that was ultimately dismissed, the damage had nonetheless been done.

“It killed our career to a large degree,” says Dumptruck founder and survivor Seth Tiven.

By then, he had moved to Austin after a decade in Boston (“the winters were killing me”) and compiled another lineup of the band, which has become the vehicle for his compelling guitar-based songs.

Dumptruck has issued two albums on the California label Devil in the Woods in the past two years, “Terminal” in 1999 and last year’s “Lemmings Travel to the Sea.”

The latter is a double-disc set that mixes nine new studio recordings with a disc of live material from 1986 and ‘88--providing a history lesson on the indie band that refused to disappear.

Tiven grew up in a musical family in Connecticut. “My dad was a jazz drummer when he was young,” he says. His brother, Jon Tiven, is a successful songwriter and producer in New York.

Growing up in New Haven, Seth Tiven was part of the late ‘70s group the Saucers, which included drummer Mark Mulcahy--who would go on to play drums on half of the first Dumptruck album before fronting Miracle Legion.

“There wasn’t much of a scene for original music,” Tiven recalls. “Even when I was growing up in Connecticut in the ‘70s, it was all cover bands.”

Tiven fled to Boston, where he ran into another musician from New Haven, Kirk Swan. “We had been friends and liked what each other was doing a lot,” Tiven says.

With Mulcahy on drums, the two singer-songwriters alternated as front men. “I’d play bass on his songs, and he’d play bass on my songs,” Tiven says.

They ended up putting out the results themselves as “D Is for Dumptruck” in 1984.

“It was a very stripped-down melding of pop and rock,” Tiven says. “We got a lot more reaction from it than we expected.”

They were signed by Big Time Records, which was big-time enough to have the next album, 1986’s “Positively Dumptruck,” produced by Don Dixon in his North Carolina studio.

They crisscrossed the country, playing with the Replacements, Husker Du and the True Believers. But it took its toll. After a particularly long and trying tour, Swan quit.

Tiven vowed to go on--as a single-songwriter band--especially when the label offered to finance an album recorded in Scotland with the producer of Echo and the Bunnymen.

The results, “In the Country,” may have been the strongest yet, but it was sabotaged by the Big Time lawsuit.

After several years of litigation, some lessons were learned, Tiven says. “Basically anybody can sue anybody for anything. If they want to make your life hell, they can do it. And there’s not a lot you can do about it.”

Even when the suit was thrown out and the band was awarded nearly a quarter-million dollars in a countersuit, the band saw very little of the money.

Tiven has made his living as a computer programmer while continuing to make music with a band that included, through the years, Kevin Salem, Helium drummer Shawn Devlin, Buttercup guitarist Michael Leahy and Spike Priggen.

The Austin lineup features George Duron on drums, Hunter Darby on bass, Jacob Schulze on guitar and Kathy Ziegler on keyboards.

By now, everybody in the band has other jobs and, frequently, other bands. And there’s less of an appetite for long tours.

“Back in the ‘80s we’d tour a whole lot. Some years we’d be on the road more than 50% of the year,” says Tiven, 44. “And we’d put up with a lot: sleeping on people’s floors, driving all night rather than paying for a hotel--things I wouldn’t do now. I’m too old for all that. If we’re going to tour, I want a bed to sleep in.”