What Is a Dad, Anyway?

I hadn’t had any coffee yet on Sunday, June 21, when I saw Soleil’s 8am text to me and Rahawa: “my record swap scheme,” they wrote, with an accompanying image of a charmingly hand-drawn bracket on poster board, complete with a glued-on photo of a Fender guitar. 

What that bracket contained got my heart pumping faster than caffeine ever does. It was clearly designed to (shall we say) ignite discourse. 

Nine months into COYOTE’s existence, after clear-eyed, incisive writing about Palestine, homelessness, and artificial intelligence, the most provocative work our collective has produced thus far is apparently Soleil’s “Dadliest Band” bracket, which they toted to the Alameda Record Swap on Father’s Day with the goal of getting more people to stop by our table. 

First of all, mission accomplished. 

Second of all, What the fuck, Soleil?

This is the overarching question that Rahawa and I, COYOTE’s two music writers by trade, tried to answer the next day in a bit of Monday morning quarterbacking. But what was supposed to be a chatty rebuttal to this unholy creation quickly devolved into a series of further questions for our colleague. Where were Wilco and the National? The Boss? What definition of “dad band” could Soleil possibly have been using? What the hell is Slipknot doing here?!

“When I see ‘Dadliest Band’ tournament, I’m not thinking ‘Fathers of Alameda, what are your favorite bands?’” said Rahawa, noting that “Dadliest Band” and “Dad Band-est Band” are different things. “Much in the same way that every dad who has a body technically has a dad bod, that is not what dad bod means.” 

After we ranted at each other for a good 30 minutes about the match-ups (“I’ll never get over Metallica vs. Slipknot,” Rahawa said. “The chaos, the violence that was chosen!”) we tried to parse whether the subscription cancellation we got nine minutes after our newsletter went out could be attributed to this beast. But one thing was clear: We needed our friend to define their terms. 

Here, then, is a lightly edited explanation from the chaos-sower. See you at the next Alameda Record Swap?

Emma: OK. Tell me about how this abomination came to be. 

Soleil: Last time we were at the record swap, maybe five people stopped at our table. And I get that! They’re there to buy records, we don’t have records, why would they stop at our table? So I was thinking, maybe there’s a way to get some participation. It’s Father’s Day, right? And I was going to be tabling for six hours by myself, and I have a hard time just, like, cold-yelling for people to come by.

E: Thank you for your service.

S: At first I was thinking, who are some bad Bay Area dads? Which I asked on Bluesky, and then it got dark really quickly. Like, Elon Musk, rapists… I didn’t want to go there. Then it was, OK, music, record swap: Dad bands. 

I texted a bunch of the dads and the music heads in my life, including my partner and the dads in my family, and just went off that. Then I went to Urban Ore to look for collage material, looked through their CDs for inspiration, got supplies from Reuse Arts & Crafts on San Pablo Avenue, and spent a couple hours making it at home. 

E: How did you define these terms when asking for input? This isn’t a qualitative thing, like, we’re not talking about the best dad band, right?

S: I let the dads take it wherever they wanted to take it. I did not explain anything when I asked the question. Because, as we know, a dad could be anything. A family can be anything, right? Like, what is gender? 

People asked [for definitions] at the table too, and I was like, take this in whatever direction you want. You could think about a real dad, you could think about a spiritual dad, just think about the concept of dad, and vote according to what appears in your spirit. The vagueness was the point, at least for me, at the table. I think the less specific you are, the more open people are to sharing. A lot of people shared stories about their own dads. I had a lot of older men stop by the table and tell stories about concerts they went to, and it was great.

E: A lot of dad engagement. 

S: Right, which was the point. So maybe it was IRL clickbait, I don’t know. I just wanted to invite discussion, because I wanted people to learn about us too, and think about us as a place for these funny little conversations about culture and art.

E: It sounds like it was all very positive at the record swap, but online most of what I saw was extreme disagreement. Were you surprised by the reaction on BlueSky?

S: Speaking as a restaurant critic who’s received death threats … no. I’m not surprised. I understand [the negative feelings]. And in this case, I think, in real life, there was just a lot of jolliness and silliness, and a lot of kids making fun of their dads, which is what I wanted. 

Sure, it was a little troll-y. But also, the roster was determined by real dads.

E: Let’s talk about some of these individual choices. Green Day was very divisive, no?

S: Yes, that was a very elder millennial “Oh, shit” kind of response. I also saw someone on BlueSky say, “If Slipknot is your dad’s favorite band, you’ve never met him.” But again, I was very expansive in my question. Like, give me the first thing you think of. And I guess I know a handful of elder millennial parents who are kind of Midwestern nu metal freaks. 

E: This is a big-tent definition of dad bands, is what I’m hearing. Given that, what do you make of the extreme whiteness? How do you respond to the criticism there? 

S: I was very aware of that while making it. A few Vietnamese dads that I asked were like, do you want the Vietnamese bands I like? And I said no, sorry, not gonna do well in this bracket. So they suggested music they like to sing karaoke to, which does shake out to a lot of white bands. That said, that doesn’t mean they’re the best bands.

E: We were talking about the whiteness yesterday, and I was thinking about Stevie Wonder, which led to the question: Can an artist be too good to be a dad band? Here I’m going to copy/paste what Rahawa said.

Rahawa: This is where the word “unc” comes in, because “unc” is a term of endearment, really, within the Black community. You could have an “unc”-est band tournament where it’s Earth, Wind & Fire vs. Stevie Wonder and people would argue for 20 years, OK? But that’s different… I personally think dad band music is very, very white. 

S: I definitely did not mean to make a definitive statement, like, this is the only music for dads. To anyone who felt alienated by this tournament bracket, I apologize. That was not ever my intention, but I see how that could happen. The next time I would totally invite more and more people to participate in the forming of such a sign.

E: Thank you for this heartfelt apology tour. What do you hope people do with their clearly powerful and perhaps lingering feelings about this bracket?

S: Maybe give me a better idea for the next record swap? Something that gets people to come to the table, to talk a bit, maybe think about subscribing. Joyful engagement is what I want, and that is largely what I got at the record swap, so I'm happy. And honestly, I’m glad people have such strong feelings! It means culture is alive, and it is a living, breathing creature that we all care deeply about. It’s wonderful. 

E: Last thing. Pink Floyd won, yeah? Was that a landslide?

S: No, it was a tie between Pink Floyd and Steely Dan for like an hour, and I was getting kind of stressed, like, “Oh my god, am I gonna be stuck here waiting for a tiebreaker?” But eventually a family came by who leaned pretty heavily toward Pink Floyd.

Ed. note: The objectively correct winner on this nonsensical bit of handiwork, as it currently, insanely stands, is Steely Dan.