A life of music by way of stringed instruments began at the age of 3 years old as Battle Ground resident Dan Dingman started with a plastic toy ukulele.
With an eight year gap between Dingman and his next older sibling out of four total, when he was 7 years old, Dingman said his folks had a little extra money after a sibling had left the nest and another one was about to follow suit. With the extra money, they got him guitar lessons at age 7.
“And the rest is history,” Dingman said, now in his 60s.
With music being a part of the majority of Dingman’s life, he has been fulfilled by rewarding experiences. From National Anthem performances in front of thousands of people to small gigs in senior assisted living facilities where the connection is incredibly personable, Dingman has had some of life’s greatest enjoyments through the sound of music.
“I play a lot of the assisted living and memory care centers around here through a company called Music We Remember and that’s rewarding,” he said. “Last Christmas time I was playing at a memory care place and I played there once before and I knew this one gentleman would sing, but I really couldn’t communicate with him. He wasn’t real verbal and when I came there for Christmas, he sat about as far away as you are from me right now (a few feet), he sat there and sang every song with me in harmony, but I couldn’t talk to him, but I touched him. The music touched him. It was able to reach him, and that’s probably the most rewarding thing now.”
Dingman’s setlist consists of the 50s, 60s and 70s, he said, adding that the majority of his audience is his age or older.
“I’m a retiree as well,” he said. “I’m retired from the paper industry after 40 years and started picking up gigs about 2013. My job had been taking me over to the east side and I would stay in the Walla Walla area and there was a place there that had open mic every Wednesday night. You could get a half hour set and after a while I’d worked up to a couple of hours and started reaching out to wineries and started getting gigs and now I’ve got over five hours of music I can do and it just kind of went from there.”
Dingman also gave a lot of thanks to the community that supports him, having won “Best Band or Musician” in the readers choice “Reflector Best of The Best” awards earlier this year. Updates on Dingman’s musical whereabouts can be found on Facebook under his page, “Dan Dingman - Music.”
The National Anthem during the current times
Dingman has performed the National Anthem throughout the area, including passionate renditions at Portland Timbers games, Portland Thorns games, Hillsboro Hops baseball games, Ridgefield Raptors baseball games and ahead of concerts at the Clark County Fair.
The next performance is slated for Aug. 3 ahead of the “Kansas” concert at the Clark County Fair.
But for Dingman, the “Star Spangled Banner” has not lost meaning for him in today’s political climate.
“First of all, singing the National Anthem now has nothing to do with the current politics of our country,” he said. “It’s not in support of either side. I think both sides are clueless at times. They don’t represent the average person like me and you. That’s my feeling on it.”
Dingman performs the anthem in a booming voice in honor of his parents who served their respective roles during the second World War.
“When I sing, I sing because of my parents,” he said. “My dad was a World War II vet. He was in the Pacific Theater as an Army MP. He didn’t see any direct action but he was one of the people that followed in. And my mom was a ‘Rosie the Reveter,’ she was a welder in the Bremerton shipyards and that’s where they met.”
Dingman says he sings the National Anthem with pride and how it was written, not indulging himself into the poem, adding that he treats it similar to a hymn.
“So when I sing the anthem, I’m singing thinking of the country that they served for,” he said. “They served and they served hard. You know, mom was 18-years old welding.”
When he sings it in his style as it was written, Dingman said he uses dynamics, such as starting off quietly at the beginning, “But man, when I get to the line, ‘The land of the free,’ I want to belt that out because that’s what it is; even in this current political situation. The only reason we can fight and bicker over it is because we live in the land of the free. We still have an amazing country because we have this opportunity to do this and do it civilly, hopefully.”
Does Dan have a favorite guitar?
“This is my Martin D-28, it’s a 1972,” Dingman said, so yes, he has a favorite and was quick to the answer.
He bought the vintage Martin in Memphis, Tennessee in 1998 when he lived in the city complete with music history and roots to many sounds and icons. He loves the vintage Martin so much that if the house is burning — since the wedding pictures are uploaded to the cloud — that he’d make sure his wife and dogs were out of the house first, but then he’d be swiftly going back in to rescue the acoustic guitar.
“Those I can pretty much replace,” Dingman said, pointing towards a wall with multiple guitars hanging on it. “But that one, that’s my baby.”
When he bought the Martin D-28 in Memphis, he attended a class related to church music and the instructor had the exact same model. Dingman compared his primary guitar back then to the vintage Martin and the width of the neck had a big difference. He said the vintage Martin allowed him to grab cords cleanly and that the sound is just purely amazing.
Recommending the stage to those who may be hesitant
After his prior experiences in Walla Walla with open mic, Dingman highly recommends the open mic opportunity to every aspiring musician.
“Open mics are really nice because generally people know it’s people that are starting out or are not really experienced and it’s positive,” he explained. “I mean for me, that’s when I realized after going to the open mic that I actually could have an act out of this.”
Another pointer he provided is to understand that mistakes may not even be caught by the audience. Dingman said a musician may always feel a little bit embarrassed after a mistake, but most people won’t even hear it.
“I have gigs where I feel like I got, at best, a B-minus and people are telling me it’s incredible. I’m going, ‘What did you listen to?’” Dingman said. “‘I sounded like crap today.’ You just have to treat the people like props even. I mean, when I’m at the Timbers game, I don’t even think about how many people are out there. I’m comfortable in my little space and I just see everybody around there as props and just let it go.”
