We all want to find our purpose in life, something that gets us out of bed in the morning with the energy to take on a new day. After years of searching, Eddie Dahill found that purpose with music.
Dahill is a talented multi-instrumentalist who is the drummer of Ruby Leftstep, an alternative rock band that has become one of the biggest names in the Connecticut music scene. At the heart of their sound is Dahill’s emphatic and John Bonham-esque drumming, as well as his songwriting contributions.
Music became a part of Dahill’s life when he picked up a ukelele while working at his parent’s farmstand during his sophomore year of high school. He spent his time learning songs like “Stairway to Heaven” before he realized he wanted to play music with others, so he started taking lessons at Downright Music in Collinsville, Conn. It was there that he started playing bass, which he still plays on the band’s latest recordings. But he soon realized that some ukelele chords transferred over to guitar, leading him to briefly put down the four-string and move up to six strings.
When the pandemic hit during his senior year, he decided to “strategically tank” his grades so that he could spend as much time playing guitar as possible. The approach payed off, giving him hours to spend with the instrument.
“I knew I wasn’t going to college, so I tanked my grades on purpose so I could have more time to spend on guitar,” said Dahill. “And I bought a nice guitar and played for 10 hours a day.”
In 2021, he met singer and guitarist Dylan Hrinda at Downright Music and the two started jamming together frequently. After bringing in guitarist Thom Busemeyer to the fold, the core of Ruby Leftstep was complete. Dahill served as the group’s bassist early on, during which they recorded their debut EP “The Ground Up,” which was released in August 2022. But when their drummer left the band in January 2023, Dahill filled the newfound void and became the group’s drummer, a role he has filled since then.
Dahill is left-handed, something that usually requires drummers to shift their entire kit around. But he has experimented with different ways of setting up his drums instead of fully inverting the kit to a left-handed setup. He’s constantly moving drums and cymbals around trying to find what works best, a process driven by the question, “How can I play this in the most efficient way possible and also look cool?
One of the latest set-ups that Dahill has used involves placing the ride cymbal, which right-handed drummers keep on their right, on his left side, while the rest of the kit features a traditional right-handed configuration.
“The ride on the left side happened because it needed to,” he explained. “At a gig, I didn’t enough space in front of me to where I literally would have been hitting Dylan’s back with the ride cymbal, so I put my crash there and my ride on my far left above my hi-hats.”
Though this set-up has been effective during live performances, it has presented a challenge while recording in the studio. In a right-handed setup where the hi-hats and ride cymbals are on opposite sides, the overhead mics placed on each side pick up on this contrast; however, this is lost when both are on the same side. As a result, Dahill noted that “when you pan those overheads left and right, the left overhead is capturing so much cymbal,” making it difficult to get a balanced mix.
To resolve this, Dahill has been teaching himself to play open-handed, with his less-dominant right hand playing the ride cymbal on the right side of his kit. Training his right hand has been “insanely difficult, but I know that it’s worth it.”
“Most days, I’ll just sit there with a metronome and I’ll play with my right hand as the driving force for an hour or two,” he said. “It’s not like I haven’t made improvements, but it’s not at a point where I’m like ‘alright, let’s put the ride on my right side at a gig.’”
Dahill is also actively involved in the band’s songwriting process. Some songs like “Plastic Stranger,” “The Comedown” and “Shuteye” have been written primarily by him, while others like the recently-released “Bitter End” have been full group collaborations. He said that “there’s a couple of songs where I’ll write them almost entirely by myself, not because I prefer that, but just because that’s what makes the most sense with the time that we have.”
Over the last two years, Ruby Leftstep has established themselves as one of the best and most popular bands in the Connecticut music scene. They’ve also developed a strong presence in Storrs, including performing at and winning WHUS Radio’s Battle of the Bands in February 2024, as well as other frequent shows in the area.
One of the shows in Storrs that stood out most to Dahill was the band’s most recent appearance at The Dog P0und on Feb. 21. The energetic crowd danced and jumped along with the band. As Dahill looked out to the crowd, he could see them singing along as well, a powerful moment for him.
“I think the reason that felt so much more important is the amount of people I could see singing the lyrics to songs that I wrote, it was super weird,” he recalled. “I was like, ‘Oh my god, how do you know this, what the hell?”
Dahil spoke positively of the Storrs crowds, saying that “time and time again, they’ll show up and dance no matter what.” He made note of the camaraderie that can be found at Storrs shows, which helps the band foster “the most positive community we can.”
Dahill called Ruby Leftstep “the most important thing I’ve ever been a part of.” It’s given him a profound sense of purpose, wanting to keep pursuing music in any way he can and molding him into “the person I’ve always wanted to be.”
“Playing with Thom and Dylan has been very transformative to finding my own purpose,” he said. “I feel like I’ve found what I should be doing. Whether it’s recording, writing, playing live, doing live sound, it’s definitely turned things around for me.”