The Sugar Daddies is a Montana-based trio founded in early 2012. It consists of Richard Riesser on guitar and vocals and Oscar Dominguez on keyboards, bass and vocals. The band fluctuates between talented drummers Ron Craighead and Mark Levy at their many shows. While the gist of their material is popular rock ‘n’ roll, country, oldies, R&B, and blues, they also have an extensive arsenal of original material, all of which are palatable, as well as an array of lesser-known but still great songs by both obscure and well-known artists and songwriters. The Rolling Zone was able to sit down with founding members and funnymen Oscar and Richard to talk music, memories, and their main ingredient to success–having fun.
RZ: Hey there. The Sugar Daddies have been together for how long now? OD: January will be four years.
RR: We met at a Moms Mabley look-alike contest.
OD: We’re both losers. [laughs] We met through some mutual friends. Richard had called me and we did a gig together at Bacchus as a duo. Then a gig came up in Helena that was cancelled, and I happened to know the person booking it. So I called Richard and said, “Do you want to put something together for this,” and we did. We came up with the Sugar Daddies as a name.
RR: We did a birthday party right before we did [the Bacchus show]. It was the gal whose birthday it was that named the band.
OD: That’s right, I knew that came out of somewhere. [laughs] “Sugar Daddies” started to stick, and we’ve been together since. One gig led to another, and here we are now.
RZ: We’ve noticed you guys have really started to take off.
OD: We’re very blessed. Word of mouth has gotten around.
RR: Probably all those times I write our name and number on the bathroom wall at the Sacajawea.
RZ: That’s gotta be it.
OD: For a good time, call Sugar Daddies. [pauses] We’ve been very lucky and very fortunate. We love what we do, [playing] shows on stage, and we love our following. They’re some of the best fans ever.
RR: We do have a few different dance clubs that follow us and I wanted to acknowledge our appreciation to those folks.
RZ: You do seem to have quite the following. RR: Oscar’s classically trained, and I’m housebroken. [laughs] I know I’m making a joke out of this, but in a lot of ways we put this together as a dance group. Part of the first priority–and hopefully it’s going to continue this way–is, you know, are we having fun and are we able to help the audience have fun. We do a lot of different kinds of tunes. Some gigs are maybe more country-oriented. I mean, it’s funny, we’ve played some places when we come in people will go, “Are you the jazz band,” or, “We heard you were the fifties band.”
OD: [We play] a little bit of everything. We try to, anyway.
RZ: How would you describe a Sugar Daddies set list?
OD: Variety. In the widest form of the word. There are some things we obviously won’t do, but we really try to listen to what the audience wants. We joke about “No request left behind.” [If] someone comes up with a legitimate request that sounds like something we might be able to do, we do it. We love it. We love pleasing the audience.
RZ: Any favorites in particular?
OD: You know, I’ve been doing this so long now, there is no one favorite song where, “I can’t wait to do that one.” My favorite comes from seeing the reaction we get from the audience. If it brings them out to dance and they’re dancing with full fervor, then it’s my favorite song. There are some songs, and I won’t name them, that I’m so tired of because I’ve been doing them for like thirty-five years, but every time I play them, people still come out and dance. So let’s keep at it.
RZ: Every song is someone’s favorite. OD: Absolutely.
RR: We do a pretty fair amount of originals, also. That, to me, is pretty satisfying. I like the fact we have a lot of the audience that recognizes [it]. We’re going to surprise them. Although, by now, some of the originals are maybe their most requested tunes that we have, interestingly enough.
OD: Richard is very modest–he’s a great songwriter. There’s not a song he’s written that we do that I don’t like. I enjoy playing all of them and the audience enjoys it. Nothing could me more pleasing or satisfying or flattering than somebody saying, “Play that song that you wrote.” Or we play a nice song and [people say], “Did you write that one, too,” and [we say], “No, but thank you for thinking that.” We’re very lucky in that respect as well. RR: I would be remiss if I didn’t say–and obviously I write my own stuff just by myself–but I have a writing partner I’ve been working with for twenty-three plus years now who lives in Bozeman also. We worked together in Nashville for quite a while. His name is David Johnson. When Oscar and I aren’t involved in the Sugar Daddies, that’s my main project–working with David. I want to at least acknowledge that the original material that we’re doing is a lifelong pursuit. It’s something that I take very seriously. It’s extremely gratifying to me to bring this to fruition and see the really unequivocal positive reaction we get from “Ants In Our Pants” and “Baby Say Bye Bye,” or “Never Felt Nothin’ Like This.”
OD: And they’re requested all the time by the audience. We’ll do one of his originals, and [people will ask], “Who does that song?” We do.
RR: I feel really blessed to work with Oscar. He’s not only a great musician, but the five inches between his ears are super important because he listens.
OD: That’s all there is! [pauses] Again, I love what I do. I love performing and I love performing to an appreciative crowd. That means a lot more to me than my own personal expression and my own personal tastes. I feel blessed. I feel blessed to be in Montana–a beautiful state with a great band and great players and a great audience.
RZ: Tell us how music first found its way into your lives.
RR: We’ve both been involved musically from the very beginning. Obviously I’ve done other things, but I’ve always been involved musically. In college, I studied premed and I just wasn’t interested in pursuing it–everyone in my family is in medicine. When I finally got into music, there was a guitar teacher I had, John Abate that used to work with Sinatra. I learned a lot from him. I hung out in Gainesville, Florida in what was really a hotbed of live music. There would be forty venues a night that would be playing every night. I was buddies with and played with a lot of different folks–Mike Campbell, Tom Petty, Benmont Tench. We all played shows together. I ended up studying compositional theory and arrangement as well in college, but I’ve tried to not let any of that get in the way of the musicality.
RZ: How did you two come into contact?
RR: [After my wife and I] came back in about 2003, I feel fortunate to have met Oscar. I had been looking to start a retirement band, if you will. I’m actually working more now than I have in a long time, just because I’ve been working in my studio at the house as opposed to playing out live.
OD: I grew up in New York City to Cuban immigrants, and so I got exposed to a lot of different kinds of music. Then in high school, the Beatles had just come out and a bunch of friends and I saw they were getting all the girls. So we said, “Hey guys, let’s form a band and get girls too! All we gotta do is learn how to play an instrument.” So we did. We never got the girls, but I got to like music a lot more. I started pursuing it because it became a passion. It let me to moving to California, then back to New York, then Hollywood and Las Vegas, and then back to New York again. I met my fiancé, who’s from Montana, and by then I was getting older. I said, “Okay , I’ll move to Montana,” and maybe semi-retire and hopefully find a band and play one weekend a month and I’ll be happy. And like Richard said, now I’m looking for one weekend a month that I’m off. I’m working harder now than I ever did in Hollywood, Las Vegas, or New York, and I’m enjoying it. That’s the thing. As long as I’m physically still able to do it, I’ll keep doing it.
RZ: You guys seem pretty comfortable with each other. How are the band dynamics?
OD: Well I think we’re on the same page, musically, and [with] what we want out of our band. We both mentioned that the audience is the most important thing. That’s really our approach. We’re not above learning any particular style or song if it means pleasing the audience–and that’s been our focus all along, including the original music. It’s really quite that simple. We’re having fun doing it.
RR: It’s also not egalitarian. I mean that in the sense that there are some tunes I would never had foreseen myself doing five or six years ago. I certainly didn’t anticipate singing “Born To Be Wild” ever in my life. I’m not against that, but by the same token, we have a really wide and very deep reservoir of resource we draw from. OD: The funny thing is, I never thought I’d come to Montana and play a polka. But it goes over like gangbusters, so why not? It really is a lot of fun to play and because of the reaction [it has] with the audience.
RR: What he said.
RZ: Is there some vision in place for the future of the Sugar Daddies?
OD: We’re working right now on a CD. We want to get that finished up and get it out there to the public. Other than that though, we just want to keep doing what we’re doing. I don’t see us becoming big stars anytime soon–I mean, we’re already stars in our own right in our town. But really, in my mind, we want to keep doing what we’re doing until we drop.
RR: I just want to keep getting better. In every sense. I don’t really have a five-year plan.
OD: There you go. I didn’t plan on any of this, but suddenly we’re working more than ever.
RR: A couple of years ago [at the Stroll in Whitehall] and a bunch of teenage guys helped us load in. They’re like, “What’s the name of your band,” and we said, “We’re the Sugar Daddies.” All four of them stopped, and the one guy said, “You’re my grandma’s favorite band!” [laughs]
RZ: That’s hilarious. OD: What’s funny is, we’re getting requests for older stuff from young people. One came up and said, “Do you guys do any Neil Diamond?” I was thinking [he] was too young to remember Neil Diamond. He said, “No, my mom loved it and I love listening to that.” It’s gratifying to learn that young people still appreciate the good ole tunes, just like we do.
RR: That’s what I really appreciate about Oscar–we have a love of a lot of different kinds of music. Sometimes less becomes much more, in terms of the limited personnel lineup [we have]. There are only three of us. We worked with Rick Philipp for years. Rick has moved with Stephanie Davis, his lady, back to Austin. But we’re really fortunate now to work with Ron Craighead as our main drummer. [He’s] a tremendous singer, and really such a versatile player, also. Oscar is playing bass with his left hand, better than most bass players in this area could do with two hands [and] two feet. I look at myself as a confident player and an okay singer. I’m trying to do justice to the material more than anything, and I appreciate the fact that at least we can try a variety of different styles.
OD: We’ve been very lucky as far as drummers are concerned. We’ve never had to cancel a gig because we couldn’t get a good drummer. As a trio, we sound pretty full, but not so full that it’s a wall of noise. We try to keep it clean and concise. RR: Having worked together for this amount of time, we have three, four hundred songs that we’re doing. We’ve got a lot of stuff to draw from. Sometimes there’s some oblique things that we’ll do–it depends on whether it’s a bachelorette party or it’s a–
OD: –or a senior center. [laughs] RR: [But] I think we’re both good musicians and we try to pay attention to what’s occurring musically, but we’re also both entertainers. We are purposefully and contentiously engaging with the audience.
OD: Anything for entertainment, anything for a laugh.
RZ: This area has a bustling music scene. How does it feel to be succeeding here?
RR: There are a lot of great players in the area, and a lot of younger bands. I feel grateful we have folks that appreciate what we do and come out to support us in so many places. OD: This is my sixth year now in Montana. I was amazed how many venues there are here that have live music. This community really supports live music–for that, I’m very grateful as well. I keep using the word “grateful,” but I am. There are a lot of really great players here. I’m glad [we’re] all working, and I’m glad there’s enough support in the community.
RZ: People are starved for it. People can get their fill of the Sugar Daddies at a number of upcoming performances through the end of the year and beyond. First up, the fellas will bring their duo act to Desert Rose in Belgrade, Thursday, December 17th from 7-9pm. The band in its entirety will head to Neptune’s Brewery in Livingston, Friday the 18th from 5:30-8:30pm. They’ll spend Saturday the 19th at the Riverhouse Grill in Big Sky at 7:30pm as a duo. The trio will return to the American Legion in Manhattan for a special Sunday show on the 20th from 1-5pm. The Sugar Daddies have teamed up with Ballroom Dance Bozeman for their “New Year’s Eve Dance Party,” Thursday the 31st at the Emerson Cultural Events Center beginning at 8pm. Be sure not to miss these guys! •
