In August 2021, Peter Felsman traded Brooklyn for Marquette.

The indie-folk singer-songwriter had relocated from New York City to Michigan’s Upper Peninsula for an assistant professor of social work position at Northern Michigan University.

While adjusting to that change, Felsman had started writing songs for what would become Things We Used to Make.

“It is beautiful in Marquette, but the pace of life was a huge contrast to Brooklyn, where I had moved from, and I had more space to reflect on the last few years,” said Felsman, who records and performs as DASHpf, about his latest EP.

“A lot of the songs focus on making meaning of the past to help move forward, and they did. I was able to make a lot of amazing memories in the U.P. and [find] fodder for new albums.”

Felsman explores the EP’s overall theme through five concise tracks, which feature honest lyrics, soulful vocals, and earnest instrumentation.

“Thematically, this EP feels very nostalgic,” he said. “It is past-focused in a way, but it is fundamentally a hopeful album.

“[The track], ‘Witch in California,’ is a song about attending an Acceptance and Commitment Therapy Bootcamp and committing to be a better person! ‘Nicole’ is a song about missing my friends, but ultimately motivated the creation of the [EP] with my friends.”

A year ago, Felsman made another professional move from Northern Michigan University to Oakland University.

I recently spoke with Felsman about the inspiration behind Things We Used to Make and his new role in academia.

Q: What’s been inspiring you lately?

A: Generally, new life phases. I feel my world growing in new ways, and that excites me creatively. And I am, as usual, inspired by my friends who make all kinds of things. My friend Brian Heveron-Smith wrote a classical-punk musical about Fanny Mendelssohn. My friend Shawn Golden animated a whole pilot episode of a cartoon [called] Big Big Baby.

I just met Kora Feder and have been totally blown away by her new album, released this past spring. My friend Josh Rice created a puppet wrestling show called Kayfabe. I saw some clowns, Ethan and Gigi, at Chris Gethard’s That Show at White Eagle Hall in Jersey City in August and am still processing that performance. Musically, I’m all over the place, but shout-outs to Charlotte Cornfield and Joanna Sternberg.

Q: You’re currently working as an assistant professor of social work at Oakland University. How is that going?

A: I’m loving Oakland University. I am teaching social work there—it’s wonderful! My colleagues are great, and the students are great. It’s a strange time to be an academic, but I’m feeling inspired by the people around me. Go Grizzlies!

Q: How did a lyric from “Nicole” inspire the EP’s title?

A: Things We Used to Make is a line from “Nicole” that became the EP’s title as a reference to past subjects throughout the songs, but it is also self-referential! Years from now, we’ll have a record to look back on from a really fun experience in the studio.

Q: “Nicole” reflects on missing the person you once were. How did having a conversation with your friend Nicole Patrick lead to writing this song?

A: I had been practicing piano a bit, but I hadn’t written a new song in a while. I had a phone call with Nicole and expressed my fear that the creative well had run dry. They caught me up on their life, describing touring the world, [yet] feeling unsettled. They said something like, “I just want to make music with my friends,” and before hanging up, [they] playfully suggested, “Do something on that.” I had the full song written within a day.

I wrote about Nicole’s experience filtered through my own. I knew after writing it that if I were to record it, getting Nicole to play on the track would be a dream come true. Last summer, Nicole reintroduced me to Dylan Mckinstry. I had met [Dylan] at a gig many years ago, and the three of us worked on “Nicole” together. It was such a fun experience that we made the whole five-track EP together, with Nicole’s sister Sydney [Patrick] guesting on track two, [“Color Theory”].

Q: “My Ex’s Plant” is about starting over and feeling hopeful about the future. How did keeping an ex’s plant alive help you feel rejuvenated?

A: I had gotten back to my house in Marquette from a winter break and really thought this plant was dead. It was basically a stem and one leaf, and my house was cold. I had thought it might do better in my bedroom, so I gave it a cup of water and brought it upstairs. And then as the weeks passed, it just wouldn’t die. It was this sign of an ex that wouldn’t go away. It was invasive, and it was in my bedroom!

But I think there’s something true about exes leaving artifacts with each other, and something beautiful about figuring out how to live with those artifacts, whether they be new fears, insecurities, a book, a favorite band, or a house plant. And in this case, it was a plant, and it lived on. I found that inspiring, and I related to it differently. If that plant [was] isolated, dehydrated, and cold and could make it, it gave me some hope for myself during a long winter. I started feeling optimistic about spring, and I wrote “My Ex’s Plant” as both an extended metaphor and a literal story. 

Q: “Hungry Bird” highlights feeding birds and other wildlife in your backyard and developing a true appreciation for nature. How were you inspired to write this song for a child’s tent performance at the Hiawatha Annual Traditional Music Festival? How did Kerry Yost and Alex Alaqil add to that inspiration as well?

A: I had fallen in love with the doves outside my kitchen window. I had an eye-level view of the backyard, which was sloped upwards so that my eye level was closer to the ground. I had [also] fallen in love with the rabbits, the squirrels, the chipmunks, and even the ground squirrels. There were all kinds of birds in my yard because my neighbor had some bird baths in her yard.

Kerry was invited to play the kids’ tent at Hiawatha because she is an absolute force of a songwriter and singer on her own. She invited me and Alex to join her because she is also extremely kind and thought it’d be fun to do as a group. My brother and sister-in-law were expecting their first child the month after the festival, so I was excited to work on my identity as a fun uncle. I wanted to learn some great kid-friendly covers, but I also wanted to make sure we had some original songs, too!

Alex playfully added the chipmunk-snoring sound live, which obviously inspired that moment on the recording. And Kerry added a whole bunch of harmonies on the chorus—same deal. They gave that song an original form. Dylan [Mckinstry] and Nicole added a lot of additional dimension, color, and ideas, but I wouldn’t have written the song in the first place if not for Kerry and Alex.

Q: Tell me about the creative process for Things We Used to Make. How did the EP’s five tracks come together in the studio?

A: The five tracks were originally written over the three years that I lived in Marquette, but [they] were recorded the year after I left. [They were] recorded in Brooklyn, which was the last place I had lived before moving to the U.P. The process involved bringing songs into the studio where Dylan works for Dylan and Nicole to play around with. It was a lot of trying stuff out and seeing what we liked, but always basing the arrangements on the basic songs in their original forms.

Q: Things We Used to Make features collaborations with Nicole Patrick (drums, OP-1), Sydney Patrick (vocals), and Dylan Mckinstry (production). How did they help shape the EP’s sound and the respective tracks they played on?

A: Dylan and Nicole are all over this record. We had a lot of fun in the studio trying stuff out together and seeing what stuck. Sydney actually guested on the [EP] without me [being] present. I was back in Michigan when she could meet with Dylan. I asked her to try out a few things on two tracks. The guidance I gave was a general feel—something like “ethereal”—and some ideas about words versus not, but she really came up with the part and absolutely crushed it.

Q: What plans do you have for new material?

A: I wrote a new song in August, and I actually recorded a few songs of my brother’s last spring that I’ll hopefully release next year. He is a prolific writer—one of the “can’t not write” kind of writers—and a major influence on my songwriting.

He wrote a song called “Basketball” with the lyric, “Coming home from school / Beating my little brother Peter in basketball,” and I just had to cover it. There are a couple more, but you’ll have to wait until they’re released to know which ones.