Secret Dakota Ring is the homemade indie-pop brainchild of Serious Business Records co-founder Andy Ross. The project emerged in late 2002 when Andy began recording the music he’d written after a string of jarring events: his band broke up, his relationship dissolved, he quit his day-job, he started taking the Long Island Rail Road out to Sayville on Long Island where college pal Travis Harrison rented a windowless shack on Montauk Highway (Trav’s mom let Andy crash on the couch). The songs he’d come up with included a handful of super catchy, major-key bangers (â€Whiskey,†“My Windowâ€) that sounded honest and unpretentious, and a series of heartbreaking slower, sadder songs built around solo performances (â€At Night,†“Beautiful Girlâ€). Within a few months, the guys had moved to a new studio in Queens, hatched plans to start a label and Andy finished what became Do Not Leave Baggage All the Way (SBR02).
By January 2004 when Baggage was mastered, Travis and Andy were involved in starting two other projects, The Unsacred Hearts and DraculaZombieUSA, had upgraded to a fancy loft in Brooklyn and had officially hatched Serious Business Records. A year later, Andy joined Chicago pop-rockers OK Go and toured the globe supporting their sophomore release “Oh Noâ€. He danced on treadmills in front of bazillions of humans at the 2006 MTV Video Music Awards.
A follow-up to “Do Not Leave Baggage All the Way†is currently in the works.
"Do Not Leave Baggage All the Way" is currently sold out, but you can still purchase it digitally on iTunes .