Editor’s note: Unfortunately, fans will not be able to see Dallas perform for several weeks since he fell off his bike and broke both arms in early August.
By Connie Leinbach
Twelve-year-old Dallas Mason might be the busiest musician on Ocracoke these days.
The rising eighth grader, having shown the island his skills on the drums, has been wowing audiences with his new skills on the guitar.
He made his public drumming debut at the Ocracoke Health Center Seafood Festival fundraiser in 2019 at which the Ocracoke Rockers capped a successful event.
Dallas has been the group’s drummer since its prior drummer, Tommy Hutcherson, is with the Ray McAllister Band.
But, along with learning to play the drums, Dallas also began playing guitar and is often the featured guitarist with the Ocracoke Rockers.
When he’s doing that, his grandfather, Dal Burrus, who is his mom Emilie’s father, often takes over on drums.
Dallas’s repertoire of songs has grown considerably since 2022. Even then, however, Dallas was noodling on an electric guitar.
Audiences saw some of his new skills during a concert in February with Martin Garrish, one of his guitar teachers, and Josh Goforth, who is most famous for his fiddling but who is equally adept on the mandolin and banjo.
At that concert, Dallas, on acoustic guitar, and Goforth did a flawless rendition of the “Dueling Banjos.” (See the front page of this website for that photo.)
What’s even more astonishing about Dallas’s guitar playing is that he’s doing it left-handed, and he’s right-handed.
He explains that when he was 3, he would stand in front of the Rockers and imitate what they were doing with an inflatable, toy guitar.
“I started strumming right-handed,” he said, “but halfway through, I switched and was playing left-handed.”
It was a mirror image.
“Because all of their guitars were pointing in the same direction,” Dallas said. “I wanted mine to point in the direction, too.”
Ironically, while onstage now, his guitar points in the opposite direction of his right-handed band mates.
“Since I’m right hand dominant, it’s easier to make chords faster with my right hand,” he said. “But it’s harder on picking because my right hand would be faster.”
That didn’t seem to matter much at the June Ocrafolk Festival when the Rockers began their set with Dallas playing “Purple Haze,” by Jimi Hendrix, or when he played “Dueling Banjos.”
But he’s building up his left-hand dexterity with bluegrass.
He’s also working on his acoustic repertoire, having recently received a custom-made acoustic guitar made by Gerald Hampton, who’s the mandolin player for Molasses Creek.
He took this guitar to a weeklong Steve Kauffman’s Acoustic Flatpicking Kamp in Tennessee, for which he received a scholarship.
Dallas still does not read music, but on his own he’s working on more Hendrix tunes, such as “Voodoo Child” and “All Along the Watchtower.”
For him to play these on the guitar, the band needs a drummer.
When he’s not playing with the Rockers, Dallas plays drums with Raygun Ruby, a 1980s and 1990s band with Lou Castro, another of his teachers, and April Trueblood.
Castro, known for some serious guitar shredding, is in awe of Dallas’s talent because Dallas learns by hearing.
“He just has a great ear,” Castro said. “He’s picking stuff up left and right very quickly.”
Dallas has been listening to sophisticated music since he was three, Castro said.
“He learned ‘Tico-Tico’ the same time we were learning it,” he said.
He was referring to the song “Tico-Tico no Fuba,” a popular, fast and happy Brazilian choro song composed by Zequinha de Abreu in 1917 and which gained popularity in the 1940s.
Dallas is not just doing licks all the time.
He comes up with good ideas for his only licks,” Castro said.
Castro suggested that Dallas learn piano because even drummers should learn how music is laid out.
Dallas is doing just that, said his grandmother Miggie O’Neal, who with her husband and Dallas’ grandfather Rex, go to all of his gigs. All of these, including him as a toddler, can be seen on the Dallas Mason Fan Page on YouTube.
In May, a videographer Peter Santenello came to Ocracoke and got squired about by Rex, who also took him to see Dallas. The 46-minute video is on YouTube.
Miggie said Dallas sat down at their piano recently and began playing along with a Beatles tune that was on the TV.
“He just started playing along with it on the piano, not even knowing how to play the piano,” she said. “And he got it almost all right, and then I said, ‘How did you do that?’ And he said, ‘I don’t know, MigMig.’ So, he doesn’t know himself how he does it.”
Among the bands he plays with are Wednesday nights with the Ocrafolk Opry in Deepwater Theater; sometimes with the Ray McAllister Band, the Dune Dogs, and sometimes with visiting bands who need a drummer, such as recently with The Notorious Clam Slammers.
It was when Dallas was four that he first saw and heard his grandfather, Dal, tapping out the fast 1960s song “Wipeout,” on his kitchen counter.
Then, at home, Dallas began repeating the rhythm, to the astonishment of his mom and his dad, Shane.
Both note that Dallas has shown his musicality since he could walk.
His YouTube channel includes the very first video when he was three years old, standing in our living room playing air guitar,” Miggie said. “It’s just amazing to watch the music flow through his soul.”