Interview: 25 September 2008
How involved were you with Pepi Ginsberg’s amazing album, Red?
“Incredibly involved. It was just me and her living together for a month, making the record, getting to know each other really well. She didn’t have a band, so she just put her faith in me to help her arrange these songs, play all these instruments, and fake a band for every song. It was an incredible, life-changing experience, really. I have so much respect for her, and have so many great memories of making that record.”
Is working on projects like that a luxury of home?
“Oh, yeah, definitely. I’ve been noticing the more we tour, and the older I get, the real drawback is a creative one. When we’re on the road, I can’t write, I can’t visualize, I can’t get a vision for much other than what’s directly in front of me on a daily basis. Earlier this year, I spent two months at home, just doing nothing. I was 24 or 25 before we started touring, so I have very strong reference points for what day-to-day domestic life is like, and I really wanted to recapture that. It was amazing to me that, during that time, I started to have tons of ideas: I wrote a lot of songs, I made a lot of pictures, and I had great conversations. It actually felt like I was a growing human-being!”
Is being on the road stunting, then?
“It is. That’s exactly what I’m trying to get at. It’s stunting. On one hand, every day is different, so that’s great. But it’s because every day is different that things don’t develop; every day you have to wipe the slate clean, re-set, and start again.”
Did you harbor rock dreams as a kid?
“I’ve never harbored that dream, and, even to this day, it seems like a very irrelevant fantasy. But, recently, it has occurred to me that, to an outsider, or to friends, we’re living the rock'n'roll dream: we’re out on the road, playing all these shows, sellin’em out, coming home with a little money. People suggest that our lives must be complete, now, which is weird for us. I think it’s just an exciting thing for old friends of mine to say: ‘you’re a rockstar!’ Which we’re not!”
But you do appear on television, right?
“Well, yeah. Being on television, in magazines, knowing famous people: I totally see that. I don’t want to be this stick-in-the-mud, talking about our success in a negative or pessimistic way. I’m just telling the truth. Maybe I could feel like a rockstar, if that was this goal that I pursued. But I really didn’t, and I still don’t. That’s not to say my whole life hasn’t been 100% devoted to music, because it has. I’m just way more into the process of being a musician than the rewards of being a musician.”
So what ideas did you have in mind at Dr. Dog's beginning?
“The band has tried to stay true to an ideal that was there from the very start —back when Toby and I met in the eighth grade— which was to have a band in your life, because it fills a void that nothing else can. If that’s what you’re looking for in music, if you want to constantly free yourself from the dishonesty, the pressure, the criticism, the rigidity of normal life, then all you’ll want to do is maintain that free feeling of it, and it'll be worth all the blood, sweat and tears you have to go through. Because there’s just no way in hell you’re gonna not do it.”
Were those classic-pop influences —the Beatles, the Beach Boys— really always there? Or are they more what other people hear in your music?
“That’s a tough question. You’ve gotta trust me that I’ve thought really hard about this. Because I absolutely 100% accept anyone’s comparisons that they throw out, especially the Beatles and Beach Boys, which is no shock whatsoever. If I’m asked about why that is, I can honestly say that whatever influence has gone into our band is very deep-seated, like we were informed by these fundamentals from the very start, and those have become our parameters. We are very strict about what we find acceptable and what we don’t. There are so few records that’re made these days that’re as good as they could be. It’s not because I think that people aren’t capable of making good music, I just have such an overly dogmatic idea about how things should sound. And I’m certain that was informed by music of decades before. It’s just an aesthetic thing, it’s not a style thing, or a scene thing, or an identity thing. And this is where it gets kind of nerdy, because it’s, for me, the way a drum is recorded.”
So you definitely ascribe to vintage recording techniques?
“I do. This is a very slippery slope for a lot of people, because it puts me in this category of having a reluctant take on culture and the arts, this conservative idea of clinging to the proven past rather than journeying into the future. But, to me, it’s not about what year something was done, or some lack of quality about what’s being done now. To me, it’s about the process, and about inspiring creativity by working within these strict parameters. I don’t need this vast tone palette, a hundred thousand choices on a computer to say whatever it is I wanna say. As silly as anything I want to say is.”
You don't think you're out to convey something weighty?
“I think the impression that we want to make, if anything, is having a light-hearted, relaxed attitude about things. That’s an important way for me to feel in life, and, for me, it just works out better if I’m not a prisoner to technology. I don’t want to be surrounded by computers. I don’t want to click and drag to turn up the volume, I want a console that has a big volume knob on it! The technology to record music is just a necessary evil; the music is within you. The goal, for me, is to have a direct line of recording from within, a way that will offer less friction, less obstacles. And this is just the way I do it.”
