Odds and Ends
Dr. Dog Goes Lawn Bowling With WB
Featuring: Dr. Dog
Written by: Justin Pearsall
Published: Dec 19th '07
It’s 11.30 on an overcast Melbourne Sunday morning as Dr. Dog and crew saunter from their minibus to confront the challenge of one of our country’s proudest and most storied traditions: lawn bowls. After a heady night spent eating barbequed kangaroo and drinking Melbourne Bitter in Melbourne’s rock institution The Tote, the band may be at a slight disadvantage when confronted with the considerable talents of a fresh Wireless Bollinger bowling team who, in stark contrast to the band, are up bright and early taking hints from local bowls guru Fred and practising their bias control.
With a brief instruction on the rules and bowling etiquette – the main point being that if your bowl goes in the wrong direction you must skull/chug your beer – the game gets underway…
It’s Toby Leaman, Dr. Dog’s vocalist/bass player, who applies pressure early. Revealing a natural talent for the bowling green and a willingness to distract the opposing team with his commentary on the merits of Pee Wee’s Big Adventure, Leaman secures an early score for Team Dog, his consistency making him a formidable opponent.
Not to be outdone Team WB employ our own tactics, unleashing the enforcer in wife-beater-wearing senior writer Al Cottrill, and business manager Tim Clare, whose skinny jean slippage causes many moments of partial nudity. Undoubtedly perturbed by the sheer physicality of Al, Team Dog falter even with the steady hands of drummer Juston Stens and keyboardist Zach Miller providing some sparks on the Darebin green.
With 11 people bowling the end changes were few and far between, and as the beer flowed freely and the Melbourne summer sun finally graced the Philadelphians with an appearance, both parties agreed to an abbreviated form of the game: a winner takes all shoot out, scores locked at four a piece…
Cue space-travelling music and a blurry screen effect and we’re at the Northcote Social Club where band, Bollinger and crowd are witnessing a superlative opening set from local produce, The Smallgoods. Playing material from this year’s deservedly acclaimed Down on the Farm, The Smallgoods shine with drummer Gus Franklin back at the helm after global touring with Architecture in Helsinki. Fuelled by strong harmonies, the psychedelic key work of Shags Chamberlain and tight, varied songwriting, the band prove the perfect support: fitting the sonic style of the headliners and engaging the crowd in anticipation.
Now miles away from the pressure of a deadlocked Darebin bowling green, Dr. Dog deliver a surprising sonic assault. While the songwriting talent and the band’s gruff, loose manner of delivery are never in question, it’s the ferocity of the performance that defies expectation. Dual vocalists Scott McMicken and Toby Leaman throw themselves around the stage like some lost relics from the ‘70s punk scene, and while giant-sized guitarist Frank McElroy, Zach and Juston Stens are more subdued in movement, their individual playing is equally relentless: song tempos are pushed to the limit, making some tracks initially unrecognisable, guitar breaks are deliberately discordant and keys parts often have the dangerous feel of improvisation.
Opening with a number of selections from this year’s stunning We All Belong, tracks like ‘My Old Ways’ and ‘Worst Trip’ sound not only fresh under this tempo-breaking performance but empowered. Even more subdued numbers like ‘Alaska’ and ‘Keep a Friend’ are never too far away from a psychoactive explosion, as Dr. Dog interplay their rockier songs with their more R’n’B-focused pedigree. Vocally, Leaman and McMicken aptly switch between whisper-soft balladeers and throat curdling frontmen.
Team Dog splice the myriad of We All Belong highlights with some of the better offerings from Easy Beat including powerful performances of ‘The World May Never Know’ and ‘Oh No’. However the highlight of the night is undoubtedly the impromptu performance of Architecture in Helsinki’s ‘Heart it Races’ with Dr. Dog and the Architecture crew combining for a version that eventually resolves somewhere in-between the original and Dr. Dog’s recent cover.
Before leaving the stage Architecture in Helsinki make a few requests from Easy Beat (‘Say Something’ and “Wake Up’) that close the night, the 200 strong crowd rousing in their reception of what has been a great performance…
Back at the bowling green all is tense as the black bowls litter end 15 of the Darebin facilities. Team Dog have managed to nearly engulf the white jack, a perfectly placed trundle by Juston Stens nestling up to its white target and leaving team WB down one with only Al Cottrill to bowl. In fittingly aggressive style – his tactics matching the viciousness of his tattered wife-beater singlet – Al drives the bowl hard-and-fast managing to dislodge the jack and sending the black bowls scuttling to all the outer regions of the green. With two bowls left and no one remotely sure of which side is actually closest to the jack it’s up to Scott and Frank to determine Team Dog’s destiny – and deflate any potential bitchiness about who actually had that pink bowl with the picture of the duck on it.
Just as in live performance, Team Dog deliver, both Scott and Frank niftily avoid the black landmines and fallen soldiers that haunt the path to victory. Just like their live performance Team Dog have destroyed all competition, rendering any doubters defenceless with clockwork-like teamwork and flawless execution.
Now secure in their bowling supremacy, Team Dog (Scott and Toby) graciously grant a humbled Team WB the chance to discuss the day and the band’s plans in a post-game debriefing:
WB: How’s the experience in Australia been?
TL: We’ve never been here. We wanted to come, people in America want to come to Australia all the time. It’s been awesome.
SM: Well, I don’t know how much people in America want to come to Australia all the time, its not talked about all that much. My point is, that it’s a real surprise.
TL: We went to a rainforest outside of Brisbane.
WB: Is that the kind of stuff that really stands out when you’re on tour, rather than just going to a pub?
SM: It’s just a pub, a pub is a pub, but a skink, a skink’s not a pub, a common skink is no pub. You can’t find common skinks in a pub
WB: What about the Meredith Music festival, how was that?
SM: It was great, we didn’t have as much time there as we wanted, but it was great.
WB: You were just there for the Friday night?
TL: Yeah, we got there around seven and we left probably around one or two.
WB: So did you see any of the other bands?
SM: We saw about three or four other bands. There’s a cool mix of stuff, and everyone who was doing their thing was doing their thing well.
WB: What about with your individual shows, you’ve been happy with the turnout?
TL: Well, yeah, if anybody’s there we’re happy. I mean, we’ve never been here before, so you can’t expect to see a million people.
WB: What can you tell us about your work on a new record?
TL: It’s going to be the best one.
SM: It’s gonna get your arse shaking.
WB: So, is there any direction change, or will it be more concise…
SM: It’ll be a little more concise I think, a little more planned out. But I don’t know how that will end up on the record, I mean, we’re doing something now, which is something we’ve never done before, which is that everybody knows the songs, in some form or another, before we go in to record them.
WB: And what about with the actual recording process, was the old stuff done on tape, and do you want to keep it on tape to keep that aesthetic?
SM: Yeah, everything was. Plus that’s the format we know how to work in
WB: What about tonight with the show, will there be some new songs?
TL: Yeah, I think we’ll play two new songs.
WB: So how far away till the new album will be finished?
TL: We’re looking to have it done by the end of February, ‘cos we’d really like for it to come out as soon as possible, just to keep records coming. But you know, if that doesn’t happen we won’t lose sleep over it. The record will be done when it’s done, but the objective is February. And that way we can have it out hopefully by June.
WB: Is part of the idea behind consistently putting records out to keep momentum or to match the old school days of an album-a-year from the best bands?
SM: Well yeah, we’ve always been that kind of band, a recording band, and with the two of us writing, we have more than enough material all the time to record an album. We could have recorded one as soon as we finished the last one.
TL: Plus, we love to record. I mean, touring is fun. Like this, this is sort of the cream of the crop, this is as good as it gets touring, but still, recording is definitely what we’re about.
SM: And that’s where we can kind of really move as a band. I mean, the two things definitely inform each other, like being on the road so much gets you better as a band, and tighter, and gets you better as a player too. So being on the road so much is great, I feel as though its made us a lot better. But, it’s those kind of elements that occur in the studio that often don’t have much to do with playing live.
WB: Like working with arrangements?
SM: Yeah, two different worlds, like textures and different tones and instrumentation. Like, we don’t really approach instrumentation in the studio at all in the same way.
TL: Yeah, it’s the electric guitars too, compared to the live stuff they take a back seat in the studio. It’s hard to get a good electric guitar tone; also, recorded, some things sound better: organs and pianos and things.
WB: What about your gear. Is it retro amps and effects?
SM: No, our gear is shit. We have a really bad reputation, our gear is awful. We’re sort of at the level of band we’re we should have much better gear. Our gear is barely functioning. It’s no joke, it’s stupid. It’s just been something we’ve never given a shit about, and touring around the world with it. But now, it’s becoming glaringly obvious. Like, we’re going on with bands opening for us, and their gear is, well, it works. It’s just like “Can we, um, borrow, well, everything that you guys have, can we borrow…”
TL: No, we’re not much gear heads at all. We’ve sort of gotten to the point of ridiculosity where we should have good stuff.
WB: You can always work on the theory that the less something costs the more credibility it has.
SM: Well, yeah, it’s also a way of thinking, where you can focus on that stuff and assume that it's really important, or you can focus on the songs.
TL: We started out as a live band, and that’s part of it too. You’d just be like, hey, if something’s all fucked up, like your guitar goes out in the middle of a show, that’s just like, we can work with that, it just means you don’t have that guitar a little bit.
WB: So have you got a title for the new album or anything?
TL: No, not really. We have the cover though.
WB: So do you consciously think: ‘that was We All Belong, now we have to do this’, or is it just a progression.
TL: No, I think of it like in chunks
SM: In fact, it’s a major priority. For instance, in making this record, when we first started to think about it, all the emphasis was on how we could change our circumstances that we had with We All Belong drastically, so that we not only make what feels like a different record, but that we make it in an environment that doesn’t resemble the past. We just wanted to take all the little elements that go into making a record and try and pull some away and add some new ones. And so, I mean for us, it’s always just a completely different look. And so having made We All Belong in our studio, the idea, for a while of making another record in that same studio did sort of feel like a continuation. You get so familiar with everything, and you just do things the same way over and over again.
WB: Does that emphasis on breaking albums up and creating new chapters extend to your songwriting?
SM: Well yeah, there’s a couple of songs that we wrote a while ago that never really saw the light of day that have merit, and then there’s new stuff too. I mean, there’s a back catalogue, and then there’s the new stuff that you’re a little more passionate about. But sometimes you’ll forget about a song, and then it’ll show up one day, and you’ll be like, ‘oh yeah, that guy’, and work on that. But as far as songwriting, it’s not something we really do, sit down and go, like, ‘we’ve got to write a different kind of song’.
TL: It does happen, in the life of any songwriter. But in our case, I don’t think it’s conscious. The records will reflect where the songwriting’s at. And the recording will reflect it too. You can make it be whatever you want, in the process between it getting written and recorded, there’s world’s of difference.
WB: And just one more thing, the big difference, for me, between Easy Beat and We All Belong were the arrangements, is that accurate?
TL: We’re just better; just better than we were.
SM: And plus the technology that we have now. I mean, Easy Beat could well have sounded a lot more like We All Belong, but at the time we made it, we only had an eight-track recorder, so you can only go so far along with eight-tracks, and we packed in as much as we could. And what you hear on Easy Beat is us maxing out our machines, but then when we went to 24 tracks, there’s a lot less walls that you hit.
WB: And, of course, what did you think about lawn bowls today?
TL: I liked it.
SM: I would love to play it a lot more.
TL: I would love to get a lot more serious about it. This stuff is more fun, when people give a shit.
SM: And this kind of thing, I kind of think, I could get good at this.
TL: Yeah, I kept thinking I was gonna get slightly better, but I don’t think any of us improved. I think we stayed pretty stagnant.
SM: I don’t know, I think the balls were all a lot closer together when we played that last one.
