Dr. Dog on Fate, Philosophy and Kinship
Featuring: Dr. Dog
Written by: Thomas Mendelovits
Published: Jul 28th '08
WB’s Thomas Mendelovits talks to Scott McMicken, co-lead vocalist and guitarist of Philadelphia’s Dr. Dog on the eve of the release of new record Fate. With Fate, Dr. Dog have one of 2008’s most thoroughly enjoyable collections of songs so far and a record which, with any luck, will seal their own fate as a soft-rock tour de force; a band as equally accessible as they are artistic. They talk about the Dr. Dog philosophy, the inherent fractiousness that comes with expectations, and the overriding synergetic kinship felt within the band.
WB: Firstly, congrats on your new album. There seems to be a bit of a buzz going around about its release, which is coming up in a few weeks...
SM: I can say with complete confidence that everything is going far beyond our expectations. It’s been exciting. But you never know… it’s a real strange world, this music industry. We’re not a band with a whole lot of expectations, but if we were to stop and have them we would have to take it all with a grain of salt. But what I can say though that makes me confident is that we’re all really excited about the album we made, everyone feels we made the best album we could, and the response from our manager and people who have to do their thing and trickle it out after we’re done recording it – they all seem excited about it too. It’s a fun batch of songs to play live and we’ve been getting them ready, which is going well too. So all in all it’s been a really pleasing process.
WB: You’ve played a few shows lately around the States, but you have a long set of dates all around the US and Europe. So, you’re looking forward to road testing them?
SM: Yeah, I’m looking forward to that. I know from the past, the process is that we make a record and so we learn how to play the songs. Then we take them on the road and then, finally, by the time we come home they’re something completely different. And that process is something I’m definitely looking forward to with this batch of songs, because this record has more to do with us as a live band than any of our other albums. We weren’t really a touring band, but over the last few years we’ve been touring so much that in our heads we really think of ourselves now as a live band. These songs are tailored to that.
WB: This album seems like it could have taken a very long time to record. As well as the live feel, which does definitely come through, there’s a real studio-as-an-instrument element to it. How was the recording process?
SM: Well, actually, by our standard, it didn’t take long. Though I don’t know what ‘long’, generally, is… If a band usually takes two or three months, we were kind of right on par with that. We spent about six weeks tracking it at our studio, the same studio where we recorded We All Belong, and then three weeks mixing it – so all in all it was around a two-month experience. For us, it was unheard of, which made it one of the things that made me nervous going into this album. I knew that, in order to keep to a certain pace of having a record out every year, that if we didn’t have it done by March, then it wouldn’t be able to come out this year what with the amount of set-up time, printing, manufacturing and all that kind of stuff. So I was a little nervous, because I was scared one of the things we’d miss out on was the evolution of things that I’d experience in the studio prior, and it seemed to me that that kind of thing takes months and months – letting things sit in the studio, change and evolve and ultimately wind up four months later as something completely different to where they began. And that, to me, is one of the joys of recording: sculpting and chipping away at things and seeing where they end up.
WB: And you have to have time to do that.
SM: Yeah, that’s what I thought… but what I found out was the same sort of thing, or the same feeling at least, was happening. So when, a year ago say, something would have taken three weeks, this time, the same amount of changes were occurring on a daily basis. It was staggering to be a part of this new process. I guess it’s all in how you choose to look at it – and it was definitely a valuable lesson. I think it has to do with the fact that we’re all better and more efficient in the studio now. We’ve gotten closer to feeling what it is we actually like, and naturally too – after making these couple of albums, you learn more and more and then are able to get to points faster.
WB: You and Toby (Leaman, bass/vocals) both sing lead vocals for Dr. Dog. Do you each just write and sing your own songs?
SM: 99.9% of the time that’s how it works. Actually, this album is the first time we’ve deviated from that, because on the last song, ‘My Friend’, I wrote both halves of it, but the first half he sings and the last half I sing. That just felt like an absolute necessity; in my head that song needed to be sung in a way that I know I’m not confident in singing, and also in a way in which I’m one hundred percent confident that Toby can do.
WB: That’s seems like a lovely example of how in-sync you are with each other. Even though it’s in two distinct parts, I thought it was a Scott song, even when I heard Toby’s voice first. It works really well together, almost like a duet.
SM: Thanks man. It was a lot of fun. I look forward to doing that more. Having had that experience I can maybe write and identify quicker whether it’s something Toby would be better singing. It was good to realise that there’s nothing wrong with that admission too, that if he’s got the right voice then there’s really no reason to feel so attached to me singing it and vice versa.
WB: This ties into something that’s been touched on a lot for this release -- the consistent lyrical thread that runs through the record. When you came last summer, you told the guys from WB that you just knew which bunch of songs would fit together. Is it something to do with that feeling across the band of togetherness and comfort with each other in being in Dr. Dog? Or was it a more personal thing that just happened to be felt across the whole band?
SM: I guess a little bit of both. I think that the intangible side of the record – the life that it took on while we were making it – I know that that feeling had different effects on everyone. It wasn’t an entirely shared sensation, but I do think that, at its core, the ideas that it touches upon, and what it allowed us to carry with us into the studio allowed us to be able to blur, a little bit, the line between our lives as individuals and our lives as musicians. And that let us take in some of the ideas which dominate my life, and Toby’s life, and bring that all to the table, open the spectrum a little wider, and not leave out the intangible things.
And while I know that that did mean a lot of different things to each person in the band, as I was saying, at its core it is a very fundamental way in which we all relate to life. More than anything it’s a display of a certain disposition, a certain lifestyle, or a certain way of navigating life’s different adventures. A way of maintaining a sense of groundedness, a sense of humour, a lightness about things that can easily feel so heavy and depressing. And I think that that is definitely something that’s been built into the concept of Dr. Dog from day one; perhaps that was even more prominent at day one than it even being a musical thing. In the beginning it was very much about this forced context of ultimate satisfaction; that we weren’t going to allow any obstruction into our feelings about what we were doing whatsoever. And while that is a sort of naïve and youthful approach to take, and has been challenged for us on many occasions obviously, it still maintains itself. And I think that this record is our best attempt at addressing that issue directly. And we hope it comes through in the music, which is what was nice about it to make.
WB: Fate definitely doesn’t suffer from that feeling of jadedness, which seems to be intrinsic to a lot of music these days. You’ve made four full-length albums together, but have you been friends for much longer than that?
SM: Oh yeah, you know how it is. You always hear musicians talk about that. Actually, just yesterday I heard an interview on the radio with the Watson Twins, who are these two twin sisters from Kentucky who moved to L.A. and became known as a back-up group, they did a record with Jenny Lewis and somebody else. But now they’re making their own music and they were talking about how as twin sisters and musical partners they are aware that it makes dealing with the tension and some of the difficulties a lot easier, because at the end of the day they’re sisters and that’s never gonna change. I can say, without being too schmaltzy about it, that I do feel a certain kinship and loyalty towards everyone in the band that keeps us together even when we aren’t. I’ve seen it in action and I feel really thankful about that. More than anything, that is the most important thing to keep intact when in a band, and when that’s challenged nothing feels worse; when you feel there’s a barrier between you and someone in the band, or some lack of communication. There’s nothing worse, because it calls the whole thing into question.
WB: Without having to go into specifics, did that happen at all during the recording of Fate?
SM: To be perfectly honest, there was a little bit of that in the beginning. I think we faced one of the most intense, not that it was by any means super-dramatic, but by our standards, the most intense conflict in intraband dynamics for about the first week or two. It had nothing to do with the music we were making; it was more where people were in life, and stepping into this new record, which obviously we put a lot of pretence behind. You know, “here we go, we’ve got two months, this is it for us. Every day, this is our life”. And it took some people some time to get into that mode, that commitment, but out of that period of adjustment, it forced some people to step back and take stock about how they feel in the band and their role in the band. And for a minute there it was sad and scary, but in the end it made us a stronger band. Sometimes you’ve gotta go through those. I’ve seen that to be true in a love interest or a relationship too, you’ll find yourself suddenly in the middle of some mess and you’ll think: “this is the end of everything”. But then you find a way to change and compromise and you’re ready for what’s next: you’ve beat that little problem…
WB: And you’ve learnt something from it too…
SM: Yeah, and life is full of those little things, you’ve gotta learn to move around them. And yeah, it was cool, because to be perfectly honest, at times I think we are sometimes an excessively optimistic band. We’ll let things sit and simmer longer than they ought to. So things don’t often come to a boiling point, we can all swallow things for a really long time and keep doing what we do. So to be forced into a situation like that, for me personally, though I know that everyone in the band has a different philosophy on relationships, was good. I’ve become so obsessed with communicating and being open and I’ve just found that the more I do that and the less I hold in, the better I feel in general. Letting go of all the shame within myself that comes with feeling the need to be open with the people in my life, but not getting it out. So I, for one, loved that we ended up in a situation where we had to address these things. And not only to let off some anger, but to be able to say the good things that I always wanna say but for some reason never do. To affirm to someone who may be feeling otherwise that I totally love them and value them. And especially with a band or any kind of collaboration, where egos get in the way, it’s easy to think that if I’ve got this idea but he says its dumb, then I think he’s thinks I’m dumb. And suddenly it escalates, it gets out of control.
WB: It must have been hard, because there are really so many ideas on the record. Did any just get the big ‘no’ stamp? Were there boundaries that you had to draw?
SM: I think in general, we just try to be open to as many possibilities as we can be. With this record, and every Dr. Dog record, the way we approach every song is to try to be open to new ways that you might not have imagined. Personally, I’ve always been drawn to those artists who display that kind of variety, that ability to let the song dictate what it ought to be like, rather than the particular sound that the band has come up with, or your intuition on the instrument. To push past those boundaries, and it becomes fun because then you get to hear it coming back as something not entirely unrecognisable, even though you’re all over every inch of it. But I can say that, there are certain modern aspects, actually it’s not even safe to say that they are modern, but things that you might hear in a lot of modern music, which have always fundamentally given us stomach aches. And that’s things like, disco beats and you know… though I do think there is some great disco music…
WB: But I heard one! On one of the songs you sing too… yeah, on ‘Uncovering the Old’…
SM: What? A disco beat crept in there. Oh you know what… that is a pretty disco beat…
WB: But it’s not one of those shamelessly overused beats solely designed to get people to dance…
SM: Oh, but don’t get me wrong, we really want people to dance. And actually, dance music and dancing was a major motivation behind a lot of these arrangements - to keep them danceable. But there is something about that “mmm chk mmm chk which just cheapens things to hell.
WB: On Australian bands, I know you covered an Architecture in Helsinki song, and they’re pretty big over there. Do you have any other favourites?
SM: That’s a good question. The Bee Gees were Australian, right?
WB: Do you know yet if you’re coming to Australia after all the Europe shows?
SM: The plan for a while was to be there at New Year’s, but then some Festival popped up with an offer for the end of January. So I think we’ll come at the end of January instead of over New Year’s. I can’t remember… I think it had the word ‘Thunder’ in the title.
