Fifteen minutes with: Dum Dum Girls

YourGigs talks to the enigmatic Dee Dee from Californian quartet and recent Sub Pop signing Dum Dum Girls.

Dum Dum Girls began humbly as a series of home recordings for Kristin Gundred, and are now a fully fledged band who have just release their debut album I Will Be on Sub Pop.

 YourGigs (YG): How were your recent shows in Europe?

Dee Dee (DD): We are in intense rehearsals at the moment before we head back. We had a week and a half of shows in London – it was amazing but we just got back from a US tour with Girls, it was the best tour in the history of tours, we had such an amazing time and we became such good friends with them.

YG: Is it hard to find bands you can get on with and tour with successfully?

DD: We are still pretty new at touring, we are a friendly bunch despite what we might look like on stage. I knew two of the people in Girls, they’re friends of mine and I knew JR and we had conversed over the internet, they came to our first show in London and we really wanted to tour together. It took a couple of shows to break the ice but I think we’d both be into touring together it was so much fun.

YG: How were the shows in London and how did the crowd response compare to back home?

DD: Everywhere we went was just playing to new cities we’d never played before. But getting to London and having our first show sold out was just shocking. And then to have four more the same after that was just pretty surprising and amazing. You will always have your kids that are ultra-excited and those kids that were too cool for school, but that’s normal and I see that everywhere we go. I just try and find someone who looks like they are enjoying themselves and try to feed off them so I don’t get nervous.

YG: The response you go must give you a lot of confidence, considering you are heading back to Europe shortly?

DD: Yeah, we’ll be playing quit a lot of shows and the tour finishes at Primavera in Barcelona, so we are really looking forward to that.

YG: Just getting to the point of being a functioning touring band – did it take much adaptation along the way?

DD: Well the whole project started as just a recording thing I was doing in to pass the time. When it reached the point where it would make sense to play a show or two – when I was signed to Sub Pop and knew that there would be three records coming out in the next few years obviously I was ready and wanted to put a band together at that point. I taught the girls the songs and they pretty much play them faithfully to the record. The longer that we play together and tour more they are able to move about more within their parts. I mean, I am a terrible bass player and Bambi is a good bass player and she knows the style of the songs and the band and she can make the parts better and I’m enjoying that within the band. We just got  a new drummer, Sandy, and she’s incredible, it’s a real treat to hear her subtle changes to the parts, so that’s really fun, but for the most parts its been a fairly easy transition because I just gave the girls the record and just said figure it out?

YG: Do you think as time goes on it will become a more collaborative thing with the whole band or are you wanting to keep it as your own thing?

DD: Realistically the next phase – I’ve written most of the next record at this point, I am hoping to put out an EP in between records – all my songs I write them on an acoustic guitar with a single melody, first thing I do is harmony, second thing I do is the bass line then the drums then I flesh it out in that manner. Truthfully, I know that my skill, if I have any, is writing a song and coming up with the vocal harmony and vocal melodies. And I will assume that now I have these talented women in my band that I would utilize them to record with. But Sandy who is a much better drummer than I am, will come up with the perfect drum part to the song, Bambi, can figure out a more interesting bass line than I would be able to, and Jules is a great lead guitarist and has a really different style that I do, and I’m a terrible lead guitarist. At this point I can’t imagine doing it how I did this record, because that was just me doing the bare bones and I had some friends contributing the guitar parts. And I love how the record sounds and how come out, but in the future I would love to do a proper full studio album. Even if we are only in the studio for a week I want to have that experience. So I do plan on collaborating a bit more in that sense, don’t know if we’ll write songs together, as that is still a personal thing I am very attached to and loving.

YG: Did that stem from the previous band you were in wasn’t as supportive of your song writing and you felt you needed to get out and do it on your own?

DD: It was more just my experience in bands in general, I was always just though of as the girlfriend that could sing, or the person that got roped into playing drums because the drummer quit. I’ve always been a singer and I’ve always written songs but I lacked the ability to write a lot of songs because I didn’t play guitar or play piano very well. So it really was for me this epic struggle as if you are the singer, but you are not writing the songs, it is just strange. It is strange because the songs could be in a style that doesn’t make sense to you and it’s hard to collaborate when you may not be on the same page stylistically as another band member. So for me it was amazing and refreshing and so necessary to be like there’s nobody else involved in this song and it is exactly what I would do if I had complete control and it was the first time I’d ever experienced that and it was a lot of fun and it was something I was just doing for myself  and the fact a few friend heard it and responded and were really supportive then friends of friends and then eventually someone like you in Australia has heard my record, it’s pretty crazy.  

YG: It must have been a pretty amazing ride –how did the Sub Pop thing come about and did you ever envisage any of this was going to happen?

DD: I didn’t go into it with any aspiration. It was literally just a home recording thing to stave off boredom I was alone a lot and had a shitty job and had been really unhappy with what I was doing musically and just doing it because I would go crazy if I wasn’t. Initially this label Hozac in Chicago put out my 7” and that was just crazy for me because I was obsessed with one of their bands Catatonic Youth – and I remember I got this email and it said I’d love to put out a 7” of yours and I was thinking oh where do I know this label and my husband said oh they were the ones who put out that Cataonic Youth 7” and I was like oh my god how flattering and I got really excited about that. Then Mike Sniper from Blankdogs started up his own label and I was the first release on that – he’s since then put out a thousand records, but I was kind of star struck that someone over the internet that you don’t know and played music I respected wanted to help me out. And my now friend Dean, who is the A & R at Sub Pop who signed me, he’s just an avid music collector and listener and he’d just known about me from Hozak because he gets those 7”. And he basically just emailed me on MySpace and didn’t identify what label he was from, he just said ‘oh I work an indie label and I do their singles club and maybe we can do something’ and we just had this really casual back and forth, I was like, I have just put out this 7” and I’m really excited and have to write some more songs, and then a few emails down the line it came out he was from fucking Sub Pop and I was like are you kidding me? So he compiled the singles clubs which is something I was aware of, and it wasn’t just Sub Pop bands, there were a bunch of bands that I respected who knew had done it , it seemed like a really amazing opportunity and a few days later he wrote back saying ‘what do you think about me pitching you for real for a record?’ – and I’m you go ahead, knock your socks off and let me know how that goes, and he gets back and says it went unbelievably well an everybody was into it. And I didn’t even have a band or an album at that point so it was unbelievably surreal and flattering that a label like that would even consider me for anything.

YG: So the band as a girl group – was that something you wanted from the start or just something that happened as you adapted as things started happening for you?

DD: I played a couple of shows with a couple of girls that were helping me out and a couple of guys that helping me out and they were premature shows. We weren’t really ready to play, but it was important that we be involved in the show and we made it work out. It was always my intent to have an all girl band. It’s always been something really inspiring and intriguing to me when I’ve seen it or heard it and it was something I’ve wanted to be involved with and experience for myself. So it just took a few months to figure out who I could get, and once I could make the decision about that I wasn’t going worry about where people lived – because it’s more important to have the right people rather than people that live in your city. So I looked to an old friend in Texas and I met a new friend through a good mutual friend of ours. Frankie Rose was the first person that had helped me to make it into a real band, but always under the guise that it wasn’t necessarily a permanent solution, she does her own thing, and was starting to do it more and more. So we just got a new drummer, we’re really excited about her. She’ll be doing all these tours with us and it feels like this crazy second wind. We’ve been having epic rehearsals this week, she’s just so talented and such a natural and basically  just heard the record a handful of times and played it perfectly and improves it. I’m so glad we found someone so quickly who is already above and beyond what we anticipated.

YG: What aspects of ‘Girl Groups’ do you hope to carry on?

DD: I don’t think that it’s necessarily related to the decade, I just think that I’ve always been attracted to songs that are honest and really earnest. Something’s the simplest concepts and explanations are the ones that ring truest. Not to keep talking about Girls, but seeing them play every night was heartbreaking – Christopher Owen writes the most touching, honest lyrics, and some of them are simplistic and some of them aren’t, but you can tell they are for real. That’s always been something that I always wanted in my songs – something that other people are going to hear and know exactly what i mean and relate to it in some degree.

YG: Your husband is also a musician – Brandon Welchez from Crocodiles – is it inspiring for you – do you often bounce ideas off each other?

DD: Yeah we are big supporters of each other and he was obviously the first person to hear Dum Dum Girls stuff and was really encouraging. I think its pretty obvious a handful or more of the songs on the record may be attribute to something about him. The same can probably be said about his band. It’s really nice to have somebody that is doing the same thing in life, its hard to be in a band and have a relationship and in my experience it is even harder if they are not familiar with what goes along with that. We have a pretty good understanding of what we are doing while we are out there. Things can be really stressful and we are always checking in on each other and making sure we are okay. He is just a true talent and inspiring in that way as well.

YG: What was the experience like working with Richard Gottehrer?

DD: It was an unbelievable opportunity, it seemed unreal that is was happening. We worked over the internet for a few days then I flew out to New York and mixed with him and he did his production on the backward end of things, It was amazing to see him work he was the sweetest guy, nice and personable and really friendly. What shocked me the most was that he really dealt with me – like he respected what I had to say. It was crazy to me because in my head he was working with me and talking to me and he’s probably talked with Richard Hell and Blondie and he was giving me the same room for my ideas – it was really crazy and flattering that someone I have such high esteem for would even give me the time of day, really. It was an amazing experience to see how he would put his touch on the songs and such a good experience that I’m probably going to be working with him in the future. It is still surprising I read these quotes he has said about me – and it was very validating.

YG: Just to finish off, our standard gigs questions - First gig you ever played?

DD: It was in an abandoned house in a small town called Half Moon Bay, near San Francisco, CA, I was singing for a band that was awful, we wanted to be the Jefferson Airplane, i was wasted on wine cooler, I was 19 or something, it was fun I’m sure.

YG: Best gig you’ve ever played?

DD: Our first show in London, we showed up in London not sure what to expect and it was sold out and packed and we weren’t jetlagged yet and our bodies were confused and it was just a really special night, it was perfect.

YG: Worst onstage moment?

DD: Just before we flew out to London for that little tour we played a show in New York and my guitar was damaged on the flight and it was just going out of tune, extremely in every single song. It was just one of those terrible moments where I could just play the songs and it would sound awful. Or else I could spend 20 seconds in between every single song tuning. It was just a really traumatic experience for me as it takes everything I have to exude that nonchalant confidence, that really only works when you are not interrupted.

YG: One gig in history you wish you were at?

DD: Well there’s one gig that hasn’t happened yes that I really want to go to – the ATP with The Stooges – so if someone can help me get to that would be great.

Andy Ryan