Long standing and well loved punk outfit The Dwarves are returning to Australia after spending, frankly, too long away this October! Bringing with them a stack of new material, a killer live show as well as all the favourites from what has become an extensive career, Australian fans in Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane are in for an excellent time. the AU chats with Blag the Ripper ahead of it all to see what they’ve been up to in between making records and being on the road, how they’re keeping the standards of rock and roll on the live front high, and more.
We’ve got you coming to Australia in October! It’s going to be good to have you guys back down here.
We love Australia! God, it’s been a good four or five years since we’ve been there, so I’m really ready to go back.
It’s been too long since we last saw you! You’ve worked on a new record…what else have you been up to? What’s the last few years been doing for you?
Well yeah, we just made this record called The Dwarves Invented Rock and Roll and that has been the focus of the last year or so. About three years ago, we made The Dwarves Are Born Again, so we’ve made two records since we were last there. I did a podcast for the last three years, I just stopped doing it about six months ago, it was called “Radio Like You Want” and that was neat because I got to interview a lot of people from punk bands and different walks of life. I even interviewed people like a Bali Bombing survivor, which was a really harrowing interview. We did a bunch of cool stuff and I’m sure you know that with podcasts, you do a lot of work and you don’t make a lot of money! After a while, you’ve got to pick your battles, but that’s what the last couple of years have largely been. A lot of touring, two records and that podcast.
You mentioned interviewing a Bali Bombing survivor and things like that, going down that road must take you out of your comfort zone, in terms of what you normally do in playing on stage or making a record?
Yeah, it was a lot different! At first, I was interviewing people I knew or I was talking about myself and them, so I had to figure it out! You’ve got to dig and really be interested in people and start thinking about what they’re saying and what they’re responding to. That was really interesting. As far as making the records go, it’s like, we’ve been making the best records in punk rock for 25 years, so that part was easy! [Laughs]
It still wouldn’t be routine, for you to just walk into the2 studio and put something together! What is the process these days, when you do go in to make a record?
Well, this time around, it was a little different. Generally, I’ve written a lot of the material first but this time around, I had several songs, Rex Everything had a couple of songs… Fresh Prince of Darkness, our guitar player, he had some, HEWHOCANNOTBENAMED had some and even some of the newer guys like Chip Fracture who is our bass player, he had a couple of great songs. This one was really a lot more collaborative and there were a lot of songs coming from every different angle. My job was to tie it all together and try and make something cohesive of it. I think it turned out really well. I think our fans like this one a little better to our last couple of ones, because I got very crazy with the production on the last ones. The record always starts with a basic session of just guitar, bass, drums, let’s knock this out.
Depending on how crazy I get afterward is how much things change, you know? I think on Dwarves Must Die, I really went wild with it and went to every different genre and played a lot with the production side of things and Born Again was not quite as much that way, but there was still a lot of genre-hopping and a lot of crazy shit. This time, it was more like knocking out the record and trying not to go too crazy on the production. I still get a little crazy, because that’s the fun for me. I never wanted to be one of those guys who makes the same record over and over. I like to stretch out and do something interesting, so that’s the way it went this time! It’s a little more immediate. I think The Dwarves fans are really liking it and they seem to be buying it a lot, so that’s good news!
A lot of things I read about it as well, from fans and from critics, is that they compare it to Blood, Guts and Pussy quite a bit. Do you think there is a little bit of coming full circle with some of the ways you went about this record?
Yeah, I think that’s a fair estimate. There is a little bit of that. Every Dwarves record has a certain amount of hardcore on it; I always loved hardcore and I always wanted there to be some, it’s just the degree to which there’s more or less of it on the record, you know? I think the other reason people are comparing it to Blood, Guts… is because we did a similar kind of photo shoot, but there is three naked babes instead of two naked babes! It was done on a white background and it’s sort of harking back to that and I’m glad, because that’s one of the great album covers! This one was a great follow up. That’s what’s so cool, if you’re a teenager and even if you don’t like the music, just buy the album and jack off to the cover of it!
That’s right! You’ve got a great array of covers to do that with as well.
Yeah, nobody has better naked women than us all over their records, except maybe The Ohio Players. You know, hey, that’s the kind of company that I’ll gladly be in!
Well, we certainly appreciate that and I certainly did as a 15 year old as well. [Laughs] We’re looking forward to seeing you back down here and when it comes to your shows at the moment, how do you determine your playlist every night? I couldn’t even count how many records you guys have to choose from now.
I mean, there is somewhere between 10 and 12 records, depending on how you reckon it. Basically, the one record that really seems to resonate with everyone still is Young and Good Looking. We reissued Young and Good Looking through Reset Records about a year ago and that got a huge response. We made a double record and everybody tripped out. There is a lot of stuff from Young and Good Looking, maybe from the last three records, there is a chunk of that, maybe another five tunes or so. Always three or four from Blood, Guts and Pussy, but that only takes you five minutes! There’s a smattering from all of them, but those three are the ones which are leaned on the most. It also depends on what kind of show it is – if we’re playing in some kind of a more garage rock thing, we’d lean more on the rock and roll songs. If we’re playing with a more hardcore band, we’ll lean on more of the hardcore songs. If it’s a little more of a metal crowd, we have some more speed-metal kind of songs on various records. We try and mix it up. It’s always The Dwarves, it’s always the same basic drift, but you can try and do different sets that lean more on different tempos.
Energy of the show as well must still…is it exhausting? Is it more exhausting now than it was 20 years ago?
Well it is! I keep waiting for younger bands to come along and be better than us and more energetic and wilder, and it just never happens! All I can say is that I think we’re a very spectator society now and so this generation of young people who play rock and roll is all like, ‘Oh I’ve got my phone and I’m going to take a picture and I’m going to stand here and play my songs’. The Dwarves are just not raised that way, we always put on a wild show! The most frequent thing that happens to me is that young people walk up to me and go, ‘Shit, man, I’ve never seen anything like that. I’ve never seen a punk show like that. I didn’t know you could really do that.’ It’s weird, if you listen to our records, there is sometimes a lot of production and a lot of stuff and then when you see us live, all of that is gone. This is a live show, we don’t have a backdrop. We play on borrowed equipment. We’re a real punk band from the beginning, you know? You don’t really see that much anymore. I like that combination where, on the record, there’s a lot of ear candy on there for you but if you see the show, you just get a smack in the face with rock.
Do you think there’s an element that other bands have done it wrong along the way?
Oh yeah, sure! I mean, there are other elements too. One thing I see a lot in California is bands who are really patted on the back a lot for making one mediocre record in the 80s and then just always have done the same thing since then. It’s like, ‘Well, everybody liked it so we’re just going to do this‘ and they call that ‘integrity’. I call it boring. There’s gold in the middle of the road, so that’s how musicians are. You pat them on the back for something, then they’ll do it for 30 years, waiting for a cookie. For The Dwarves, that bored me too much and I just never wanted to do that. In terms of live, people get a little too comfortable. I never wanted to go out and have a band that got up on stage and was like, ‘Hey we’re just like you kids. You can do this.’ It’s like, ‘No, you can’t do this. You’ve got to get really good to do it. We’re going to do it and you’re going to watch and you try it.’ I think a lot of bands have that attitude of, ‘Hey we’re just like you’ and it’s like, ‘Yeah, you are. Your band’s boring, you don’t do much and you are just regular guys’. We’re not.
You’ve kept that going all these years! Many, many respects to you for that.
Well thank you, I appreciate it! Australia has always been a great audience for us. People love rock and roll there and they really give you a great amount back and that’s part of it too. The audience makes the show. When the audience is into it and having fun, that’s great. When the audience is taking pictures or came to see what was in the newspaper or what was on the internet, even if the band is good, the same great things don’t necessarily happen. I would say that Australian audiences are good, they know how to rock out and have a good time. It’s always been great for us.
I imagine there have been periods in your career where there have been shows where people have come just out of curiosity, not really knowing who you were. Because they’ve read an article in Rolling Stone, or they’ve read something about you doing something crazy. Do you recognise periods or remember periods like that, when it was sort of…boring?
Oh yeah! When Blood, Guts… happened, there was a lot of that because a lot of people were paying attention to SubPop and the grunge movement. There was a lot of that then and it still happens. We just did a west coast tour and it’s like, in southern California they go wild and here in northern California where I live, in San Francisco, there would just be a write up on us in the paper where they’d be proud of us…I was glad to get the write up and the show sold out, but then it was all people standing there, looking at us and shooting me with their phones. It was like, ‘Well fuck, man, thanks for coming but let’s rock now! Put your phone down, let’s play rock and roll. That’s what we’re here to do, we’re not here to be on the phone’. If people pay their money, then they have the right to do whatever the fuck they want, I guess, but it’s kind of funny. The more you look to be a spectator, the less you get to look at. The more you take part in it, the more you get to spectate as well. That’s what rock and roll is, it’s not the symphony. You get to take part in it, that’s half the fun of it!
That’s for sure. I hope the Australian crowds do you proud once again and I can’t wait to see you when you come down here in October! I really appreciate your time today and enjoy sunny San Francisco!
It’s my pleasure! Tell all the people to go to thedwarves.com and they can order our new record, The Dwarves Invented Rock and Roll! That’s how we do, my friend! We’ll see you in Australia!
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THE DWARVES AUSTRALIAN TOUR DATES
October 17 – Evelyn Hotel, Melbourne | 18+
October 18 – Bald Faced Stag, Sydney | 18+
October 19 – Crowbar, Brisbane | 18+
The Dwarves Invented Rock and Roll is available now.
Transcription by Sosefina Fuamoli
