The Dt's: The H.o.S. Interview
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Uncle Dan: First off, I'd like to thank you folks for taking time out of your schedules to sit down and do this interview.
Dave Crider: No problem, thanks for helping to spread the word about the Dt's!
Diana Young-Blanchard: No problemo.
UD: Secondly, I'd like to congratulate you on the release of the Dt's awesome debut slab Hard Fixed. Though it has only been out a short while, how has the response been, so far?
DC: Glad you dig it. The reaction so far has been positive and folks seem to be digging it, which is cool.
DY-B: Good, so far. A little more response would be nice, but its only been out for a couple of weeks.
UD: Can you tell us a little bit about how the band came together? How did you get from Watts and Madame X, respectively, to the Dt's?
DC: Diana and I had been wanting to get something musical together for quite some time but were both so busy with other projects that it just wasn't possible. Di moved up here to Bellingham right around the time things started to slow down for me with Watts, so the timing was right and we stuck the fires in the coals and got to it. We had been musing about fusing our joint love of Soul and Hard Rock for going on 10 years and so that was the focus when we started working on songs...not so much the actual textbook of sound as much as the energy and feel, if that makes any sense. No intention or pretensions to reinvent the wheel but more just to do something that made US feel good and inspire/push ourselves musically. Initially it was just Diana and I. Aaron Roeder set in on drums for awhile, but when he decided his plate was too full for another band, Phil dropped in on drums. Phil was orginally gonna play bass but the stool fit, so in he went...sounded so good as a 3-piece we never felt the need to add the bottom four. About a year ago Patti joined us for a few shows on hammond/keys and it just felt too good not to put into full rotation...
DY-B: Well, Dave and I have known each other for a long time. We've both been doing our own musical things throughout the years, obviously. But music was the thing that bonded us initially, in high school, and we share similar tastes, although we've obviously taken our musical expressions in different directions. We talked for a long time about melding a sound inspired by the type of stuff we both really dig: a lot of stuff with soul, or a groove, and then the harder rock stuff we listened to as kids.
UD: How did the songwriting process work for the Dt's on Hard Fixed? Was it always a totally collaborative effort?
DC: Overall, songwriting and arranging is a team effort with the Dt's...usually starts with a guitar tag and goes from there. Di writes the lyrics (except for Eyes To The Sun).
DY-B: Totally collaborative. I would usually want to get a cool guitar riff from Dave, something that moves and grooves me, and then I would get some kind of melody line and work out lyrics. That's the way it generally works. Phil gets a drum part based on the feel that we like, and Patti will come up with her part. We all try and work it out together. Sometimes, I get a whole thing in my head, but it's much harder to work out parts that way. Phil, our drummer, and Pat (keyboards) are actually much more adept at formal structure, notes and chords and shit--Dave and I seem to go more by feel.
UD: Dave, while I think your guitar style has remained very distinct through all the bands you've been in, the hard rock slant you've always brought to your music seems to have much more breathing room with the Dt's. Was there a conscious effort to accomodate that edge more, this time out?
DC: I'd say just by the nature of a good portion of the songs being worked out with only vocals, drums and guitars has given the guitar more space...it has meant approaching what/how I play different than in other bands I've been in, as I hear bass lines and horn parts that I try to throw in on top of the guitar shit I'm playing. I started doing some of this with Watts but have really been able to push myself a bit more with the Dt's...sorta outta neccesity, actually. I'm still pretty much a drunken ham fisted hack, but what the fuck--I'm having a good time.
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