By Murphy McFadden
Shame, Shame, the sixth album by Philly’s own Dr. Dog, signifies a time of fresh and exciting change for the group that’s been repping our city for the last decade. New label, band members, and technical tricks in the bag paired with the same light-hearted attitude towards life make for an excellent album you can not only shake your booty and groove to, but also one in which you can strangely root or sense a bit of yourself. Scott McMicken, lead guitarist and vocalist, spoke about the love of his life and the awesome place the band finds themselves in right now. Check it out.
Origivation: Tours can be an emotional struggle for musicians at times just because they’re weary from being on the road; they’re missing friends, family, home. What are your sentiments about this upcoming tour in comparison to past tours?
S: It’s a natural part of things but it doesn’t really detract from the other side of chord, which is the excitement about going out. Those things just sort of exist side by side. You take the good with the bad. And the bad on a day-to-day basis as far as just leaving home and giving up a lot of those comforts, it’s not that nagging or plaguing of a thing. And I don’t think the band has ever been happier as far as what it is we do. Externally and internally the band is doing real well, better than we’ve ever done. And that’s real cool. And right now things are so awesome and everybody’s so psyched. We’re working hard, recording a lot, and enjoying our new members, new songs, and new direction in general. I think we’re just kind of finding ourselves. You know it takes a long time to really find yourself as a band and I’m thankful we’ve been able to do what we do as long because it’s a slow build when you’re trying to do things with 6 heads.
OV: It’s great to hear that there’s so much positive energy to all these changes. How has the recording process been going with all the changes?
S: It’s been going great. We recorded six songs in the last two or three weeks. We’ve done them faster than we’ve ever done. I feel like all of our philosophies and skills in the studio are really getting toned in by the ease in which we all work together. Everybody’s just working real well and laughing our way through it.
OV: You guys took a different approach to recording Shame, Shame and I’m sure that required you to relinquish the reigns a bit. Was it difficult to let someone else steer or did you have a collaborative mindset with producer Rob Schnapf from the beginning?
S: Well, both. We went into it with a lot of optimism and a lot of confidence that it was the right thing for us to do at this point in time, and therefore, we were really excited about it. It was difficult because it didn’t immediately look like something that was working great. It wasn’t as freeing as we thought. But, it didn’t discourage on any grand scale, and it was easy to remedy. We certainly walked away from it having learned a lot. In the bigger sense, here we are now: we put out a record that we love and people seem to be liking it, and it helped us down a different course. We hoped that we’d just get blasted down a different course – just explode, but it didn’t work like that, it was really just a few steps. It was definitely challenging, but you can’t really balk in the face of challenges. You don’t really get anywhere if you’re afraid to sweat or work hard through something because it’s not candy coated from the beginning.
OV: n the past you spoke about not being a prisoner to technology, yet this album was recorded digitally. Do you think this new process posed more distractions or just opportunities?
S: Technology is just a bunch of plastic. It’s not telling you to do anything; it’s not forcing anything upon you. It’s ultimately up to you what it all means. We’ve just been getting a lot better at realizing it’s what you make of it. I guess you could say it’s about setting up your own parameters. And parameters for us as a band have been our strength. We work best when stripped of external choices. When it’s just down to the base level facilities.
OV: Can you give an example to what you mean?
S: When we were in Arizona, we went into the studio and there was this big hunker speaker made by Peavey, this company that has this reputation of being really shitty. And whenever that’s the case those are the things that we really embrace. So we set this thing up and we decided no matter what, everything we recorded, every single thing, was going to go through this thing before it hit the tape machine and when it you commit to that you have this set of parameters. You can’t judge it as anything than what it is. What happens when you exclude a lot of those external options is you open up a lot of internal options. The more you define the technologic context the more you’re opening up this whole other program inside your brain which is the real stuff – the stuff that comes out of the speakers no matter how successfully or unsuccessfully it’s captured by a microphone.
OV: Music is awesome because everyone has their own relationship with it, and it means something different for everyone. How would you describe your relationship with your own music?
S: Oh, it’s a confusing one. It’s certainly the love of my life and it’s certainly a therapeutic thing. It adds to your identity and character and builds your understanding of self. Like a relationship is an art form, your lifestyle’s an art from, your fashion’s an art form, the look in your eye is an art form, your posture is an art form. It’s all motivated by an attempt to express yourself. The great thing about it is you get this reward or token or a trophy of a particular experience, and you get to revisit it and you get to share it of course. You can hopefully infuse it with joy, no matter how bittersweet or dark it may be. There’s a celebration in music no matter how un-celebratory the nature of the song may be.
OV: You often reference the band as being this close-knit family. If it were a real family who would take on each role?
S: That’s good. I’ll look at it in a playful way. I think Toby [Leaman – bassist and vocals] would be the dad, I would be the mom, Frank [McElroy; rhythm guitar] would be the oldest boy, Zach [Miller; keyboard] would be the grandfather. Eric [Slick; drums] is the boy genius child – the one that lives with so much power that needs to be nurtured – he’s the middle child, the special boy. Dimitri [Manos – percussion] would be the weird, old favorite uncle that takes you out and spoils you.
OV: If the six of you had to be a group of anything other than a band what would it be?
S: That’s cool… Maybe we would be criminals, like a gang of that was vigilante style and we would be enacting these venges upon the world around us, not negatively or in a criminal way, breaking some rules making some shit happen, and everyone would be individually providing their particular kind of strength to that pursuit. So I guess an old-school gang.
