Dredg - A heavy epic

Forget the image of the tormented rockstar, as visionary and brilliant as he is aloof off stage: Gavin Hayes, leader of California's Dredg, fits that stereotype so beloved by music journalism very little, except perhaps for the talent part. He greets me relaxed and remarkably kind before taking the stage at Milan's Zoe Club, for a chat about the long tour that has kept him and his bandmates away from their native San Francisco for months. A few months after the release of their fourth studio album, "The Pariah, The Parrot, The Delusion", the quartet made up of Hayes (vocals and guitar), Mark Engles (guitar), Drew Roulette (bass and keyboards) and Dino Campanella (drums and keyboards) present a rich repertoire that defies easy definitions - though loosely filed under "alternative" - to an audience made up mostly of devoted fans, plus a few casual listeners. Throughout the evolution of their sound, from their early hardcore days to the balance between power and melody achieved on their latest records, the only constants have been originality and the evocative power of the songs, dominated by Hayes's melancholic voice.

You're back in Italy for the fourth time. Isn't it strange to play for such an intimate crowd, after spending the whole summer on big festival stages, right before heading to Germany, where you certainly have a much bigger following?

Not really, every night is different from the last, and for us it's normal to go from playing for a few hundred people to much bigger venues. It happens not just in Europe, but in the States too. Of course, in Germany, Austria and Switzerland our album is distributed by Universal, so it's obvious those are the countries where we play the most and where we're best known.

And yet, even though "The Pariah, The Parrot, The Delusion" isn't distributed in Italian stores, you have a solid following here too. Is that thanks to the internet?

The internet is definitely an incredible phenomenon, one that has by now globalized even the promotional side of releasing an album. And then there's word of mouth…

Speaking of your album, the relationship between religion and the individual seems to be a recurring theme, and you've said you were inspired by Salman Rushdie's essay "Letter to the Six Billionth World Citizen". Would you call it a concept album?

Actually, we've always tried to avoid that label, even though religion is clearly a recurring theme. In whatever you write there's always a connection, a common thread, but that's simply because of what's happening around you at that moment. It's the times you're living through that inspire what you write, without it necessarily fitting into some overarching scheme.

I hear you even collaborated with Rushdie for an evening of literature and music in New York in early October. How did you get in touch with him?

A friend of ours runs a book club that, besides promoting book exchanges, also works as a charity helping the homeless and people who are HIV-positive. She got in touch with Rushdie, and he agreed to work with us, partly because it was all about raising money for charity. It was a special night for us.

So we could say that now he’s a fan of yours…

Someone must have told him that our album was inspired by one of his writings and, as far as I know, he actually bought it [laughs, ed.]! That’s how he got to know our music.

There’s a song on the album, “Ireland”, that’s about being open to the world, about accepting living far from the place where you were born. Why did you choose Ireland for the title?

To tell you the truth, “Ireland” was originally just a working title, a placeholder. Usually when we write, we think of colors to describe the songs, the feelings that come from a certain sound, and Ireland makes you think of green. And besides, my adoptive family is originally from Cork, and I grew up surrounded by a lot of Irish families.

Speaking of places, do you feel influenced by any kind of music scene tied to your city, San Francisco?

Obviously, ever since high school, we grew up surrounded by bands and demo tapes circulating around. Some of those bands made it, others never really went anywhere, but they all played a part in our artistic growth.

What can you tell me about the songs recorded after “Catch Without Arms” that didn’t end up on “The Pariah, The Parrot, The Delusion”? Some came out as demos or were played live – will they ever be released?

Some of them might end up on a different version of the album, as bonus tracks, but we haven’t decided yet.

Are you already working on new material?

Honestly, we’re not the kind of band that can write while on tour, going around day and night on a bus! I mean, it’s not the ideal situation for sitting down and writing. During soundchecks, though, we try to carve out some space and use it to be as creative as possible. Usually, then, we each work individually on a computer on some idea, and by the time we get together to write, we already have, so to speak, a spark of creativity to build on.

Your sound has evolved a great deal since your first album, “Leitmotif”. Maybe it’s no coincidence that Dredg’s symbol is a Chinese ideogram meaning “change”…

Exactly. It’s a word that definitely symbolizes what we are as musicians, since we’ve been playing together since we were kids, since high school. The symbol appears on the covers of all our records and, if you’ve noticed, graphically it’s different for each album.

Besides being musicians, you and your bassist Drew are also painters. Is it true that during some American shows you gave away some of his paintings?

Yes, we ran a raffle with some small paintings by Drew as prizes. But the work that went into it… A nice idea, but a really demanding one to pull off.

But you also did something even stranger: painting a girl completely white during a concert…

It happened in London several years ago! We were opening for Alien Ant Farm, and I remember the whole crowd hated us [laughs, ed.]! Most of them were teenagers who were only there to see the headliners, and they screamed all kinds of things at us. In the end, though, it was fun, or at least unforgettable... And who knows, maybe by now those kids have grown into young adults who actually like Dredg.

Out of curiosity: how did you decide to use a Speak&Spell to add effects to one of your songs, “R.U.O.K.”? In Italy it was called Grillo Parlante and it was a very popular toy in the Eighties...

A friend of our guitar tech is a toy and model collector, and he gave it to us as a gift, and somehow we ended up using it.

At one point in the song you can hear the letters of “R.U.O.K.” being spelled out, which sounds like “Are you ok?” Why that particular phrase?

Well, it was simply the only phrase that could be spelled out and actually make sense [laughs, ed.]!

What can you tell me about the Leaflet Videos project, the series of clips you released in installments on your website and on YouTube in the months leading up to the album's release?

We got a ton of positive feedback on the videos. For us it was a way to show how the recording of the album was progressing, an album that came out several years after the previous one. And it's always interesting to watch a band at work in the studio. We'll probably do it again in the future.

Speaking of the future, is it too early to ask what's on the horizon?

After the tour we'll definitely take a short break, and then we'll get to work on new songs. What I do know is that we don't want another five years to go by before we put out another album.

I'd say “The Pariah, The Parrot, The Delusion” was worth the wait, though...

Let's just say we managed to achieve exactly what we set out to do. Last night I listened to it again for the first time in ages, since we finished recording it. With some distance you see things from a different perspective, but I can say I'm still happy with how it turned out.

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