FT: The new Album, ‘Dog Ear’, is another wonderful collection of songs, which I’m loving. ‘Dog Ear’ is a slightly curious title for such a rich collection of songs. Can you explain a bit about the title and its meaning, and were there any other contenders for the title?
Dave: I’m not sure if you guys in Ireland use the phrase, but it’s when you flip the corner of a page to keep your spot. Is that what you guys call it?
Dave: the song is about our kids, it’s from the vantage point of a parent, and he’s plucking these little images of the problems they’re going to face in their lives and thinking about how they’ll work through those issues. So, the song talks about many different things to your kids. You’re a shoreline, when the seas are stormy, you’re an open door, when things are tough, and they need to find a way out. When they’ve lost sight of who they are, you hope to be the ‘dog ear’ that can bring them back. It became something of a unifying theme for the album. All of these songs, in one way or another, kind of come back to us.
FT: Family?
Dave: Yeah, come back to family, come back to what kind of fathers we want to be, what kind of men we want to be in the world, and now that we got families, it’s all about who we can be for our kids.
FT: And the dog ear is marking those special places, special times. Were there any other ideas for titles for the album?
Joey: We did talk about ‘Evergreen’. ‘Wide awake and dreaming’ was another. It just felt like such a poignant moment on the album, and whenever we listened to the collection of songs, it felt like that held the sentiment of what we were trying to say, and we were okay with it being a little cryptic if that’s what it wound up being.
FT: “Vincent” is a real standout track on the album. Is there a real person behind the song, or is he more of a composite character?
Joey: Yeah, it’s a combination of a few characters, and Dave brought that one to the table with the idea. There have been a number of people who come in and out of our lives that the song is a tribute to.
Dave: Yeah, it represents a bunch of men in my life, friends. When we started out playing, both Joey and I were both alcoholics. We were young, in our twenties. We struggled with that a lot, and we were surrounded by people who were also living really hard. I think we count ourselves very lucky that we were able to sober up, and kind of get our arms around it, and start living a little better. But I looked out at some of the people I really loved, still love, and not everyone was so lucky, not everyone was able to make that graceful, well, it wasn’t that graceful, but make that exit early on, and it sure weathers you to live like that into your 30s and 40s and beyond.
So that song talks about how it feels like to watch somebody kind of grow up and break the cycle. In that song, I look at the people with a kind of bitter reverence, too, because they’re holding on to this flame, but also recognising you have let some of these people go, because you can’t ride different waves and still stay close. At some point, it is about self-destruction, and you just have to let yourself off that ride.
FT: Hearing Bonnie Raitt take on “Made Up Mind” must have been special. What was your first reaction to her version, and what does continuing to collaborate with her mean to you?
Joey: Oh wow, it was an insane feeling. A fun story, was we were playing the Briony Bay Blues festival, a wonderful festival in Australia, and Jackson Browne was one of the headliners, and he had come to see us play, and he heard our song ‘Made up mind’, and he came by to say hi after the show, which was really cool, and he said, “There was one song in your set, I could have sworn that was a Bonnie Raitt tune”. And I thought, oh wow, wouldn’t that be cool! But when we got the advance recording of it, within 5 seconds, it was very clear, it was no longer our song! It just sounded like this was always her song.
Dave: It felt like we had been covering her song!
Joey: Yeah, it just fit so well, and she did it her own way. We met Bonnie at our home town folk festival in 2014, and after our gig, she had come to see us play, and she said, “Send me some songs, I’m always looking for songs”. So I said all I have are the 11 songs of our first album, if any of them speak to you, just take it. The way Bonnie
tells it is that she heard the song and said, “I’m going to record that one day”. So yeah, it was just serendipity after serendipity.
FT: And now she is adding vocals to two songs on the album, which speaks volumes about the relationship?
Joey: Yeah, it has turned into a really nice little friendship. She was so gracious and so very generous.
FT: Dave, you mentioned both your struggles with alcohol and you’ve spoken openly about your experiences with mental health, which hasn’t always been easy territory for artists. I’ve struggled with issues of mental health myself, and it’s been enlightening to hear artists such as yourself and Springsteen talk so openly about your own issues. How important is it that artists talk about the subject matter, and open up the conversation?
Dave: I think that’s an individual choice. For me, it was helpful to talk about it a little bit. It helped me feel a little less shame around it. I remember the first time I said something about it on stage, I was really surprised by how many people came up to me afterwards and said hey, that really resonates with me. We had put the band down, indefinitely for a time, because I was in such rough shape. I was trying to get my marriage fixed and figure my own head out and work out where all this unhappiness was coming from. When we first got the band back on the road, it just started as me trying to explain to people where I had been. People seemed to want to hear this, and I felt it helped me, too. It became a part of the show.
We talk about different things, the show is always evolving, and we take on different subjects as to what’s relevant, and at that time, talking about it was also helping me understand it a little bit better too. It was like writing in a journal; it was healing, it was helpful. That sounds quite dramatic, but it was helping me organise my own thoughts. So I wouldn’t say that artists should feel compelled to do it, but for me, I genuinely found it helpful, and it really encouraged me to see other people in the room. It was like these are my brethren, people who have also gone through or are going through it. And it was a ‘hey, you’re not alone’ moment.
FT: So how was it for you watching your brother and your bandmate going through this?
Joey: It’s an incredibly human thing. I’m very proud of him for the work that he’s done. It was incredibly necessary, it was incredibly painful, but we are so much better now than if he had not taken the time. I would only add to that, it is a very individual thing, but I have felt compelled to talk about my own addictions. I might have wound up in a different position if I had heard my heroes talking about the things that they went through. I would encourage people to share their stories if they feel comfortable doing so, because, exactly as Dave said, the number of people who would come up and talk after the shows. And it was particularly moving to have men come up and say, ‘I’ve never talked about this to anyone, but now I’m going to’.
To know that we played a small part in that person’s journey toward healing. It did feel like a bit of a responsibility, not in a weighty way, but it did feel, this is important, because it might help somebody. I remember talking about Sobriety one night, and having someone come up and say I lost my daughter to an overdose, and I wish she had someone she could have heard talk about their addictions, so that she knew there was nothing to be ashamed of. So watching Dave go through what he did was really inspiring and also inspired me to invest in my own mental health too. So, it’s a very giving thing.
FT: For the normal gig goer, to know that the guy on stage, in the spotlight, has had the same struggles, that’s incredibly healing, so thank you for that.
FT: Can we talk about the sound of the band? Obviously, there are the influences of the blues, Little Feat and a bit of Bonnie, a west coast vibe, perhaps a touch of the Eagles. But it has evolved into your own unique sound. How has the sound evolved from your days as backing musicians to the present Bros Landreth sound?
Joey: I think our upbringing as working musicians, in terms of our trajectory, there was always a heavy emphasis on a blue-collar working musician. Our dad was a working musician. He’s a great singer/songwriter himself, but he made his living playing for other people and playing a little of his own music too. For us, too, and in that setting, you sharpen your tools and become quite versatile, for better or worse. The truth of the matter for me is I was never the greatest side guy, because I always wanted to kind of do my own thing a little bit. I often got called to do gigs, not necessarily because I was the best guitar player, but because I was the best guitar player who could also sing well. But I was not the greatest sideman. But I think what gave us an edge was the ability to absorb things. And something I’ve really enjoyed in the past 4 or 5 years is allowing myself to steep myself more in my influences.
As you develop your own artistry, you kind of think, ‘I need to develop my own thing’. But I had a realisation that if I try to sound more like my heroes when I play and sing, that’s actually where my sound comes from. It’s the ‘gumbo’ of all my favourite singers and guitar players meeting at the centre point, which is me. And jokingly, I like to say I’m just doing bad impressions of my favourite guitar players, and that’s my sound. I do my best to play like Ry Cooder or Bonnie or Lowell George, and I can’t hit those marks, but I hit a different one. Which is a good thing, because if you could hit those notes, then you would not have your own identity. And I think we do that pretty well in the band. Dave has people that he loves and admires, so he brings those people to the table, and Roman (Clarke, drummer and writer) has his own. My favourite way of thinking about it, is the sound of the Bros Landreth is all of our influences sitting at the same table having dinner, and they’re all welcome. There’s no point when I say to myself, ” Oh, don’t play that, it’ll seem derivative” or whatever. Whenever I have that feeling, I try to challenge myself and run in the other direction. Okay, I’m going to go really hard on that.
FT: It’s a rich feast you serve up for everyone! Thank you for taking the time to talk to me today.
Joey and Dave -Our pleasure and thank you for the thoughtful questions. Hopefully, see you again down the road!