Dr. Dog Interview

Tim Baker - Hello and thanks for taking time to talk to me today and where exactly are you at the moment?
Zach Miller - No problem and I am at my house in Philadelphia right now.
TB - So I heard you guys have been in the studio, when is the next album supposed to come out?
ZM - Well we have got an album, actually an EP that will come out in September or sometime in the early fall and the full length album will be released sometime next winter(January or February)
TB - Is the next album going too released on Park The Van Records?
ZM - Yeah
TB - Do you think the next album sounds for the most part like Toothbrush and Easybeat or does it have a different theme to it?
ZM - Yeah, the biggest difference is we have a twenty-four track machine to record on as opposed to an eight track which is what we used to record on before, so the album sounds pretty much the same, just more layered with more sounds. As far as fidelity, there isn't much of a change there.
TB - On a different subject, how did Dr. Dog come together?
ZM - Well, we all met in college but Toby and Scott have been playing together since they were in middle-school, and then the rest of us, in some capacity, all met through college. A few of us were classmates and then Justin our drummer was a friend of a guy we knew from college so it all came together about four or five years ago and then Frank joined the band last year.
TB - So is being a musician something you always wanted to do, I read that you studied jazz guitar somewhere.
ZM - Yeah, for about a minute I did. I went to University of Hartford and had the ultimate intention of doing composition but it just turned out to be to expensive, and that is when I ended up transferring to Westchester University in Pennsylvania and ended up meeting these guys which leads me to where I am right now.
TB - I know a lot bands have a lot of "drama" behind the scenes, do you all get along for the most part?
ZM - We are a very low drama band, we all get along real well, it would be a very boring, behind the scenes unauthorized video.
TB - That's good. I know you guys haven't been playing to many shows, but have you been playing any of the material off of the new album at any of those recent shows?
ZM - Yeah, that's one of the weird things about having these songs is that, I mean we have been playing some of these "new songs" for a year or more so to us they seem sort of like old songs now but you know we have to get use to the idea that we are going to be playing these songs for years to come, just out of obligation of people coming to the shows. I mean as cool as it is to have new material and stuff like that, when you go to a show and you don't know any of the songs, it kind of sucks in a way.
TB - Yeah, having that rough sound on new material is never good.
ZM - Yeah, but we have been playing four or five songs that will be on the new album, for a while now. Some of the songs are old songs which were never recorded properly, so they been around longer than the newer "new" ones.
TB - Yeah. So how did you all come up with the name Dr. Dog?
ZM - That was a story Toby had written, and I wasn't in the band at that point, so I wasn't really a part of that decision. So it was just like yeah, we need to call it something and it just sounded right.
TB - So what have been your biggest musical influences?
ZM - I listen to everything like classical, jazz, but speaking for the band, it's just kind of the ideal of good songs and arrangements that serve the songs, rather than the other way around, just try and put out a solid song that can stand on it's own as a composition without all the guitar solos and all that sort of stuff. There is a lot of music out now that is all atmosphere and no substance.
TB - The general idea of a big record label.
ZM - Exactly.
TB - So Dr. Dog did a special KEXP radio session in New York?
ZM - Yeah, that was really great.
TB - So you just went to the studio and played some songs?
ZM - Yeah we went to, I think it was called Gigantic Studio's in New York City and they had a full electric setup there, where as normally you have to scale down your performance for the radio, we just went in played like we do live, which is really nice. Because normally we just go in with an acoustic guitar, an electric guitar and a small amp and play certain songs which we worked out to do radio shows, because it always sounds weird to do a full band and it's a big hassle to set everything up for only two or three songs, so this was nice because they had a full setup and it was comfortable and sounded great which is a real rarity when your playing live on the radio.
TB - KEXP is always good.
ZM-Yeah, that's what everyone has been saying.
TB - So who writes most of the songs, is it one person, or is it more of a group thing?
ZM - Well Toby and Scott write all the songs and then sometimes they'll have just the song, or just and idea of how they want the arrangement to sound, but we all sort of contribute are own little parts and ideas into the songs but at the basic level it's just Toby and Scott. That's always been the fundamental idea with Dr. Dog, is Toby and Scott's songs.
TB - So I know Easybeat was your first studio album, did you play on Easybeat and Psychedelic Swamp?
ZM - I wasn't on Psychedelic Swamp at all because that was before I was in the band, that was just Toby, Scott and Doug who was our first guitar player and a founding father of Dr. Dog and that was just them. I appear on one track on Toothbrush where I played bass on "Mystery to me". Toothbrush was just kind of like a lot of different songs various era's so it wasn't like, it's just a compilation, it was never thought about as being an album. It was just something we could give to our friends and we ended up taking it on the road because we didn't have anything else.
TB - So have you had a pretty hectic schedule between the shows and the studio?
ZM - Actually, we are on a bit of a break now, although we do have these shows coming up but after that we don't have anything for a while, until the end of August, and then the madness starts again (laughs) so it's a relatively relaxed period for Dr. Dog right now, although we have been kind of stress out with finishing the album and that kind kind of stuff.
TB - That's good you got a little break. So I saw you opened a couple of shows for the Strokes, what was that like?
ZM - That was pretty cool, they are a really great band and seeing them reminded me of how much I loved that band. But it was just weird, playing a show of that size because they are just on a completely different level than we are. Even when we opened for My Morning Jacket there was sort of a relatable comparison, but with The Strokes, I mean they're rock stars, on MTV and they're celebrities, so it's just a totally different relationship.
TB - So did you talk to them any before or after the show?
ZM - We did get a chance to meet a couple of them and they were really nice but it was a lot different than one of our normal shows.
TB - Were The Strokes fans pretty accepting?
ZM - Yeah, I think so, it was hard to tell with the nervousness of playing a show that big, I mean that was the biggest audience we have ever played to, but I think it went pretty well, we got some nice fan mail from people who saw us.
TB - Personally, what is your favorite aspect of being a musician?
ZM - I guess, the fact that you get to go a lot of places, see a lot of things and meet a lot of people. I like the traveling most because I have been places in parts of the world that I probably would have never seen normally. So, it's nice to see that stuff but it does start to wear on you after a while. It's nice to come home and just compose yourself for a little while.
TB - I can only imagine.So you have been a musician for quite a while now, what is the best advice you would give to young aspiring musicians?
ZM - I'd say, we have had a lot of situations where we could have compromised what we wanted to do but we never gave in to that and we always stayed true to our vision and true to our idea of how things should be with the band. Also, just stick to what you believe and just be yourself. Maybe we're just fortunate but it has always worked out for us, like there was some initial reluctance about starting on Park The Van but in the end it was what we wanted to do, we wanted Chris to put the album out because he was a good friend of ours and now it's all working out great and there have been a number of other different scenarios where we could have compromised like part of our sound or part of our philosophy about playing shows and stuff but we stuck to our guns and if people like the music, it will work out in the end, and it has for us. We might just be lucky but I like to think it's because we stuck to what we believed in.
TB - I know that you guys have been getting a lot of attention with KEXP, MTV Subterranean, and the shows with The Strokes, do predict any sort of label change anywhere in the future?
ZM - No, were probably definitely going to stay with Park The Van. There was a lot problems the first year we were on due to some affiliations Park The Van had but it is a completely different scene now with the label and it's a lot better and everything works a lot better now.
TB - Well once again thanks a lot for taking the time to talk to me and I can only see bigger and better things for Dr. Dog in the future.
ZM - Yeah sure, no problem and I think we'll be down there(southeast) in a couple of weeks for a couple shows.
TB - Yeah you are playing two shows in Georgia and one is at the Drunken Unicorn and I don't know the other one but hopefully I can make it to at least one of those shows.