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Last Updated:
Mar 19th, 2008 - 07:43:02 |
Hedge Clippers & The New Dylan:
Dutch Pink
Any time someone writes or talks about Detroit trio Dutch Pink, a Tom
Waits comparison always gets made. But singer/guitarist Dustin Leslie
isn’t complaining.
“It’s not like they’re comparing us to somebody who’s not good,” he
says. “[Waits] is a great songwriter — he writes songs, he writes great
music — and he’s creative and he doesn’t do the same thing; he’s hard
to pin down. So, maybe, to give us that label is like the ultimate
compliment, like, ‘OK, the only person we can compare you with — you
have a gruff voice and we don’t really know what you’re going to do
next — so, you guys are like Tom Waits.’ Shit!”
“That’s like being, ‘the new Dylan,’” bassist Clyde interjects. “You
can’t really be like, ‘I’m not the new Dylan! That’s a horrible thing
to say! I can’t believe you’d say that to me!’ It’s like, ‘Thank you
very much.’”
“Exactly,” Leslie affirms. “If you hear that and you think that, then
that is fantastic. We’re obviously fans of his.” But there’s more to
Dutch Pink than simple Waits aping. Sure, Leslie does a gravelly thing
with his voice and the songs have that bizarre, Coney Island of the
Mind mixed with whiskey feel, but the Dutch Pink boys are trying to do
something new, too.
They recorded their new, debut full-length album, Idols & Infidels,
with Tony Hamera at Tempermill Studios and spent a good deal of their
studio time NOT playing their instruments — at least not traditional
instruments. The openness to experimentation is a large part of the
reason they chose Tempermill. “[Hamera] allows us to do the kinds of
things we want to do,” Leslie says. “If we want to play chairs, then we
play chairs. He opened up his utility closet for us. ... He’s got
Martin guitars and all these great amps and he’s like, ‘You guys went
straight for the utility closet!’”
“He started bringing stuff out for us,” Clyde recalls, “like, ‘This is gonna make a great noise!’”
“He got us hedge clippers and a serving tray and we’d bang on it,”
Leslie continues. “We’d play the piano bench instead of the piano,
those sorts of things.”
Dutch Pink weren’t always this experimental. They began three years ago
under the moniker With Against in a progression that took them from, as
Leslie puts it, “shitty to garage rock to, like, well, we actually can
write songs now.” They changed their name around the time the new sound
(and Leslie’s new vocal approach) started to solidify about two years
ago.
It was an organic shift. “The music started evolving,” Leslie explains.
“Our drummer, Dave Iannuzzi, he’s a guitar player — he wasn’t a
drummer. He played drums because we had two guitar players and a bass
player and we wanted to be in a band.” Leslie attributes a good deal of
the band’s harmonious inner workings to Iannuzzi‘s six-string
background, since the now-sticksman acts as the group’s primary
arranger. “We have a pretty good way that we go about doing
everything,” he says. “I write, say, 99 percent of the lyrics; Dave
arranges a lot of the songs as they’re written — I come with the chord
changes, progressions — and Clyde lays down the soul of it, like, gives
it life. …
“It works well that way, it’s really good for us,” he continues. “And I
think that breaking that up in any way would be fucked up. We at one
time thought about adding another guitar player and ... maybe a piano
player, but instead we bought our own organ and I taught myself how to
play it, that sort of thing.”
Dutch Pink’s summer project will involve recording famous writers’
sonnets as full-on songs. “We’re doing it to experiment with a lot of
new stuff that might end up on a full-length later,” Clyde says.
Does that mean the studio’s utility closet will see some action again? “Oh,” Leslie says, “absolutely.” | RDW
Dutch Pink CD release party • May 4 • Magic Bag
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