Dresden Dolls Interview

After an hour or so tucked away in the hive of creativity that is the Roundhouse for the next two nights, Brian Viglione, one half of exquisite cabaret duo The Dresden Dolls emerges to answer R13's questions. A warning: After any amount of time in this band's presence, or even merely reading this interview, you're likely to feel injected with creative urges and ready to quit your 9 to 5 for any dream!

R13:You're here at the Roundhouse for two London dates, what was the idea behind returning to the capital?
Brian:When we heard about the offer to come and play here it was just impossible to turn down; they made us an offer we couldn't refuse. We have an incredible, incredible fan base here in London, so it was a nice way to wind up the last year - the last three years of touring with all these great performers and I think a really well executed event taking place.

R13:It's quite a unique venue, how are you finding it?
B:It's great, it's beautiful, the sound is a little bit difficult on stage because of the acoustics of the building but I think we're counting on the energy of the crowd to carry us through any technical setbacks.

R13:I hear you were giving out flyers for fans to distribute last night, did you get a good turnout?
B:Yeah, they're absolutely incredible [the fans], it was fantastic, it was at the Lock Tavern right down the street. It was great, we just met up with a lot of our old friends and a lot of our London folks and had a few drinks and cast out a few flyers, it was great, it was really wonderful.


R13:You've been over to the UK a few times to tour, have you got any favourite cities?
B:Let me think... well, what's the town right by the beach? Brighton, we played in Brighton on the last tour and had a really nice time there and, I don't know, sort of all over the place! London is the easiest one to say is our favourite place; this is where we have the most history with our fans; where we played out first UK show back in 2004 and you know, the place that sort of gave us our spirit, see when we played way back in Madame JoJos this little sort of backroom...yeah.

By now you may have picked up on Brian's effusive personality and one of the things which makes him most animated is reference to the band's astonishing fanbase, many of whom have been inspired by the band to the degree that they've become performers themselves...

R13:You've got some brilliant opening acts out there, are they friends you've met along the way?
B: Yeah all of them, Zen Zen Zo, the butoh troupe are folks we met down in Australia on the last trip, Jason Webley is a good friend of ours from the North-West of the States, Sxip Shirey who's performing tomorrow is a great performer from New York; all these different people we've met over the past few years and now find we have a place to bring them all together so it's wonderful. It's the best part of this band and the circle of people that we travel with is how we can bring out underground acts that we've been exposed to and now we can share with the wider public.

R13: Do you feel that you're quite inspirational to fans as well?
B:Yeah I mean I hope we're as inspirational as the bands that came before us and that inspired me and Amanda to come out and do this. We've definitely had a lot of kids come up and say thanks you've rekindled my interest in learning music again and getting a band together, or pursuing whatever particular art form, so we're really grateful for that. That was one of the major aspects that we wanted to, let's see, generate energy around was getting people to be pro-active and engaged.

R13:Talking about being pro-active and engaged you've often been quite apologetic about your country; we're coming up to Guy Fawkes night where we celebrate an attempt to blow up parliament of course, does the US need gunpowder and treason, or do you think there's a way to engage the kids out there?
B:Yeah, again I think the best way to engage the kids is to find ways to make them feel empowered because I think one of the biggest problems facing especially young generations is this feeling of, not even apathy, but powerlessness in the face of the past few years and the large scale demonstrations that have gone on and the brutal sort of militant squelching that has gone on against your freedom to assemble in the United States; the mockery that was the 2000 elections which George Bush robbed everyone of. And you know the Hurricane Katrina catastrophe where the American government basically ignored its own people and let thousands die and starve, you know, it's just like tragedy after tragedy and I think people are starting to feel this sense of, "why are we even trying?". So I think again to sum it to get people to realise that just in the general act of caring for one another first and being proactive on all levels; taking responsibility for your own shit and taking responsibility for the way that you engage with others, that can at least hopefully help us as a society to move forward or at least remain with some semblance of community and not just feel completely fragmented and forgotten.

R13:You obviously think music has a role in talking about politics; with songs like Mrs O and Half Jack which reference quite raw emotions or events, is there anything you think music shouldn't address?
B:No I think the great thing about it is that it's open for anything, it's a great tool for expression, it's a great tool for motivation and for getting people to think. It sort of moves you on a primal level and can stir you to thinks about issues that you wouldn't normally think about in the same way; it taps into a deeper emotional place that just reading a pamphlet or going to a rally or something like this, it gives your actions a soundtrack and that's the important thing I think.

R13:There's been a lot of press over here at the moment about bands under the "emo" umbrella being a bad influence by mentioning issues like self harm or depression, which the right wing tabloids have grasped as glamourising the issues, do you think that's at all true?
B:That gets tricky. I think personally younger audiences, it's definitely important for them to have a wide array of music to absorb because they are so impressionable, but I wouldn't go so far as to say that music is responsible. Just the same as the PRMC in the 1980's tried to crucify Ozzy Osbourne and all these other people for "distributing harmful matter to minors" and corruption of the youth through music and lyrics. In that I think art is definitely imitating life, it's a reflection of what people are feeling and if people are using music as an outlet I don't feel that they're just being manipulated as mindless nitwits; but then there's plenty of that that goes on too, so it's really a case by case scenario!

R13:So now we've covered the content, how does the songwriting process between you and Amanda actually work?
B:Amanda usually comes up with a pretty rough draft of the song and these days I think I get involved a little bit earlier on in the process; where in the past she would bring the fully finished song to me and I would put the drums to it and that was the end, now we work on the arrangements a lot more together, we try to come up with vocal harmonies, we try to come up with the theatrical bits and dynamic elements of the song that we can really draw and expand upon. One of the unique and interesting things about the band I think is that because it's lyric based we have a different focus than just trying to lay down a solid groove; it's really about expressing a specific sentiment, so it's a slightly different approach to orchestrating a song.

R13:Do you think of yourself as having a specific role within the band; I certainly wouldn't say you're just a drummer, would you define yourself as a performer?
B:Yeah my specific role in the band is to support the song and imbue it with as much life as I can from my own instrument and help give some structure to Amanda's voice and delivery and sort of help punctuate. We try to employ that mentality of conversing with each other on stage to be able to create in the moment and not feel too locked into a rigid structure and really be able to communicate.

R13:You both have a very strong persona, would you say that's more a mask you put on to shed your inhibitions or an extension of yourself?
B:It's really definitely an extension of the self, it's not a mask as much as it is a tool, a channel of that energy, it gives it a visual context whereas you don't necessarily lose anything is you get up there in your jeans and a tshirt, but it gives it that added embellishment. It draws upon the other senses, you've got the sound and what comes through the PA, so why not make the most of it visually as well and really give another world to people to go to.

R13:So do you think a lot of these scruffy indie bands could be a lot stronger if they put on more of a show?
B:Well not necessarily because it's not them, you don't want to just rely on it, you want to use it to the extent that it services the performance. For us, we don't do huge elaborate costumes and giant stage shows because it's not really what our band's about, we do just enough to draw out that element from within ourselves and then it ends there; by the end of our concerts we end up sweating and half naked and that's kind of what we use it for. If we were Alice Cooper and wanting to do a bigger show, we'd bring in a different direction; if we were Black Rebel Motorcycle Club it would be used for something else, every band's got their own visual devices and there's no right or wrong way, but I would definitely encourage any young band or musicians out there to stay open to what their intuition draws them to.

R13:But are you saying if you were playing Wembley Stadium you'd still be using the same devices, you wouldn't be increasing the scale?
B:That's a different question now, depending on the relative size of the venue, yeah. But what we feel the actual substance of the show relies on is very much about what happens between Amanda and myself; although the scale may get larger, we don't really feel that we need to outdo ourselves with each successive tour; it's really about making the most of the material that you've got.

R13:The band really is the bond between you and Amanda, let's say there's a scenario where Amanda's been kidnapped and you have to perform without her to ensure her return, is there anybody else you could do it with?
B: Screams a little Oh man, I really don't know. I would probably do some sort of interpretive dance to our records or something like that and just bring it into a whole different realm.

R13:Cover versions are a staple of your shows, have you got any new ones lined up for these shows?
B:Yeah we're doing a version of 'Mad World' tonight, it's really beautiful, we played that on the last Australian and US tour with Trash, the singer of The Red Paintings and we'll be doing that one tonight and a cover of 'Mein Herr' from Cabaret, which will be really fun.

R13:If you could choose another band to perform a cover of one of your songs, who would it be?
B:Ooh, that's a good question! LaughsI'd be sort of curious to hear maybe Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds do a cover of one of our songs, or something really far out, maybe like some kind of weird gypsy band, some kind of weird Romanian tribe of travelling musicians doing an adaptation for something different.

R13:Your vibe is so bohemian, but you've signed to a large label [Roadrunner], how do you reconcile that difference?
B:It hasn't been very difficult to reconcile because the label pretty much has left us alone to do what we want, almost sometimes more than we would have wanted! And it really has not been a huge struggle to retain our identity just because we've signed to a big label. We use their tools and stuff like that but the deal was that in signing with them we'd retain creative control and they've stuck by that, so it was a pretty fair deal all round I think.

R13:Is your aim as a band to get much bigger then, I don't see you as a band who are motivated by revenue, or playing the biggest venues possible, what are your goals
B:We definitely want to keep the band going at a level where we can grow and execute the kind of projects that we want to execute. You always find the balance between earning enough money and staying on the road long enough to do so and working with other people to help you get done what you want to get done, but no, we're not into chasing of success. Time has proven to us that we don't need to, that even if we did fall into that trap it would be an unnecessary step because everyone is helping us do this regardless of what we do on our own; the more we tour the more word spreads and the more gratification we get in playing to people all around the world.

R13:What are your immediate plans now that 'Yes,Virginia', which must have consumed a lot of your time, is finally out?
B:Yeah in a certain sense we toured on a lot of that material for about a year and a half and then went straight into the studio and recorded, 'Yes, Virginia' and since we've been out we've been on the road, haven't written a whole ton of new material but now the plan is to go back to home in Boston and we're going to be doing a play - a musical production called 'The Onion Cellar', sort of based on a Gunther Grass concept. Then we're taking about 6 months off completely from the band just to get away and do some other projects, wipe the slate clean and do something that we can pull some new inspiration from, probably do another US tour in June and then take another period of time off before we think about making another record.

R13:You said that you'll take time out but you've already mentioned other projects for that time; you seem like people who need to be constantly on the go and creating something, do you really ever spend any time relaxing?
B: Well it's kind of weird, for me want I'm excited to do in getting way from The Dresden Dolls is do a lot more learning and gain some experience that I haven't been able to gain in the context of the group and go out there and play with lots of other people and pursue these other goals that you're not always allowed to on a grinding tour schedule and for Amanda it's the same. So it can be nice to be home for about a week and see friends and catch up, but very soon after that the little voice inside goes, "Get to work, you know there's like ten things you want to get doing, so hurry up!" It's been great doing this, with some of the people that we've been in contact with you just want to get straight back to playing music.

R13:Do you ever get the time to sit down and read?
B:Yeah actually!
R13:What was the last book you read?
B:It's a book right now that I'm reading, it's written by an elementary school teacher from Massachusetts on this paradigm shift in the school system and the focus of classroom energy and how it needs to be less focussed on the standardised test and more on community learning and character building and really investing and taking pride in what they do in the classroom, as opposed to how well they do. It's important I started reading this as I wanted to start giving lectures and drum clinics and I wanted to investigate some of these different techniques they were talking about and see if I could apply them to my own classes when I start giving them. It's a really inspirational book just talking about how these kids as young as first grade, when given the proper tools and proper freedom, really flourish in such a way that you realise how held back most kids are by the rigid structure of the classroom. It's really about taking a deeper investment about what you do; when kids have come to me for drum lessons I always ask them "what do you want?" for me the death of musicianship is what the Berklee School of Music [Boston music college] offers, they hold this model of technical proficiency as the be all and end all of musical pursuit but it's completely devoid of any real heart and soul or any real pride in it and that's something that I hope to translate to kids that I work with.

R13:Do you think that it's a liberating process then?
B: Yeah absolutely, like developing another voice. It helps how you relate to yourself and to other people, it gives you something to lean on and makes you feel less alone. Arts and theatre programmes and sport programmes are all something kids use to help give them a sense of security and identity, but in the US they're being stripped away and I hope we can preserve them in the future.

R13:So what encouraged you to turn to music?
B:My father. My father wanted to be a drummer when he was younger and got really strongly discouraged from it by his mother who said, "You'll never make a living off some stupid dream, go get a real job!", and with me he said, "I never want to make me feel like that, this is something that you love and I want to share it with you because I'm your father". He encouraged me to really go for it, without that I don't think I'd have really had the courage to do it, you really need someone here to say you're worth doing this, believe in yourself enough to go for it. I was really fortunate as a young person because I was very single minded about what I wanted to do, from the age of about 11; I never really went through an identity crisis and I attribute that to the support I had from my parents in letting me develop and pursue what I wanted to pursue.

R13:You've given us plenty to muse over for now, so lastly we're currently compiling a list of our top albums of the year, what would yours be?
B:Hmmm...that's a good question! One of the ones that comes to mind for me was 'Begin To Hope' by Regina Spektor, I thought that was a really great record, I love her style and her songwriting and to me that was a really great balance between the more poppy stuff and now she's touring with a band, but still with all the same wit and catchiness that she's got.

R13:Well good luck with the show tonight and thank you very much for your time.
B:Thank you, enjoy the show!