The Workings of a Band

Interview with keyboardist Dennis Drew.

15 Minutes: Who are your major influences?

Drew: Well, we're a pretty diverse group. All of us really have different favorites, which is one of the neat things about the band. One of the things that brought us all together was...certainly we came out of the funk movement in the late seventies. We were inspired by the rebellion of the Clash and the Sex Pistols. We used to do a lot of Gang of Four songs and a lot of Joy Division songs. We also did a lot of reggae music. We like the social protest of Bob Marley and the Gladiators and the Mighty Diamonds. We just did the Harder They Come the other night at Duke University. So we were brought together and were inspired by that music. Individually we're all quite different. Natalie is a big fan of a lot of female artists--Nina Simone and classical music too. She knows a lot more about classical music than I do.

15 Minutes: How does the band's writing process usually work?

Drew: We did this record different than we ever did before. All the music comes first as usual. If I write the music I bring that in, the band learns it and Natalie puts lyrics to it. I never go over to Natalie's house and we don't sit around and write songs together. So usually that's the way it used to work, but this time we tried to make it more of a workshop effort. We got together and we tried to break out of the mold, so we really spent a lot of time rehearsing in our rehearsal place, just playing in different keys, different time signatures, trying to make some goofy sounds and playing with some sample drums and just trying to break down the barriers that we probably had.

15 Minutes: Do you think it works well?

Drew: I think it worked great. On this record we have three songs which are credited to the whole band and they really came out of that jamming workshop that we had. Even the ones that were individually credited were really inspired by the process of learning about writing songs and that workshop that we put ourselves in. So that's how the process worked this time. We literally sat in a room quite often and made noise until something sounded good. Otherwise the individual writer is inspired by our rehearsals and they come up with something and bring it in and we learn it and Natalie puts lyrics to it at the end.

15 Minutes: Is this new album Our Time in Eden your favorite?

Drew: Absolutely. I think it's the best we've ever sounded. I mean I like all our stuff, I just think, like all artists, the last thing you did is your favorite. Maybe when I get some perspective on it and my career is over, I can look at them all as a body of work. I think that production-wise it's by far our best record.

15 Minutes: What step has the band taken with Our Time in Eden?

Drew: Well, I think it's a more mature record in every sense. I think that soundwise we're finally starting to get what I consider a really good sound and a good mix. I think it's deeper and wider. I think we're filling up more of the sound spectrum this time. I think our other records were a little narrow sounding. So I'm really proud of that, getting a bigger sounding record. We worked on analogue for the first time in about eight years so that was great. It did make much warmer record. I think you can see us taking more control over what we do and I think that as a result of playing the music is more relaxed. I think we were a real folkfock band in the Wishing Chair days, but I think we're getting farther and farther away from folk-rock. So I see us moving in that direction.

15 Minutes: Where do you think your music will be in five or ten years?

Drew: I really don't think that far ahead about it. We've never had a committment to do another record. After every one of our records we were never clear that we were going to do another one. We just kind of decided to do this one at the last minute. We really have resisted to make long-term plans. I don't see us breaking into the stadium circuit and I don't see us sinking back into playing bars in Cambridge.