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Santa Dog
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Article
written by Ged M
Jun 21, 2007.
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Bristol’s Santa Dog are Rowena Dugdale (vocals, guitar), Rob Williams (lead guitar), Martin Maidment (drums) and Rob Ash (bass). After self-releasing 3 EPs, ‘Delicate’, ‘Chemical’ and ‘Belle De Jour’, their debut album ‘Kittyhawk’ has just been released by Quince Records of Japan, while SoundsExperience (us!) have released the 7” vinyl single and download of ‘Big Bang’/ ‘Are You Hot Enough’. The band have been gaining attention from further afield, having showcased at Canada Music Week in Toronto, played Fleche D'or in Paris, been featured on NPR America's coveted All Songs Considered OpenMic, playlisted on selected college radio, invited to play US tour dates, and selected for an exciting new Japanese label compilation. They’ve also gigged widely, playing to the monkeys at Bristol Zoo and the primates at the Windmill among other places. Musically, they touch on Throwing Muses and the Smiths but at heart it’s classic British pop, rich in melody and smart of lyric. Next up, they play the Kilburn Luminiere on 30 June and the Indie Tracks Festival in Derbyshire at the end of July. We caught up with the band in May 2007 in Brixton.
SXP: How did you form Santa Dog?
Rowena: It came about a couple of years ago with me and Rob [W]. We had a different rhythm section then. It just solidified last summer when Rob [A] joined.
SXP: Is your name a reference to The Residents?
Rob W: Yes. It’s a bizarre thing. We were trying to come up with a name and Row came up with ‘Polar Dog’ – which I thought was absolutely rubbish! I don’t know why but ‘Santa Dog’ came into my mind and I just thought the idea of having a really subversive, obscure kind of satanic reference in there just seemed really cool!
Rowena: All these Residents fans in the States found out about it and then listened to us and got really irate: “But you play pop. This is irreverent”!
Rob W: A blog appeared on the Residents website on Monday morning and all these Americans started emailing: “you can’t do this, this is sacrilegious”. And then the next day it was: “we listened to your stuff. Actually it’s pretty cool. It’s not really like the Residents but we like it”!
SXP: When describing you, all reviewers mention bands fronted by women: Blondie, The Pretenders, Rilo Kiley, The Sundays, Sleeper, Isobel Campbell, Belly and Echobelly. It seems like people have a narrow frame of reference when it comes to Santa Dog. Does that irritate you?
Martin: At the risk of stating the bleedin’ obvious, I think it’s quite good when you can throw people a reference about what you’re about. We do have guitars and we have a girl singer. So that puts us in the same ballpark, certainly at that level.
Rowena: The stuff we listen to isn’t really the Echobelly or Sleeper genre. I suppose it’s rooted in the Beatles and the Smiths and all that stuff.
Martin: The simple fact is we’re just about songs really. And that’s the hairiest cliché on the planet!
Rob A: [adopts Spinal Tap voice] “we do it for ourselves and if anyone else likes it, it’s a bonus!” [cue spat-out-lager-laughter]
SXP: You’ve been credited with making “thinking person’s pop”. Do you consciously write songs that are antidotes to the laddish pop that seems to be all over indie music at present?
Rowena: When you sit down and write a song there isn’t an intent in mind. It’s just what comes out really, which sounds really crap…
Martin: It’s entirely different from being inspired or motivated by hearing other bands. I don’t think [our songs] are a reaction to anything. At the risk of hijacking the conversation, I’ve been in loads of bands and doing this for quite a long time and this is the most complete band I’ve ever been in. Part of that is the way that we get on, and part of that is about the way we understand each other musically. At the risk of trotting out boring old clichés, we aren’t trying to be trendy or anything, we’re just being us.
Rowena: We’re so not cool. That’s the thing in Bristol, it took a little time because people were: they’re too old or they’re too this and you’re not doing that and where do you fit. We don’t really care. We’re just doing it because we have fun. It’s about the songs.
Martin: It’s amazing doing gigs where, even if you might have had a long day at work and you do the soundcheck knackered, you get up on stage and say: yeah, man, I really like what we do, have some of that! That’s fabulous!
Rob A: Hang on, you’re shattering the illusion! We don’t work. [laughter] We just sit around all day doing copious amounts of drugs!
Rowena: …and snorting coke off young nymphs’ thighs...
SXP: I read that you’ve been serenading the monkeys at Bristol Zoo.
Rowena: [to Rob A] That was your first gig wasn’t it?
Rob A: Yeah. I’m a fan of monkeys!
Rob W: They’re fans of ours! Big time.
Rowena: The electric fence went down in the morning and they’re cheeky little things and jumped over the fence. They had to be tranquilised so by the evening the monkeys were – [mimics mongy monkey face] - all ketamined up!
SXP: You weren’t just playing to monkeys were you?
Martin: It was the opening of the new Bristol monkey house and they ran a gig in the zoo. Believe me, there’s nothing cooler than wandering round a zoo looking at the animals with a pint and a fag!
SXP: One of the big thrills of collecting your new single from the warehouse was opening the boxes and seeing the design in its physical form – which is fabulous. It’s sort of in the style of Vaughn Oliver. Did you do all the design?
Rowena: Yes, that’s my job, I’m an illustrator. It’s not influenced by Vaughn Oliver, it’s just that’s my style – I do collage and photomontage illustration. Handy for making flyers and posters and things!
SXP: Hopefully people will be impressed by the quality of the cover and buy the record.
Rowena: It’s the whole book and cover thing – because I do book covers as well – and I think they have whole design departments who try and seduce you into buying the book separately from what the content is; not that we’re form over content!
Rob W: But you captured the vibe of the record really well in the design.
SXP: So that design reflects the music?
Rob W: Yes - it’s exciting, it’s cool.
Rowena: You weren’t saying that at 4 o’clock in the morning when I was in tears: “do it again it’s wrong”!
SXP: You have an album coming out, firstly in Japan…
Rowena: Apparently it’s meant to be worldwide but I don’t know how many licences they’ve got yet. It’s coming out in Japan and we hope to go over. That’d be ace.
SXP: Are the Japanese particularly interested in Santa Dog and your type of music?
Rowena: I think it’s one of those lucky things. He found us on myspace and emailed us. We sent some stuff to him and he said “I can hear Prefab Sprout”!
Rob W: That’s how we met Martin actually. We were talking over musical influences. They’re not considered very cool in Bristol anyway, or probably anywhere, but we have a love of Prefab Sprout.
Martin: I’ve got a very old friend who’s a jazz musician and he doesn’t really like rock music at all. So I played him a bit of our stuff and the first thing he said was “Prefab Sprout”, which was quite weird because if you took an average punter and put a Santa Dog record on and said “name me a British band that this puts you in mind of” it wouldn’t be Prefab Sprout.
Rowena: If there are any songwriters that I really admire, they’re Paddy McAloon and Elvis Costello and that kind of delicate songwriting.
SXP: I remember those first Prefab Sprout singles and there was something about them: articulate, intelligent pop music.
Martin: ‘Lions in My Own Garden Exit Somewhere’! I love Swoon to bits, in fact it’s my favourite Prefab Sprout album.
Rowena: Steve McQueen for me I think.
Martin: I really love, love, love Steve McQueen but if I go back to one it’s Swoon. The lyrics are just amazing. I love his guitar playing, the crazy bastard.
SXP: Will Kittyhawk contain any of the songs from the EPs?
Rowena: Yeah, but all redone. Because Rob [A] wasn’t on board so it’s all us now. Five of the songs are from the previous EPs.
Rob A: They sound completely different now.
Rowena: Yeah, absolutely, you’ve injected a pop element that wasn’t there before! No it’s great because you got it instantly and it all clicked.
Martin: We love our album, we really do. It’s really good! Sorry, I’m the bighead!
SXP: What’s next for Santa Dog now the album’s coming out? More foreign travel?
Rowena: We hope to go back to Canada. We’re going to Austria in June. Go to Japan at the end of the year or beginning of next year. That’s the plan.
Rob W: Japan’s the big dream at the moment.
Rob A: It’s a cliché: big in Japan! But we deal in clichés! *laughter all round*
Rowena: Cliché-ridden pop monkeys. That’s what we are.
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