INTERVIEW: Dollyrots are having a ‘Daydream Explosion’
Photo: The Dollyrots consist of Luis Cabezas and Kelly Ogden. Their new album is called Daydream Explosion. Photo courtesy of the band / Provided by Earshot Media with permission.
The Dollyrots, one of the most successful punk rock bands in recent years, are gearing up for a summer filled with nationwide gigging and the release of their latest album, Daydream Explosion. The punk-pop duo of Kelly Ogden (bassist/vocalist) and Luis Cabezas (guitarist) will team up with the Pink Spiders for a series of dates in July and August, and fans should expect some tunes off the new album, which hits July 12 from Wicked Cool Records/The Orchard.
“We’re kind of on this cycle of every two years releasing something,” Cabezas said in a recent phone interview. “We’ve done it ourselves the last few times, so we’ve kind of dictated, like, all right, let’s go on tour, let’s do this, let’s do that, without a label, just completely DIY. So we’ve just kind of gone with our gut. So you put out a record, you tour behind it, and you go around the U.S. or Europe or whatever, and then you naturally come to a point where you’re like time to move on. You get an itch to start writing new stuff, and so there isn’t really a grand plan. We’ve just gotten to that place where the new songs start to feel like old songs. And you sit down, and before you know it, you’ve got an acoustic guitar on your lap, and you’re writing the next project.”
The new album has a few songs that have already been released to the public, including “I Know How to Party,” “Everything” and “In Your Face.” Although they pride themselves on their DIY business model, this time around they actually hooked up with Stevie Van Zandt’s Wicked Cool Records/The Orchard.
“We sent him the rough mixes for this record, when the mixing process started, and that was because he has out of the blue picked songs from our last couple releases and played them, like really played them in heavy rotation on Underground Garage, which is huge for us,” Cabezas said about Van Zandt’s radio show on Sirius XM. “It’s not like we’re a band that goes out and gets a radio campaign going, so for him to take these songs and put them out there on Sirius, it’s been huge for us. So we sent him the rough mixes, and him and the label came back with, ‘Oh my gosh, this is an amazing record. We want to play all these songs on the radio, and we want to put it out.’ And so for us that was huge validation. We’ve got extreme respect for him. If he thinks something is good, then I’m not going to argue with it, so it’s the first time we’ve been on a label in several records. But we feel like it’s a really good partnership, and he’s nothing but supportive. He’s willing to champion it, so it’s an awesome feeling to have somebody of that caliber behind you.”
For the past couple years, Cabezas and Ogden have toured the United States with a couple of dedicated fans in tow: their son, River, and their daughter, Daisy. It’s a full family affair when the Dollyrots pull into town.
That has been one of the hallmarks of the punk duo since day one. They merge the personal and professional in interesting ways that seem to connect with many listeners.
As an example, take their new song “In Your Face,” which Cabezas said came about magically.
“Sometimes songs take a while to write,” he said. “Oftentimes we’ll just start with an instrumental, and do a full electric instrumental, and drive around with it, or live with it for a little while, and let the lyrics kind of happen. [‘In Your Face’] wrote itself in about honestly 10 or 15 minutes. We’ve been through a lot the last year or so, just like personally. We’ve got two kids now. They’re like 5 and 2. Kelly’s dad passed away at the end of last year, and so we’re experiencing this whole thing of being grownups with kids. And our parents are getting older, and we felt like are we going to be able to keep doing this? Are we going to be able to write a record? And so that song came from that teenage rebellion going back to how you feel when you’re 17, and you can take over the world — you know, tapping into that feeling of I can do anything. And we just wrote it in a way to inspire ourselves. We feel like it’s a self-empowerment thing.”
The band knows they have a good song when it passes the goosebump test. Here’s how it goes: When they first write a tune and start jamming it, even without sophisticated equipment, they need to have goosebumps on their arms in order to continue with the recording. No goosebumps might mean the death knell.
“It really starts when it gets written,” Cabezas said. “On that first playback, it doesn’t really matter what the quality is — it can be an iPhone recording, or it can be like a real demo, or it can be written in the studio with the full production — but honestly, and I swear this is the case, on the first playback, if you get goosebumps on your arm, you know that it’s something special. It’s got a thing to it, and that’s what happened with this one [‘In Your Face’]. I swear to God, so we decided to make it part of our set list on the last tour. We pick three new songs, kind of the ones that we felt the best about, and every night consistently that one was the one that people responded to and really gravitated toward. It was that initial self-test of does this affect me cosmically and then that combined with the real-world verification of, yeah, people really like this, people get it. So we’re really confident about that one.”
Having the whole family on the road when the band tours has been a welcome and interesting challenge. For Cabezas, he would have it no other way. He loves sharing a stage with Ogden and going back to the tour bus where his children are waiting.
“For us, it has grown to be something that’s a real strength for us,” Cabezas said about the arrangement. “I think it’s hard to be in a relationship with a musician because music is hard work #1. You have to be completely devoted to it, so it becomes kind of your other significant other. And then on top of that, if you’re the partner at home, you kind of think that your musician boyfriend or girlfriend is out there just partying every night. When really the reason they’re not answering their phone is probably because they’re exhausted, so for me and Kelly, we’ve spent so long doing this — touring in bands, sleeping on floors, flying on planes, traveling on buses. We’ve been through all these experiences together, so for us it’s automatic to know how to support each other in those situations, which carries over into the reason that we bring the kids with us. It gives us an extra something to work for. For us, it’s a strength.”
He added: “A lot of times people say how can you stand being around someone else that much, and the truth is I wouldn’t be able to do it without her. And I think vice versa. We’re just a good team.”
The Dollyrots have a unique sound that teeter-totters on that cutting-edge line between punk and pop. Ogden and Cabezas like to chart new ground with their sounds and lyrics; however, they also honor the legacies of bands and musicians who came before them.
“We have never taken for granted the fact that we’re part of a musical lineage,” Cabezas said. “Rock ‘n’ roll, a lot of it is just the same chords played in the same patterns with a similar sort of tone, but it has a certain feeling to it. And we’ve always appreciated how music derives from other music. The Ramones carried on the melodies of the Beach Boys, and that carried over to what punk rock became later on. Nirvana took a lot from the Beatles, if you really listen to it. … You can almost hear a Def Leppard thing on ‘In Your Face,’ but we always try to make it sound as fresh as we can without getting too punchy. There are so many ways to make music punchy and modern-sounding, but at the same time staying true to what rock ‘n’ roll is, which is essentially bass, guitar, drums, [is important]. Our producer, John Fields, he helps out with adding layers or production elements to make it really pop, but, yeah, at its core, we feel like we’re a punk rock band. And if our records can be part of that punk rock heritage, that’s even better.”
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
The Dollyrots will release Daydream Explosion July 12 and tour with the Pink Spiders in July and August. Click here for more information and tickets.
