Having already fronted two of Liverpool's best kept indie secrets over the past twenty-five years with The Room and Benny Profane, DAVE JACKSON has quite a musical pedigree. In more recent times, though, he's been fronting the equally fabulous - and equally under-rated - DEAD COWBOYS, along with bassist Becky Stringer and former Barbel singer/ guitarist Greg Milton.
The DCs opened their account with the notable "Comings & Goings" for The Viper Label in 2000, and have just followed it up with the long-awaited "Twin Evil Stars." They've also just started gigging again after an absence from the scene while their cult profile has also risen of late thanks to LTM'S exhaustive Room re-issue campaign. We've previously spoken to Dave about that, so this time intend to concentrate solely on the present.
Dave, good to speak with you again. Let's start with the overall feel of new album "Twin Evil Stars." To this writer, it generally sounds harder and more aggressive than "Comings & Goings", with tracks like "Relentless" and the title track among the most visceral things this writer has heard from you. Was it always the intention to make something sonically tough?
"To a certain degree there's an aggression," Dave muses, "but I don't think that's always the case and it wasn't particularly intentional."
"Actually, for me, there's nothing as edgy as, say "Dear John" or "Hotwired" from the first album. There's a noir-ish tone to a lot of it, that's true to say....a lot of death" he finishes, with a real Machiavellian laugh.
Yeah, well I can see that. A lot of the songs are very filmic...
"Yeah, there's a lot of stuff that's come from film scripts and the novel I've been working on," says Dave.
"For instance, the song "Violet City" from the new record came from the ideas I had for the novel.....not that it's anywhere near completion as yet (laughs)".
Also, you employed a drum machine instead of a live drummer on this record. Did that alter the process of writing the new songs? I imagine you can't 'jam' songs so easily when you can't work off a human groove in the rehearsal room?
"Well, some of the songs we'd been playing live previously, while other songs only came to life in the rehearsal studio," Dave replies.
"I mean, we stopped playing live between albums out of necessity because Becky had a baby, so obviously that came first. Then we lost Andrew (McKechnie, original drummer) because he had too much work elsewhere. When we were working up a lot of these songs, it came through me going round to Greg (Milton)'s once a week and spending three hours a session writing and reording new stuff."
"In a way that was restricting," he continues, "but in another sense it freed us up to concentrate on melodies and a new approach.....for instance songs like "Black Easter" and "New Neighbour" have no drums to speak of, because we'd been working without drums and tailored the songs to work like that."
Of course Greg has written a couple of the tunes from the new album himself, and I always liked the stuff he did with Barbel ("Inferno" is surely one of THE great lost singles), so it's good to know he's still writing as well. "Understand" - one of his from "Twin Evil Stars" - is very funny, but do you have much lyrical input on his material at all?
"Not so much with "Understand" because that was pretty much a finished song when he brought it in," reveals Dave.
"He invited me to have a go at adding something, but I really couldn't come up with anything as good. With "A Good Car" (another new album highlight - ed) the verses are me and the chorus is Greg. He'd originally written the verses as well, but they were about gangland shootings, and that didn't work so well. I wrote a plot about a guy who's about to be executed, but turns the tables and it fit the song's mood better, so we went with that."
Yes, I really like that one - I like the idea of it having a sting in the tail. I can see the film noir aspects with this as well. I almost daren't ask if it's based on truth or fiction?
"Yeah, thankfully it's from a story in my head," says Dave. "It's an idea for a film noir-style screenplay I had. The introduction features this character who's about to be executed, but his would-be assassin is so stupid, the roles get reversed and he cops it himself...because he's so inept (laughs)."
Nice one. But then vengeance and skullduggery of assorted varieties run riot throughout the album as it is. Tell us more about "Black Easter": it has a real Velvets-y drone and Peter (Baker)'s celestial organ adds an extra dimension. The lyric on it sounds really spiteful too - what's the inspiration behind that one?
"The lyric on that one's quite an old one actually," says Dave.
"I went to Bali on holiday around the time of the first album (hence the komodo dragons adorning the cover - ed) and it's beautiful, but such a poor country. There were loads of Austalians on holiday over there and some of the lyrics are from an incident in a bar when this Australian guy asks the barman about happy hour, and the guy replies "Happy for you, hour for me"....which is exactly what he said. It epitomised the idea of slaving in paradise, which is broadly what "Black Easter" is all about."
Another one that really struck me was "The Silent Type." Perhaps I'm missing the point here, but the lyric's content appears be about a woman bemoaning the fact men show their emotions more these days. Am I anywhere near? That's what the kiss-off line "what happened to the silent type" appears to relate to....
"Yeah, you're right to an extent at least," agrees Dave.
"Though it's also based on something Tony Soprano says to Dr.Melfi his analyst when he's talking about men showing their emotions and he says "what happened to Gary Cooper?" (laughs)."
"But yeah" he continues, "It IS about a woman complaining that men speak about their feelings too much these days and wondering what happened to the strong, silent figures out there. But y'know (laughs) obviously there IS a certain irony in there."
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At a tangent, there's "Changing Trains, which - for me at least - is a great "what if?" song. I love that line "you have perpetual rights on my soul" and also the way it's left open-ended...
"Yeah, well I think one of the reasons it works so well is because it's left open-ended," Dave points out correctly.
"It's very much about loss and trying to come to terms with it and the idea of what would have happened if someone had followed a different path in their life. It's something we all dwell on, isn't it?"
Too true. Intriguingly, though, the Dead Cowboys also handed the track over to Joe 'Lefty' McKechnie, ex- Benny Profane/ Passage and Bunnymen drummer who's also made a name for himself as a DJ/ remixer of repute. The 'Lefty' mix of "Changing Trains" closes the album and is a surprising highlight which showcases the fact the DCS' indie sound translates superbly in this context. What did you make of Joe's re-shaping yourself Dave?
"I'm really pleased with it," enthuses the man himself.
"He did a great job and we'd be happy to do more like it if the opportunity arose, because it's brilliant to ge a different presepctive on these things. In a way, because we didn't record this album is a traditional band manner, I think we've been looking at our work with a different eye and we're open to trying things more than we were in the past. Now we're playing live again we find the songs on the new album are taking on their own life, too. That's exciting in itself."
Talking of stylistic risk-taking, both "Understand" and "Drowning Weed" from the new album pursue the mutant indie/ Americana slant of some of the first album, but generally you seem to be moving away from that. Is that a fair assumption?
"Well, what happened when we started the band was that we'd do this really heavy garage/metal stuff," reveals Dave, suprisingly, though he has previously revealed a love of Josh Homme's Eagles Of Death Metal to this hack, so perhaps we shouldn't be so stunned.
"Anyway, in the end that got vetoed and instead we thought we'd do very straight country, in the Hank Williams vein - as we were listening to that kind of thing a lot and it was a common interest. But then that got warped again when he tried fusing that with the indie guitar music we all enjoy playing, so it's mutated long the way. Now we don't think along stylistic lines - we just play what we like and go with whatever sounds best. There's no great master plan (laughs)."
OK, well before we have to go, tell us about your appearance at Liverpool's "Hell's Ditch" club night. Was that a good night?
"Yeah, it was great," enthuses Dave. "It's been going for less than a year and we played there back in November too. It's picked up an awful lot since then and all credit to Chris (Stevens) for making it such an exciting event. When we played the first one, we didn't play anything even remotely 'Alt.Country', even though we kind've thought that was the point, but that didn't matter in the end. It's great, very open to local talent and totally open-minded. Very refreshing in this day and age."
Absolutely, but Dave, before we let you go, realistically can the Dead Cowboys really devote themselves to touring in the traditional sense these days? You all work and have outside interests as well. Do you have the inclination to walk the indie treadmill once again?
"Well, no , we can't stop work and play every night like in the old days," says Dave evenly.
"But we are playing a lot more frequently these days. If we can get gigs, we'll play them. It's great now we have Nat, our new drummer with us. The trouble is keeping up with his schedule, never mind the rest of us."
How do you mean? To paraphrase Spinal Tap's Mick Shrimpton, it's not just sex and drugs for Nat then?
"No, no," laughs Dave, "Nat plays in pub bands as well. The night we played at "Hell's Ditch" he played a set down the road from the venue before we went on...then he raced up to play our set....and then he's back down again to play a set of Stones' covers. He's a great drummer and also a painter, he teaches fine art..."
You mean he finds the time?
"Yeah," laughs Dave. "We've got a couple of gigs coming up - at the Everyman in Liverpool and talk of more in London....it'll be interesting to see how his schedule works out for those, but that's us all over anyway. We like the unpredictability. It works for us."
And it sure sounds sublime on record.
"Twin Evil Stars" is out now on LTM/ Boutique.
www.deadcowboys.com
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