DeWolff | Interview | New Album, ‘Love, Death & In Between’
DeWolff recently released their new album, ‘Love, Death & In Between,’ out via Mascot Records.
‘Love, Death & In Between’ is the band’s reaction to their previous two studio albums. ‘Tascam Tapes,’ which was recorded on the road with a four-track cassette recorder from the 1980s and the socially distanced recording of ‘Wolffpack’. “For this, we wanted to do something with people, as many people as possible,” singer/guitarist Pablo van de Poel says.
The lightning strike moment for ‘Love, Death & In Between’ came via Memphis. “In 2019, I attended a sermon by Al Green at his own church, and it was a life-changing experience, musically,” Pablo remembers. “I was in there for one minute, and I was crying. He would be talking about someone who can’t pay their bills and would say, “I call up to the almighty saviour to help her.” It was met with the sound of “Yeaaah! Yeaaah’s!” The band would play two chords, which was beautiful. I was intensely touched by it. It left a profound impact on me. I wanted to do something like that at a live show, but we didn’t have any songs that fit. When we started writing, I wanted to do something like that, an almost religious experience. Because, after all, music does feel like a religion to us. It’s something that’s in our minds all the time. It’s what we dedicate our whole lives to.”
Recording live to tape, with no overdubs, brothers Pablo (guitar/vocals) and Luka van de Poel (drums/vocals) alongside Robin Piso (Hammond/Wurlitzer) were joined by a host of friends for the recordings. “We brought extra people and wanted their signature on it. Playing with ten people in one room is chaotic. Every take you do, somebody is not satisfied with how they play. But you realise what is important about a take.”
Everything was recorded fully analogue and directly to tape, no computers were used in the making of the album. The tapes were then sent to a mastering engineer who cut it straight to a lacquer that was used for the vinyl pressing – even this mastering and cutting was done fully analogue.
Out of the rural surroundings of Brittany, DeWolff left with twelve songs, over four tapes, with friends, having fun and remembering what is most important to them. On a diet of Al Green, Sam Cooke, and John Steinbeck, they’ve created some of their most soulful but rousing music.
“We wanted to do this whole album 100% live”
You have an exciting upcoming album scheduled for February. Are you hitting the road after?
Pablo van de Poel: Yes, definitely! Our tour started on February 3rd and will take us from the Netherlands to Spain and from France to the UK and to Spain.
Tell us how much preparation went into recording and production of the upcoming album, ‘Love, Death & In Between’?
Funnily enough we recently counted the amount of days we spent together with the three of us writing and recording this album. All in all we counted 30 days. So from zero material to a finished 70-minute album in 30 days … I guess that’s not a lot! But this time of course excludes the hours and hours of reading, listening and other means of finding and absorbing inspiration. I sometimes write little ideas that I bring to rehearsals, sometimes songs just come up when the three of us play together. Melodies and vocal lines always come hand in hand with the instrumental parts, but most often we sit down afterwards to write actual words. Sometimes the words just pop up when we’re playing and sometimes an idea for a story or subject even originates from that. Actually, it happens quite often that the idea for a story comes from the random words or lines that pop up in our heads when we’re jamming. Then we make demos that we sent to all the guest musicians for them to study at home. We wanted to do this whole album 100% live without any overdubs, so it was quite important that everybody was well prepared. Then we had two rehearsals with the full band where we went through all the material. But of course 70 minutes of music is quite a lot to go through in just two days. When we came to the Kerwax Studio in France, we were about 75% prepared. Some of the stuff we had rehearsed quite thoroughly, some other songs (like the 16-minute Rosita) we had never played in full without any big mistakes. So we were a little nervous about some of those songs! But everything went quite smoothly and in 14 days we got to lay down really good versions of all the songs on tape, as well as mixing them.
There seems to be a backstory involving Al Green?
Yes, back in 2019 I was on vacation in the USA with my wife and we visited Memphis. Of course we went to see the Stax museum and the Sun Studios but then I read somewhere that Al Green -THE Al Green!- has a church in South Memphis. Every Sunday there’s a service there and every once in while the Reverend Al Green is there himself, but you can never be quite sure. So me and my wife went there and he was actually there and the music that we heard there in that church on Sunday morning was some of the most beautiful music I had ever heard. I sat down and after just 10 seconds tears were rolling down my face. The band was loud and most of the time they were just laying down one or two chords, with Al Green shouting over them. It was so beautiful and real and touching though, it really gave me a new perception on live music. There and then it became extra clear to me that music is not about complicated song structures or finding nifty contemporary sounds but about soul! About making your musical idiosyncrasies be part of something greater, something mystic, something where you express yourself as an individual musically the way only you can and connecting to other people through the energy you put into your performance. It was quite inspiring.
“The music was written very intuitively”
How would you compare the latest album with your previous releases, what’s the main difference in your opinion?
The music was written very intuitively. If we played something that felt good – and that we might have deemed “too simplistic” years ago – there was a place for that in the music. We weren’t trying to do something new, to build a bridge between “then” and “now” because we think there is no “then” and “now” in music. It’s all one big beautiful thing that all humans throughout history contribute to. Sometimes this gets masked by “trends” but underneath that all, the song hasn’t changed that much between the 1940s and now. So there’s no point in trying to be hip or new, the only thing worth striving for in music -or art in general – is authenticity.
Sometimes when we were stuck writing a song, we would switch to an audience’s point of view. “If I were in the audience, what would I want to hear right now?” and then you realise it doesn’t matter if the next chord is an F diminished or a D impossible or whatever, the only thing that matters is that it works. And the definition of what works in music is of course very broad, but that Al Green service definitely helped in the making of that decision.
I really enjoyed the previous album, ‘Tascam Tapes,’ recorded on the road with a four-track cassette recorder. That must have been a fun album to make?
It was a big adventure! Often we recorded songs crammed in the back of our van (which is an actual van and not a big touring bus) and sometimes we would set up in a backstage or a hotel room to record. Because we were recording on all these cassettes it was sometimes very hard to keep track of what we had recorded exactly. Some cassettes went missing, the recorder itself broke down many times so we had to order a spare one for parts in Spain to fix our main one… Sometimes we accidentally erased tracks because we had forgotten to write down what was on track 3 or 4 or whatever. It was a hassle! But it was also very fun and very inspiring to work according to some sort of dogma like “we want to record an album on tour on 4 track cassette” or “we wanna record an entire album without overdubs”. It gives you a very clear sense of direction. It also helps moderating the perfectionism that is insurmountable but often undesirable in music. All the music we listen to has little (or big!) mistakes in it but when we ourselves (as a species) record music we get all insecure and especially when you work digitally there’s room to fix everything and as a result we have all this “perfect” music that sounds totally lame and soulless.
How do you see ‘Wolffpack’?
‘Wolffpack’ was also a very funny album to make, because a lot of it was written and recorded during the pandemic, some songs or parts were even recorded in isolation from home. This shift in our mindset made it possible to collaborate with other artists from all kinds of different parts of the world, like Luther Dickinson (ex-Black Crowes) in the USA, Ian Peres (ex-Wolfmother) in Australia or Theo Lawrence in France. But at 75% during the process we got a little tired of this way of working and we just got back together again to play together. This was such a relief and this new album is a direct consequence of that. What was also cool about ‘Wolffpack’ was that people could subscribe to this thing called “Wolffpack” where they would receive 3 new songs every 2 weeks, with videos of us recording them. At the end we had 17 songs and the subscribers could vote which 10 or 11 songs would make the “official” release. The Wolffpack subscribers received a double album with all 17 songs on it.
How important is improvisation for you when it comes to music making?
Vey important, especially playing live. But also when we write and record songs, of course there are certain riffs that you want to play a certain way, but most of the rest of the song – and especially the solos – are 100% open for reinterpretation. We rarely play a song the same way twice. We’re not satisfied with just knowing our own “parts” in a song, we are constantly aware of the chord progression and what we can do with it and/or what we feel the song needs in that moment, so musically we’re constantly switching around. It keeps you on your toes, it keeps things excited and in front of an audience it can totally take you places you didn’t know existed. It must be horrible to play your music – that 3 minute hit you had years ago- exactly the same way every show.
Tell us about the gear, effects and pedals you like to use?
In the studio I’ve been using my Marshall 1973X (the reissue of an 18 watt Bluesbreaker) for years now. It’s an amazing sounding amp, especially with the 2 vintage Celestion Greenback speakers I put inside. I use different fuzzes, but on this album I’ve been using an Isle of Tone Luxe ’64 germanium fuzz mostly. I leave it on all the time and with my guitar’s volume knob I can go anywhere from a sparkling clean sound to a full-on 1960s monster fuzz sound. The Marshall takes fuzz pedals very well. For guitars I really use Gibsons exclusively. My favorites are a 2014 R9 “Lemon Burst” that was given to me by Gibson as a present and a 2008-ish Gibson Firebird V, both of which I made significant modifications to. Changed the pickups, electronics, tuners and added a Bigsby & a Vibrola respectively. Further I have a 1961 Les Paul Custom (the SG shape), a 1972 Les Paul Custom, a 1967 Epiphone Olympic that has two marvellously sounding single coils, a 1972 Gibson ES320TD with the same type of single coils, a 1956 Gibson ES225 and a Flying V that was given to me by Golden Earring’s lead singer Barry Hay. I think I have used all these guitars on the new album. At home I also have a 1948 Gibson LG2 that I love to write on.
Are any of you involved in any other bands or do you have any active side-projects going on at this point?
We have a collaborative project running with friends of ours, a magnificent band called Dawn Brothers. We got together at our studio a couple of times to record some original songs that could have been on a 1967 soul album recorded at Stax or Muscle Shoals. Originally it was just for the heck of it but it was SO much fun and these songs turned out so great that we recorded a full album called ‘Double Cream’. We’re doing a small tour in the Netherlands this summer. It was such a pleasure recording these sessions; we had everyone playing live in one room, to tape, with horn players and all … it planted a seed for our new DeWolff album really!
Do you often play live? Who are some of your personal favorite bands that you’ve had a chance to play with over the past few years?
We have played over a 1000 shows, so I guess you could say that we play live a lot. We got to play with some amazing bands and heroes of ours. Most notably the Black Crowes! We’ve been fans of that band since we were born, our dad used to play their first couple of albums at home a lot. When they announced their Shake Your Money Maker tour in 2020 we immediately started to try everything in our power to go along with them as their support act. All to no avail, it seemed. Because just two months before this tour was about to start in 2022 our new album somehow made its way to Chris and Rich Robinson and they liked it so much that we were invited to go on tour with them! Our heroes! It was such a great experience and I think we got a lot of new fans because as it turned out Black Crowes fans are also really into DeWolff!
“Live, our songs are always different from the record”
Do you discover new aspects of your songs developing in front of an audience?
It’s funny, because like I said earlier some of these new songs were written with an audience in mind, but then actually playing them in front of an actual audience really adds another dimension again! Live, our songs are always different from the record, so that is nothing new for us, but it’s cool to see that even if we record an album entirely live, there’s still somewhere to go from that place.
What are some future plans?
For now we’re gonna tour this album as much as we can. We’re playing some really cool shows and I’m especially looking forward to the album release shows in Paris and London and the shows we’re doing in Spain. Spain is always so much fun to play! Germany as well. Oh well, any place is nice to play really! We really hope that we’ll be able to get a good support tour in the USA because it’s always been a dream of ours to go there to play our music.
Let’s end this interview with some of your favourite albums. Have you found something new lately you would like to recommend to our readers?
Some albums that had a big influence on us lately are ‘The Fabulous Impressions’ by the Impressions (featuring Curtis Mayfield), Sam Cooke ‘Live at the Harlem Square Club, 1963’ and a lot of old rhythm and blues music by the likes of Ray Charles, the Coasters, Little Richard. Most of those artists didn’t really release “albums” in the “Sgt. Pepper’s” sense of the word, so that’s mostly compilation albums. Some records I discovered that I really like are a live album by Carlos Santana & Buddy Miles and a very obscure album by a guy called Marlin Greene (he played guitar on ‘When a Man Loves a Woman’) that was recorded at Muscle Shoals and bears the ridiculous name ‘Tiptoe Past the Dragon’. We also listened a lot to early Fleetwood Mac and the live album “Leon Live” by Leon Russell.
Thank you. Last word is yours.
My fingers are aching from all this typing! Thank you so much for having us in your wonderful magazine and hopefully we can meet some time in the future!
Klemen Breznikar
Headline photo: Satellite June
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