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LYDIA DES DOLLES from SWEET JANE - INTEVIEW
18 July 2007DW: So, Sweet Jane is a fairly new band yet you are already making some big waves in Ireland. There’s yourself, Danda and Ruairi – how did you all meet and how did Sweet Jane come about?
SJ: Yeah the whole Sweet Jane kinda came about a couple months ago, me and Danda had been going out with each other for a while, and he had some old songs that he'd wrote years ago and wanted to put a new spin on, so he asked me if I’d go record some stuff. I didn’t think too much about it, ‘cause the last thing I wanted was to put out our stuff and it just be perceived as this 'oh man were so in love were gonna start a band and make the world see how in love we are' thing. But he got round me so we just started singing stuff with acoustic guitars at home in our apartment. Then I went to his studio and we put down a few tracks, set up our myspace account and didn’t think too much about it. Then after a couple weeks the response we got was just amazing, people really dug what we were doing, so we put a little bit more thought into getting a live band together and break out of the whole side project / recording way of thinking. Ruairi plays in this amazing garage/psych band called 'The Things' (www.myspace.com/thethings) and he's also Danda’s brother. We wanted to get him in to play keys but he wanted to play guitar as well. After a bit of persuasion he got his way, but it was definitely for the best, ‘cause he just brings this really cool element to our band, and gives us this amazing wall of sound, that you can't get with just one guitar.
DW: You played your first gig last week, at Dorans in Dublin - how was it for you?
SJ: It was amazing, so fucking nerve racking though, I was the gig virgin, and I really didn’t think I could pull it off. I don’t even know if I did, it was the weirdest feeling. You spend your life dreaming of being on a stage and getting to perform songs that you think are the best songs in the world, and then next thing you know you're on stage, and everyone is just staring at you, and its like 'fuck me I’m going to die'. But I didn’t and half way through our set I chilled out and just started to enjoy it, with the help of a bottle of red wine as well, but yeah it was amazing and now I’m dying to do the rest of all our gigs.
DW: You already have quite an impressive list of gigs coming up over the summer, which one are you looking forward to most?
SJ: Umm, I’m not sure, from now until September we've got at least one or two gigs a week so it's gonna be proper mayhem. I’m a fan of Dry County, and we kick off all the gigs with them on July 27th in The Hub. They’re fantastic, their live set up is just manic, all these laptops and micro-korgs, it's just wires everywhere.
One gig I’m totally looking forward to is August 4th in Crawdaddy with the Distractors for their single launch. They asked us to support them and I think they kinda dig what we do, so I’m pretty excited 'bout that one. Ohh shit I totally forgot we’re playing this custom car & bike show in Waterford on August 26th with Dae Kim, Arch Enemies, The Zealots, and Ilya K, and we're supporting Estel and U.K band Das Wanderlust August 18th at the Boom Boom Room in Dublin, that’s a magical girl promotions event, so I reckon it’ll be pretty crazy.
DW: You’ve recorded an EP, Black Boots and Black Hearts – which you were giving away for free a couple of months ago. Is that still the case and if so, why!!
SJ: Yeah the EP is a weird one, ‘cause we were putting it together for ourselves and our friends really, just to have a collection of our recordings, and we got a lot of emails from people asking where they could get a copy of the EP. So we put out an email on myspace and said that if anyone wanted a copy of it we would send them out a copy free of charge. Then within a week we had a lot a lot of requests for it, so I got a mailing list together of everyone who was interested.
It was so bizarre ‘cause there was people from America, France, Ireland, the UK, all over Europe looking for a copy, and our intention was to do one or two more songs, get it together, and send them out. But Danda being the musical genius that he is, wanted to go back into the studio and try make them sound even better than they already were. So that’s what we’ve been doing. But with gigs, the boys’ other bands, and getting the time to do them, it’s just been taking a lot longer than expected.I’m doing home made covers for the EP so I’m trying to get in touch with my original artistic side and make them really cool. It’s not happening for me at the moment though ‘cause I just end up writing essays on them. I like the idea of customising all our covers, it keeps it intimate and personal, even though it’ll take me forever to get through them all, but we are going to send them out. God knows when, but I have everyone’s addresses, and we stick to our word, so they will definitely be sent out.
DW: You’re getting some exposure on Irish radio – how are they responding to you?
SJ: Yeah, we’ve been asked to do a lot of radio, which is extremely flattering, but we don’t want to bring ourselves into that kind of corporate press related environment. Yeah it'd be great for the band and it would mean more exposure, but I don’t think that most of the high profile radio shows that we could go on would really get what we’re doing, and understand the sound were putting out there.We’ve done Edel Coffeys ‘Access All Areas’ on Phantom 105.2FM (you can listen to that interview on Sweet Jane’s Myspace page www.myspace.com/officialsweetjane) but we did that one because Phantom is underground and it's extremely music related. Edel isn’t some idiot DJ that knows nothing other than today’s pop culture, she’s got a background in journalism, done the band thing herself, and is totally into giving light to unsigned bands and artists in Ireland, which is highly unheard of today. So it was really cool for us to do, but yeah the response from that interview and live session alone was really great.
It was weird, we had played our gig in Dorans and went to like a secluded area and were just having a quiet drink trying to take in the gig and how psyched everyone was about it, and this guy comes up and is like 'I thought your radio session on Phantom as awesome' and then these people were like 'Great gig, I love your band', and I was like 'Danda have you paid these people to say this shit?', Y'see it’s fucked for me being in this enviroment ‘cause its all new. Dandas done all this with Mainline, so he can deal with it a lot better.
DW: Danda is the drummer with Mainline, is it easy for him to be in two bands and not have a conflict of interests?
SJ: Well I mean we're a different style to Mainline, but you can’t help what influences you’re influenced by and how your write your music. He hasn’t really made a conscious decision to make them completely different, it just kinda came off like that... But Sweet Jane started because he wanted to get creative, outside of Mainline, so that when he went back to writing for Mainline he'd have all these new and vibrant ideas. He says it the whole time now that since Sweet Jane came about he finds it easier to write for Mainline, and then it's a kinda vice-versa thing. So both bands benefit from it, but I mean Mainline is in his blood. Sweet Jane is extremely important to him as well, but they’re totally different, and both represent two completely different things. So yeah apart from busy schedule he’s managing it quite well, but then again all this is so natural to him, so it’s never been a case that it would be hard for him at all.
DW: You also have another outlet – as one half of the Cherrybomb DJ’s (www.myspace.com/thecherrybombs) – you’re a busy lady! What does that involve?
SJ: Yeah, I’m all over the place, but even though it’s totally self inflicted, I’ll still complain about not having time to myself. I got the Cherrybombs together ages ago. Myself and my other DJ half, Dawn, just got really shitty about DJ’s in Dublin regurgitating the same 'guaranteed hits' night after night and us and all our friends foolishly buying into it. I just said to myself you can’t complain about how shit it is if you’re not actually doing anything about it.I got Dawn and said let’s do the DJ thing and call ourselves The Cherrybombs. I'd been listening to a lot of the Runaways, so we started doing a few club nights around Dublin. Dawn does the whole 50’s classics meets rockabilly thing, and I do the whole britpop, early 90’s shoegaze & psychedelia thing.
After getting residency in a few places, we decided to branch out and take on our own club night, but unfortunately the youth of Dublin don’t seem to want to branch out into something new and interesting, so we stopped trying to recreate the whole music nightclub scene in Dublin, and just concentrate on having fun with it and doing high profile one off nights here and there. Which is a lot less stressful then having to worry about whether people will turn up to your club nights, and y'know doing that kinda took away from the fun of heading out to DJ. Having all your friends there, playing some cool tunes, and getting shit faced. Anyways it’s much nicer being the 'guest' rather than being the stress head running around. So yeah we're back to getting shit faced and having fun with our DJ'n.
DW: I know you’ve been involved in the Irish music community for a long time, especially down in Waterford, did you always aspire to make music?
SJ: Yeah totally, it’s weird, my family are not musical at all, so being in a band or being around music was never forced on me. I could totally go off on a tangent about music and the power of it, but to stop myself seeming like a total dickhead, and mortifying my boyfriend I won’t. But yeah from a young age it’s all I wanted to do. I did the whole six year old thing singing into my hairbrush in my Mom’s clothes screaming that I’m gonna be the most famous person in the world. And then as you get older, wanting to be famous and being a pop star manifests itself into actually wanting to do something productive in music and get recognition for all the right reasons. And truth be told when I was growing up I surrounded myself with really, really talented people, and felt slightly inferior to them because I didn’t think I could do anything as good as them.I always felt guilty that if I got anywhere in a band, that it wouldn’t be fair because these people were more talented than me, but then I met Danda and he gave me that confidence that finally made me feel like I could share a stage with them and realise that there was something good there. But its all worked out well for all of us in the end, because we've all ended up in great, great bands. Katie is in Dae Kim, Heno is now drumming for Gorbachov and Aaron is playing drums with The Spikes and a lot of my other friends are doing really great stuff, from fashion to tattooing, to one very good friend of mine ensuring that he becomes Ireland’s most fashionable gay icon.
DW: What is the best decision you have made in the past year?
SJ: For me the best decision would have to be uhhh...god I don’t know...well, I guess, staying in Dublin. It’s taken me a long time to get settled here, I’ve been living here just over two years. I mean it’s just because it’s quite a cut-throat place to live if you haven’t been brought up here, and it’s been really hard because all my family and friends are like three hours away, and I never realised how family orientated I was until I was away from that environment. So when you’re having a shit day and you just want to go home and be looked after you can’t, because you’ve got responsibilities up here. Or there’s no train until the next morning, it gets pretty hard, and you feel like such a bad person ‘cause maybe there’s shit going on down there that you need to be around for and you’re not. It can get a bit crazy being away from it.One thing that’s been hard for me is being away from my best friend since I was three, Lora, cause she has the most amazing daughter Layla, and I totally resent not being around every single day to see her growing up and learning new things. But then when you record new stuff or you play a gig, it throws all those negative thoughts away and you just get on and do it and realise why you’re up here. My boyfriend’s family are totally the most amazing family I’ve ever met, so since we’ve been together I’ve regained some of that homely family vibe that I was missing.
DW: Who are your musical heroes and why?
SJ: My musical heroes? Fuck, ehh... there’s a long list, but I guess... I’ve got a pretty varied musical taste background, but I tend to be inspired by really strong front men and women, because to be a lead singer, you’ve got to represent your whole band and the music you’re playing. You all bring your elements to a band and then as the singer you’ve got to be strong and representative. So heroes, I reckon I’d say Anton Newcombe from the Brian Jonestown Massacre, Jason Pierce from Spiritualized and Spacemen 3, Phil Anselmo from Pantera, Superjoint Ritual & Down, Jeffrey Lee Pierce from the Gun Club, Liam Gallagher from Oasis, Peter Hayes from Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, Debbie Harry from Blondie, Courtney Love from Hole, and without a shadow of a doubt, Neil Paxton from Mainline. He continuously stuns me when he gets on stage. To emit that kind of cool on stage is something I can only aspire to portray. He was born to own a stage. I get a lot of inspiration from Neil. You can kinda get what I mean from that long list, right?
DW: What would you like Sweet Jane to be doing this time next year?
SJ: I guess for me still recording and making really great songs that people are still into. I’d like us to have a completely strong live set, with some really good gigs. W'ere not after a record deal, or to make this band really commercial and part of that whole way of the music industry. Danda has Mainline as the main focus of getting signed and doing that whole thing, same with Ruairi and The Things, and I’m happy just taking a back seat and seeking the benefits of their success.I’m happy to do the Yoko Ono thing. Ha ha, no fuck I’m totally shitting you, we’ve all got our craziness outside of Sweet Jane, so keeping this band intimate but still successful is my main focus.
DW: And finally, what’s on the agenda for tomorrow!
SJ: Just getting a lot of rehearsals in for all our gigs, doing the gigs and spreading the good word of Sweet Jane, recording, getting the EP out. And for me on a personal non Sweet Jane level I’m freaked about Mainline's debut album. The boys are getting ready to go to Philadelphia in October to get the album recorded. It’s a really exciting time ‘cause I’m at home hearing Danda writing all the tunes for it and then hearing the demo's. It’s just gonna be mind blowing. I’m so fucking proud of them and everything they’ve achieved and are gonna achieve. They totally deserve the world.www.myspace.com/officialsweetjane
Upcoming Gigs
27 July - The Hub, Dublin - with Dry County
4 August - Crawdaddy, Dublin - with The Distractors
7 August - Dorans, Dublin - supported by 15 Minutes & Sons of Now
10 August - Electric Avenue, Waterford - with The Aftermath
17 August - Dorans, Dublin - with Stagger Lee and Cataon
18 August - Boom Boom Room, Dublin - with Estel & Das Wanderlust
26 August - Street Devils Car & Custom Bike Show - Waterford
with Dae Kim, Arch Enemies & Ilya K
29 August - Crawdaddy Dublin - supporting The Spikes