Waterdog Interview

WD: Hello.

SLUG: Hello. 

WD: How’s it going? 

SLUG: Pretty good, who is this? 

WD: This is Terry. 

SLUG: Terry from Waterdog? 

WD: Yeah, and Bill‘s here. 

SLUG: Do both of you play Rickenbackers, both guitar players? 

WD: No none of us do. Our bass player plays a Rickenbacker. 

SLUG: Oh, because the… 

WD: Yeah, we know the bio. Strictly promotional. We play Gibson. 

SLUG: Okay that clears that question up. How about your name, Waterdog? 

WD: Well I lived in this apartment and this guy Bags lived there [who] was notorious for buying pets and leaving them places. He had this cat called Bucket the Cat [that] he left with this guy who moved to Amsterdam, he had this bunny called Mr. Wong that ate its way out and escaped or something. So, he bought this lizard and he called it a Waterdog and he kept getting drunk and coming home and deciding he hated it and was going to starve it and “Oh, give me a buck for it, give me a buck for it,” and this happened a few times and we named it Herpe, it never ate and it died. So we named the band after Herpe the Waterdog. 

SLUG: Okay, I’m sure you’ve been asked that question a lot. The first album on Atlantic comes out in October. Have you recorded anything for any other labels? 

WD: Not with this band. 

SLUG: Okay, tell me about with your other bands. 

WD: My other band Smear did two seven inches on a label that we started. 

SLUG: You were with Smear, the girls? 

WD: No, no we were Smear. 

SLUG: Okay, not The Smears. 

WD: We actually wrote them a nasty letter about that. 

SLUG: Did they write you back? 

WD: Yeah, cause they knew about us, they were like “well, we didn’t think that anybody would know, because we’re girls and stuff.” 

SLUG: Have you met them on the road at all? 

WD: The Smears? 

SLUG: Yeah, cause they tour a lot. 

WD: No we haven’t run into them actually. They’re on tour right now? 

SLUG: Probably, I think they are always on tour. 

WD: I think I saw them with Butt Trumpet. 

SLUG: I only have the advance cassette of your album—is “Jessica” the song they’re going to push to the radio? 

WD: No, “Can’t Let Go.” 

SLUG: “Can’t Let Go” is? 

WD: Why, do you like “Jessica”? 

SLUG: I do, I was going to ask you who it’s about. Is it about a real person? 

WD: Yeah, its about an actual girl. It was this night at Teny‘s old loft. We were all hanging out and, I don’t know, I just got to talking to her and I was just extremely drawn to her and I was writing a song at the time and her name was three syllables and it fit really well. 

SLUG: So you threw it in. 

WD: I did, and I’d only spoke to her like, I spoke to her twice that night. I was just drawn to her, I was smitten with Jessica. But she’s not still always on his mind. 

SLUG: No more. 

WD: In the interview process, she’s been referred to everytime. Everyone seems to like that song. 

SLUG: Maybe that should be the single, if everyone likes it. 

WD: But the thing is, if it was, that would be kind of… “Jessica” is more of the top extreme [end] of what we do. I don’t want our first single to give people a false impression of what we do. Does that make any sense? I mean we want to give people more of what we do consistently than just a hint. 

SLUG: Okay, another song, “Goodbye, Goodbye.” Did Bill write it? It’s a suicide song that ends on a positive note? 

WD: Yeah, wow exactly, good work, good call. Yeah, it’s from the perspective of someone who’s telling a story about a kid who writes a suicide note. It’s like, the ironic thing at the end is that he’s using the word goodbye to say goodbye to the word goodbye. That’s kind of how the idea came about. I’m not suicidal or anything. 

SLUG: No, I didn’t think so cause it seems to end positively. “Youngstown Turmoil.” That’s kind of a ska song. Is there any ska experience in the band?

WD: Actually, in one of my first bands, we did a couple of ska numbers; It’s something that I’ve always touched on. We tried not to make it a ska song, just give it, like, a ska feel and that kind of happened when we were going over the songs before we recorded the record. It had this kind of bouncy feel to it and I was like, “if I cleaned up the guitar a little it would kind of create a dynamic there.” We all, I loved The Specials. Before any of us had even heard Operation Ivy. There’s a Providence—well they’re actually from Newport, Rhode Island— [band] called Verbal Assault that really introduced me to ska for the first time. They had a seven inch they put out called Tiny Giants. It was more reggae and they used the cover “Does It Make It Alright” by The Specials. So that’s how I was first exposed to ska. So, it’s always been there in Rhode Island even though we’ve never had a full-on ska band. The bands always have their ska song or two. 

SLUG: The pop-punk backlash is starting to begin, it’s beginning already. Do you have any fears about that? That the backlash will affect… 

WD: Sure we do, but we consider ourselves more of a rock and roll band at this point more than a punk band. 

SLUG: I agree with that, too. I think you’re more like power pop or just plain pop. 

WD: Oh yeah, it’s also inevitable that we’re going to get hit with that pop-punk label and I guess, you know, all we can do is play the music we like, I mean what can we say? I’ve been writing these songs for a long time. It’s like, what’s going on now has nothing to do with what I was doing years ago. It’s not like we formed this band to write these songs to get signed. It’s like the world’s taste has changed so rapidly that we became a commodity. We never really changed what we had been doing all along. A lot of the bands getting signed, people think they’re overnight successes or something, but it like, fuck, Jawbreaker, me and my mend booked them at a club we started under a skateboard park five or six years ago. People are going to hear Jawbreaker’s first record on the radio and go “geez these guys just jumped on the bandwagon,” but that’s so far from the case with just about every band that is getting signed. At least in other bands, it sounded like that regardless of … like we’ve only been a band for a year and a half, but Bill’s always played this music and I’ve played it in other bands, you know, what can you do? 

SLUG: Well it’s like, All‘s been around for how long, ten years? 

WD: Oh yeah. 

SLUG: It’s not new I know that, it’s not new at all. 

WD: No, not at all. Yet if anyone deserves the credit, it’s All because they sort of helped them out of that kind of music. Bring it to the surface. They Americanized it. 

SLUG: Okay, this is the last question I have. There was no future in 1984, now it’s 1995 and things are worse if anything. Your song “Wasteland” is about wishing for a better place. Do you have any hopes that things will improve? 

WD: Yeah, its more about… back then the attitude was like there’s no future, there’s no point in carrying on, we’re just going to be this way. “Wasteland” is more about looking at it in a more optimistic way of saying you know, of course there’s going to be a future—no matter what happens, there’s going to be tomorrow. Don’t forget about like … I don’t know, it’s just an optimistic song. (That was Bill, here’s Terry) My answer to the question … “Wasteland” was written about our hometown Providence. It has a severe gravity to it if you stick around too long and I found my better place every night for an hour on stage. I know it sounds corny, but it’s true, and hopefully that will happen to our kids that come to our shows too. That they’ll have a better place at least for an hour every time they see us or any other band. 

SLUG: That sounds good to me. 

WD: I’m not at home anymore, I have no gravity. Music is the better place. As far as world politics, what the hell can we do? I mean, I know every vote makes a difference and all that stuff, but we’re kind of like handcuffed until we get into our 40’s and take the world over. I just hope that this whole punk backlash thing has made people open-minded and liberal enough that when our generation takes over, our voices are going to change the country drastically. 

SLUG: I hope so too. 

WD: I mean that all we can do is hope till that time.. . because you can’t run for president when you’re 25 can you? I inhaled. Maybe Jello will be president, wouldn’t that be awesome? We met him in Boulder, what a trip. That’s the best part of the trip so far. 

SLUG: You met Jello in Boulder? What was he doing in Boulder? 

WD: Seeing the Lunachicks. He’s a diverse person, you can’t pin him to San Francisco and punk, he’s everywhere. He’s like God. He’s infiltrated music and culture more than you can imagine. 

SLUG: Jello is God. 

WD: He’s an intense individual and great conversationalist and he doesn’t let his politics get in the way of his life. He lives his politics but he doesn’t force his beliefs on people, he tries to spread the word. 

SLUG: That’s cool. 

WD: You’d vote for him for president. Hell, I’d pass out flyers. 

SLUG: If Jello ran for president, yeah, I would vote for him. 

WD: Maybe you could start that in your magazine. Yeah, Jello for president. 

SLUG: Maybe you can start it, cause I’ll write it down. It’s your idea. 

WD: Yeah, we can campaign on the road. We’re onto something a little bigger than Waterdog at this point. This is a good interview. I mean, we’re just another band, but this is a big idea we have here. This is something the CIA would come after us about. 

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The Tragically Hip
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