Deardarkhead | Matt Connarton Unleashed

0:00 Speaker 1: That is letting go from Dear Dark Head. The album is called The Pendulum Swings. Just came out July tenth, so it's very new. And let's see, we've got Rob Weiss on the phone line, I believe with us on the studio line.

0:12 Speaker 2: Hey Rob, Hey there, how you doing? Is it just your? Are any other band members with you that?

0:19 Speaker 3: We have Kevin Harrington here the guitar player as well.

0:22 Speaker 2: Oh awesome, Hi Kevin? You doing good? Good? Welcome guys, So I really like this.

0:29 Speaker 1: I was surprised to learn you guys have been around for a hell of a long time. So is this true that The Pendulum Swings is your first new full length album in twenty five years?

0:40 Speaker 2: Is that accurate?

0:42 Speaker 3: Yeah? Actually yeah, I mean we have. We did put an EP out back in twenty sixteen that was instrumental, but in terms of a full length album, the last thing we did was an album called Unlocked the Valve the Feeling when we had a vocalist. So it's been a while for a full.

0:56 Speaker 1: Length Okay, okay, I gotcha. So this album obviously is all it's all metals.

1:00 Speaker 2: Correct, yep?

1:02 Speaker 3: Correct?

1:03 Speaker 1: So you did have a vocalist at one at one time. So for for the EP, you said, so, I mean, how does that what goes into the decision whether or not to work with a vocalist or record an album of instrumentals? And this is by the way, you know, it's a full length album. But for people who haven't listened to it, who are skeptical of instrumentals, it's really good. And my you know, in listening to it, my perception is it's kind of like as you can hear with those songs, you know, the lead guitar kind of fills that that space that a vocalist might, right, But what goes into that decision to do instrumentals.

1:37 Speaker 4: We haven't really made a decision to be instrumental. We just ended up being instrumental once are there are formal singer left. Yeah, So it's basically we carry on until we find a vocalist or we stopped. So we basically always wrote instrumentals even when we had the singer. So now we just are instrumental, and it's just because of having to move forward versus stuff.

2:02 Speaker 2: That's interesting.

2:03 Speaker 1: Is it a challenge to do it that way or does it because it almost sounds like it's probably pretty organic, right, you don't you know you didn't decide.

2:13 Speaker 2: To approach it this way.

2:14 Speaker 1: This is just how you're doing it out of Really, it sounds like out of necessity more than anything else. I mean it is that a challenge to make these songs work as instrumentals or is it pretty pretty simple?

2:27 Speaker 4: Not necessarily at all anymore?

2:29 Speaker 3: This is just the way we write, Yeah, I will I will say I think it puts a little more pressure on Cavit because he's since there is no vocal as you point out, melodically, he's carrying the weight of the song and the emotion and you know, the effects, and so he puts a lot of time and effort. So I think it would be nice to have a vocalist sometimes if we found the right person, but we don't really rely on it, and we're pretty comfortable doing it, and Kevin does a great job handling that role.

2:55 Speaker 2: Absolutely.

2:56 Speaker 4: Interaction with a live show, I think a singer would be nice, because it always was great to have a dedicated singer, a dedicated person to interact with the crowd. But we're so used to doing it this way that this is really just the way we think.

3:13 Speaker 1: Right, No, that makes sense, and yeah, and Rob as you pointed out, Kevin, you know is able to you know, really kind of carry the weight of what a vocalist does in these songs and it it just works. I'm curious live, I mean, do you approach these any differently when you play them live than versus how you recorded them? Is there a little bit extra pressure when you're doing these live or or how does that work?

3:37 Speaker 2: What's your approach live?

3:40 Speaker 3: I mean, I don't think really we change things up too much. Occasionally there'll be a song where we did something in the studio and we've had to adapt it slightly differently live just because you know, we wanted to spend a little more time in the studio. We can do more or track more guitars, and we might do a slightly different version of the song. But in general, it's pretty pretty much what you hear is the way we found live.

4:01 Speaker 4: You may not have a rhythm guitar track live because it doesn't really well, we can't do it. But we do things in a way that you really probably wouldn't even notice that it's not there. Yeah, exaccurate because we fill the.

4:17 Speaker 1: Space right so right, that makes sense and you know, for me personally and some people will disagree with me on this, and I know that to a lot of people, it's very important that when they go to see a band live that they hear things as close as possible to what they did in the studio. And I've always looked at that a little bit differently. If I go to see a band live and there's something different because you know, as you guys pointed out, you know, maybe there's not that rhythm guitar track there because you can't do that live, you know, unless you were to bring in an extra guitarist, Right, if that means that it sounds a little bit different, and maybe live it sounds a little bit, a little bit raw, it sounds a little bit.

4:57 Speaker 2: You know.

4:59 Speaker 1: I don't know exac the term I'm looking for, but but I think you get what I'm saying. If it changes a little bit live, that's that's actually to me, that's a good thing. I find that interesting. I know not everyone, not everyone looks at it that way, but that's how I've always looked at it.

5:15 Speaker 3: Yeah, I get that. I think you know, in the past, we've kind of just performed things as we did things on the record, and I think we've loosened up a little bit more and kind of try to find different ways of doing things. When you're instrumentally, you have to find new ways of sort of entertaining yourself and making the songs very accessible, uh, even though there's no vocal. So we spent a lot of time doing that, and I think we've been really happy so far with the reviews we've been getting back.

5:42 Speaker 3: It seems like people really are getting getting it as an instrumental record and not feeling like not having vocals is a detriment.

5:52 Speaker 1: Right right When when the singer left, was it like, did you guys going to make some I guess I'm wondering because it sounds like it was just a very organic thing. Okay, we're going to do this live until we find a singer. I mean, we're going to do this instrumental until we find a singer. If we don't find a singer, you know, we'll just keep doing what we're doing. Was that your initial reaction to when the singer departed or was there ever a moment where you guys kind of talked about it and said, well, we have to find a singer because if we don't, we can't continue.

6:29 Speaker 1: And then maybe your mindset shifted.

6:31 Speaker 2: I don't know. I mean, what was your initial thought when the singer left.

6:36 Speaker 4: I think we just expected to find a singer. But then once we started auditioning a few people, we just realized how hard it was going to be to find someone that was the right fit. And eventually we realized that, well, we're not fighting the right fit. But at this point, like I said, we've always done an instrumental or two on our previous work prior to Mike leaving.

6:57 Speaker 3: Yeah, but we were really accustom.

7:00 Speaker 4: Them to just playing you know what we played, whether it's a song with vocals or not. And the more time that passed, we just really got used to it and we started writing around it, and here we are now, yeah, many years later.

7:12 Speaker 2: Yeah.

7:13 Speaker 3: I think also Mike, we were really accustomed. Mike had been in the band for a very long time, and you know, he played, he sang, and he also played guitar, and he also played bass, and he was just a really great composer and he'd been with us a long time. So it was kind of a hard act to follow, you know. We just, like Kevin said, we thought we'd find somebody. We just were disappointed with anybody that we actually you know, auditioned, and we didn't sort of want to ruin our legacy of what we'd done with a vocalist right passed, So going instrumental felt the kind.

7:47 Speaker 4: Of like organic yaka. I think having another input maybe not that it would jeopardize what we were used to, but when Mike was with the band, the three of us were all songwriters contributed relatively equally. So then Rob and I took over and we maybe were a little reluctant to add a third party in that didn't share the same direction.

8:13 Speaker 2: Let's though, Yeah.

8:14 Speaker 4: For reasons of control, it's sort of I mean, I was always pleased that we maintain just the two of us without an outside source that really didn't follow the same vision.

8:27 Speaker 1: Yeah, that's always the hard part when you have to replace somebody or try to replace somebody, you know, there's always that worry, well, what if we bring somebody in and what if they seem like they fit in the beginning, but then it turns out the chemistry isn't there. They don't quite fit as you refer to, you know, fit the vision of what you're doing. That can be very challenging, and so for you guys to be able to make this work as well as you do, and it works really well without even having to necessarily worry about having a singer.

8:53 Speaker 1: I mean, that's that's excellent, and I think it says a lot about what you're doing and what you know, what the chemistry is that you guys have. Obviously, you guys have incredible chemistry together to be able to pull this off. I'm curious about the title, The Pendulum Swings, if that has anything to do with uh, kind of the history of the band, or maybe I'm reading too much into it. But and I also noticed too that it closes the album, which is unusual. You know a lot of times the title track from an album will be the opener, but in.

9:20 Speaker 2: This case it's it's the closer.

9:22 Speaker 1: But but tell me about that, and tell me about why you chose the title the Pendulum Swings.

9:28 Speaker 4: It was really the title of the song because it just felt like something relevant to time when I was writing it. Yeah, and Rob liked this for a closer. Yeah, Kevin's good.

9:41 Speaker 3: He often is very good at openers or closers.

9:44 Speaker 2: Yeah, well it matters.

9:46 Speaker 1: I mean, that's you know, the way you sequence the album and that's something people don't don't necessarily think about, but if you, uh, it matters a lot, you know, because you're trying to with an album. You know, you're you're sort of trying to tell a story, even if it's not, even if you don't have really think of it that way, there has to be in order for the album to be cohesive, there has to be a certain flow to how the songs are ordered, so that that matters a lot. But yeah, I do think it's the perfect closer for the album.

10:12 Speaker 1: I did listen to the whole thing, and I really like it. I'm also so, you know, I'm curious about some of these songs. Are these all relatively new or because you guys have been around for so long, or any of these songs that maybe go back to an earlier period of the time period of time.

10:33 Speaker 2: Or did any of them maybe even you.

10:35 Speaker 1: Had recorded before with a vocalist and now we're getting an instrumental version of them. I'm curious about the actual songs that are on the album.

10:44 Speaker 3: Yeah, so it's kind of range of stuff. For instance, some Tears that was a track we were doing when Mike was in the band, So that was an instrumental okay, and also sad songs in Better Days. That one actually had vocals and was one of the last songs we did with Mike vocally as a new song at that time period. And then there's a lot of new songs on the record too, like the Pendulum Swings and Black Pearls and in Another Life Letting Go. They're all relatively new songs. It's really a.

11:14 Speaker 4: Split five relatively older they're reaching back and five relatively new ones as to much more new ones are brand new. Yeah, we did the last three songs on the record after we recorded the first seven, Okay, you just wanted to round it out and spend a little bit more time, so those were brand new.

11:35 Speaker 2: Okay, Okay. I'm also curious about this.

11:39 Speaker 1: So you recorded at minor street recordings in Philadelphia, is that correct?

11:45 Speaker 4: That's right, and you.

11:46 Speaker 1: Worked with this, says Brian mctairr. I hope I'm saying the name correctly. And Amy Morrissey, And I'm really I'm really interested because again, you know, certain genres of bands, you know, they're they're everywhere, but there's not a lot of instrumental bands that do what you do, you know, truly instrumental in terms of this album. What went into deciding to work with them and them deciding to work with you, because I would imagine because this project is unique because it is all instrumentals.

12:15 Speaker 1: You know that probably wasn't you know. It's not like you were throwing throwing darts at Aboard in terms of who you wanted to produce the album, right, Yeah, I'm sure a lot went into this decision to record at Minor Stream Recordings. But tell me about that and how you came to work with Brian and Amy.

12:32 Speaker 3: So, actually this is the second time we've worked with them. We did an EP called Strange Weather, and we recorded that there at Minor Street, although they weren't behind the deck. There was another gentleman there named Jonathan Love who was working out of the studio. But that's we did record in the studio for the six songs. Okay, So it's kind of we really are pleased with the way that EP came out, so it was just a no brainer to go back there again. But this time Amy and Brian were know engineering everything.

13:01 Speaker 3: They're the owners of the studio and we actually just we had our record release party last week in Atlantic City and their band Bitter Bitter Weeks came and played with us, so it was a really great night. But they're just they've done a lot of really great artists in Philly, like people like We're on Drugs, Dead Milkmen, Kurt Vile. They're just like one of the best studios in Philly and in the fish Town area and kind of like we're just very comfortable there and you know, it's.

13:30 Speaker 2: Like home excellent.

13:31 Speaker 1: Yeah, so it was, you know, obviously everyone was happy to work together.

13:36 Speaker 2: That's that's good. Do you think that.

13:37 Speaker 1: I mean, I don't know how far ahead you're thinking. I understand this album is very new. It just came out July tenth, but are you thinking of going back there in the future to work on the next one? It sounds like you guys are always writing, so I assume there's going to be more recording in the future.

13:51 Speaker 3: We have a handful of new things, and I mean.

13:56 Speaker 4: It's time to start working on new stuff. We've been well acquainted with these throughout the recording process and playing them live. Yeah, so I'm really ready to start working on some new stuff. Of course, to push this as well.

14:07 Speaker 3: Okay, Yeah, I'd like to ideally I'd like to get in there sooner than later and maybe do like a four song EP, just to rather than try to get a whole new album out, and you know, get something out quickly on the tail of this, because while we're riding, you know, the press wave of this and you know, keep the keep the momentum.

14:25 Speaker 2: Going right right.

14:26 Speaker 1: No, that makes sense. That makes sense. So I have not asked you the obvious question yet. I try not to open the interview with the obvious question. But what does the name mean? Dear Darkhead? And I should say too for people who don't know, it's it's one word. It's it's stylized as one word. But what does that mean? Dear Darkhead?

14:45 Speaker 3: Yeah, so when we started the band nineteen eighty eight, we used to rehearse at my house and nobody could do at the time. Nobody could decide, you know, on a name. So I went through all the books. I had this giant book shelf behind my drum kit, and I went through all the books and I literally wrote down like two hundred names, and I would just run through the names, and you know, I just looked through the books and out of context, anything that caught my eye. You know, whether it was a book, an architecture, or airplanes, or the encyclopedia or poetry.

15:16 Speaker 3: I would write down anything that caught my eye, and so I'd read through the list and everybody's like no, no, no no, And I got the Deer to our kid, and everybod raised their hand. I'm like, Okay, that's it. That's the name. We all agree. It was the only name that we all liked, and it's just the It's an Irish poem from like the eighteen hundreds, and it's just like a love poem about a woman with like, you know, a beautiful woman.

15:40 Speaker 4: With dark hair.

15:41 Speaker 3: But we kind of liked it out of context and we wasn't something that wouldn't be like a name that anybody else would come up with. And it actually kind of worked in our benefit because later on when the Internet came about, you know, if you google it, the only two things that come up are that poem and us, so it makes.

15:59 Speaker 4: The need for us to be found.

16:01 Speaker 2: You were ahead of your time in that sense. That's great.

16:04 Speaker 3: Yeah, we pre con you know, we prefigured the Internet.

16:08 Speaker 2: That's awesome. No, that's great.

16:10 Speaker 1: Also, I'm curious to ask you about fertile Cress and Records, because this is a label that you guys, you guys run, correct, this is your label.

16:18 Speaker 3: Yeah, it's just for us to put our own things out. I mean, the last EP came out on a small label in Texas called Saint Marie Records that kind of focused on shoegaze music, but they kind of morphed into a brick and mortar mail order record store, so they stopped putting out records. Okay, so we just decided we shopped it around. And you know, let's be honest, when you've been in a band for thirty eight years in your instrumental shoegates band, it's a tough sell and music industry isn't as strong as it used to be, so we don't really get any bytes.

16:52 Speaker 3: So we put it out ourselves and we're very happy with the way it came out.

16:56 Speaker 1: Absolutely, that's excellent. Yeah, and you know, of course, because it's your own lay, it gives you, you know, total control over everything. That's that's that's excellent. And this is the album too. Obviously it's available digitally. It's on band camp, and you know, I love band camp. I encourage everyone to support band camp and very artist Friendly and so forth on CD. And you've also released this on vinyl, correct.

17:17 Speaker 3: Yeah, just a short run one hundred and eighty grand black vinyl. You know, if we sell out, we'll do another We'll do another run of it. Yeah, you know, there's definitely a We definitely sold more copies of that than we did on the CD at the record release, So there's definitely a h an appetite for vinyl out there.

17:33 Speaker 2: Absolutely. Well.

17:34 Speaker 1: My theory is too, I think a lot of people who purchase vinyl never actually play it. They I think that I think that a lot of people purchase vinyl because if you're a fan, you know, so if you're a big fan of Dear Darkhead, it's cool too. Even if you don't have a record player at home, it's cool to just have it, you know. And and you know, I've seen people, you know, they they'll mount the the album covers on the wall or something, whether the actual record is left in.

17:57 Speaker 2: It or not.

17:58 Speaker 1: But but yeah, Vinylly is the resurgence of vinyl. And of course it never actually went away, which is something people don't realize. But the incredible resurgence of it, you know, that's happened in the last several years is amazing, and and physical media in general too. You know, CDs people are still releasing CDs. A lot of people thought those would be gone by now, you know, by twenty twenty six, but no, CDs are still being released. And I mean, is it important to you guys to have that physical media?

18:26 Speaker 1: I mean, obviously vinyl nothing sounds better than vinyl, But is that something that's important to you guys? And was there ever a point, because again, you guys have been around a while, was there ever a point where you guys said, yeah, we're just gonna release things digitally for right now, because that seems to be because if we were having this conversation ten years ago, that seemed to be where everything was going. And you know, it turned out again physical media is still very important. But has that always been important to you guys or was there ever a point over your career where you thought, nah, maybe we will just release things digitally.

18:59 Speaker 3: I'd say that, but we've always put out physical media. I think it's important to have physical media. I think one of the biggest issues is like, if you're the Beatles, nobody worries about that record disappearing.

19:10 Speaker 4: Like digitally or physically.

19:11 Speaker 3: But if you're a smaller band, like how many times have you gone to Spotify or any streaming site and something you was listening to is no longer on there right If you don't have a physical copy of it, it disappears. So I would encourage people if you like something from a band that's maybe not as you know, big as the Beatles, you might want to purchase the record and it's just nice to have a physical you know, keepsake of that, whether you went to a show or I worked in a record store. So I'm a little biased, and you know, so I'm a bit of a record junkie, So yeah, I'm a little biased.

19:44 Speaker 3: We've always done physical media, and I think it's I think you see people like to support bands when they go to the show, and I just think that's the way to go. Digital is nice, but it's kind of like it's kind of it's just kind of people. I think, what tangible experiences?

20:02 Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah, you know.

20:04 Speaker 1: When I was growing up, I always loved looking at especially if I was a really big fan of an artist, looking at liner notes, and you know, I would geek out on all that stuff and I was so happy if I opened something up and the lyrics were actually printed in there.

20:16 Speaker 2: I was in heaven, So yeah, I absolutely get that.

20:20 Speaker 1: By the way, So you brought up a really interesting point too, as many conversations as I've had about this very subject on the show, something no one's ever brought up before. But it's a fantastic point. If you are depending only on digital media, You're right. You know, something that's on Spotify today for whatever reason, might not be there tomorrow.

20:36 Speaker 2: Maybe the artist or the label or.

20:38 Speaker 1: Somebody decides to pull it off of Spotify for some reason, or you know, something happens that causes it to disappear. And if that's where you were depending on, if that's the platform you were depending on to get that particular release, and now it's gone and you don't have a you don't have a physical copy of it, well now you've got to go digging. You know, maybe it's on YouTube, maybe it's not.

20:57 Speaker 2: You know.

20:58 Speaker 1: So that's a really great point that you brought up. And so the one thing you can depend on if you have a physical copy of something is that you have it and it's never going anywhere and no one can take it away from you.

21:09 Speaker 4: Absolutely, your friends might steal our records. But yeah, maybe they weren't friends anyway exactly. So what's more, it just proves that they were friends with better musical taste than you thought.

21:22 Speaker 2: Well, there you go, class af full.

21:24 Speaker 4: You know this record, yes, and hang it on your walls. They make great artwork, just like you said earlier.

21:30 Speaker 1: So circling back just quickly to the live aspect, do you guys playing a lot of shows? I would imagine you're you're doing shows to uh, to support the album, But what's what's that like?

21:39 Speaker 2: What's your touring schedule?

21:40 Speaker 3: Like?

21:40 Speaker 1: Right now, we've just got.

21:43 Speaker 3: We just finished this record release party. We don't really have anything lined up at the moment. We're kind of taking at the time, regroup, work on some new material, and then book a bunch more shows. So you know, we kind of do it we can. It's not our We don't do this as a full time thing. It's more of a life and we've been at it for a long time. The longevity is sort of our goal for success and being able to do what we want. So we try to play when we can fit it around our schedules and whatnot, But we do spend a lot of time on it and we try to do it to the best level that we can do and get ads to as many people as we can.

22:17 Speaker 3: We'd love to play anywhere.

22:19 Speaker 2: Absolutely excellent, excellent in a moment.

22:22 Speaker 1: Well, we're going to play another track from the album at the end of our conversation, but before we start to wrap up, And by the way, I want to thank both of you very much for joining us today. This has been a wonderful conversation. Rob Wis and Kevin Harrington of course from the band Dear Darkhead. But let me ask you this, where is the best place? Well, as we discuss, it's very easy to google you, but where's the best place for people to go online to keep up with everything that Dear Darkhead is doing.

22:50 Speaker 3: So deardarkhead dot com. If you go there you can get to all our social media and streaming platforms pretty much sets the the main place to get get our stuff. But we're on all the you know, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, whatever. But if you go to our website gear at arkhead dot com, it has all the latest news and links.

23:11 Speaker 2: To other places outstanding, outstanding.

23:14 Speaker 1: Well, okay, so one more question, guys, I'm going to kind of put you on the spot here, what song I'm gonna let you pick? I did open today with I played the Pendulum Swings and I played Letting Go. I was able to sneak into what song should I play at the end of our conversation from the album I'll let you guys pick.

23:33 Speaker 2: Told you I was going to put you on the spot. I know, right, my children, exactly exactly.

23:40 Speaker 4: How about sad songs in better days?

23:43 Speaker 1: Sad songs and better days? Let's see, let me just make sure yep, there it is boom, all right. Any particular reason for is does a song anything we should know about it? Any any particular meaning that we should know about? And why you chose the song.

24:00 Speaker 4: This one because of the energy. It always has a great live presentation.

24:06 Speaker 3: Okay, perfect, It's just yeah, it's just got.

24:09 Speaker 4: Good energy to it.

24:10 Speaker 2: Perfect.

24:11 Speaker 3: And this one was, as I said, this one used to have vocals. It was like the last the last song we did vocally with our old singer.

24:18 Speaker 1: Oh okay, interesting, gotcha? Okay, Well, so we will close our conversation with that. We're gonna hit that track Sad songs in Better Days. But again, Rob and Kevin, guys, thank you so much. It sounds like you've got a lot of good stuff coming up, so we will definitely do this in the future again, and congratulations on the album and I'm sure we'll talk again soon.

24:39 Speaker 4: Thank you very much.

24:40 Speaker 3: Thank you for having us.

24:41 Speaker 4: We really appreciate it.

24:42 Speaker 2: All right, anytime, guys, Thank you, Take care, Bye.

24:44 Speaker 4: Bye, ye bye bye.

24:46 Speaker 2: All right.

24:46 Speaker 1: That was Rob Wise and Kevin Harrington from the band Dear Darkhead. And let's give this a spin. This is from the new album and again it just came out July tenth, very new. This is called Sad Songs in Better Days