In February I had the chance to speak with
Runaway Dorothy's Dave Parnell ahead of the release of their latest album, The Wait. See
what he had to say about his musical style, the band's second album, and
performing in New York City's subways.
E: The album's sound is sparse and, while I respect that you
chose to let the songs stand by themselves rather than stuffing them full of
theatrics, why did you decide you wanted to make this style of music?
Dave
Parnell: Stylistically, I guess, it's kind of new for me; I've always been into
rock bands and full production stuff and layered [tracks] and I like the idea
of that, but sometimes it can overshadow what the song is doing. I've always
created with [the] unsung philosophy of simplicity upon simplicity upon
simplicity: almost like a symphony kind of thing, where you have your violin in
one part and your cellos in one little part but, when you start bringing it
together, they complement each other. The guys I have in the band are such good
musicians, if I'm just like "go, do whatever you want" they really
could be so technically proficient; they're also smart enough to know that what
they do helps move the song forward
I got obsessed with a band called The Jayhawks, just with their
arrangements and stuff; I was just like, that is so melodically beautiful [and]
catchy, with every instrument they did. It wasn't just that the vocal melodies
were so melodic, it was the guitar parts and the bass lines and anything they
did with the keys; everything seemed to push the song forward.
E:
So, what was the first band you played in?
DP: The first band I played in was like this U2, bad.. I mean,
they were a good band, we just sounded like a bad U2 cover band.
E:
You recorded Runaway Dorothy's debut album by yourself; was it important for
you to see how everything came together, musically, before you brought anyone
else in?
DP: I had just moved to New York from Charleston, South Carolina
and written a bunch of demos and put them together in my apartment and sent
them to my friend who was still living in North Carolina. He was driving around
in his car one day and I get this phone call from him [saying] "what are
you doing; you need to go record these immediately" and, at this point,
I'd been in bands before, but I'd never been 'the guy': the guy who had to
coordinate everything and who had to make all the decisions. So [my friend] was
like "I'm going to call the studio now and I'm going to set it up for you.
You're just going to fly out to Missouri to work with this producer I know;
he's going to take care of everything and I'll come out and join you". So,
like, three months later I get a call; everything's booked and I'm flying out
of New York City to the middle of Missouri and I'm working with this guy I've
never met before but in ten days we're going to finish this album, and that's
kind of what happened. My best friend who lives in North Carolina flew out and
he, Oran -the producer-, and myself kind of banged out the perfect album in
about ten days.
Now
that I think about it, probably yes [it was important] because, at that point,
I had been in bands and I'd had roles in bands where I was writing; there's
always this camaraderie around a band of people being able to check you and
[say] "that's not very good" or "let's work on that" and in
this situation, even if it was bad, I could pull the trigger and say
"let's do that". I went and did this and by the time I got done with
it I [could] trust myself a lot more in my decision making. Then I was able to
bring in the band and kind of become more of a leader, because I knew what I
wanted going in: I could hear the sound, kind of in my head, and it was just
learning the language of moving it from there to the recording. I think having
that first album where I kind of had to do all of it, when I brought in other
people I was able to communicate to them what I was looking for.
E:
How did you decide who to bring into the band, aside from your brother, after
completing the first album?
DP: My
friend and I started the band and we started with two other guys I'd never even
met. I was living in New York, he was living in North Carolina [and] whenever
we toured I would just fly down to meet them and we'd rehearse for a week and
then go out [and perform] and we did that for about a year, where we would go
back and forth. We were doing pretty well but then I started getting more shows
in the Northeast and it became more difficult for them to travel [but] I was
living with my brother at the time and he's pretty much the best guitar player
I've ever met so I was like "I'm going to have you fill in on these gigs
for me". Then the bass player that was living in North Carolina decided to
move: he graduated from college and was ready to get out of the state so he
moved to New York; so then I had three fourths of the band here. I was helping
a buddy of mine on a project that he was working with and I kind of stole him
and, before I knew it, I had bumped into all these people that were musically
on the same page as I was and [I] just kind of beg and stole them into Runaway
Dorothy.
E:
Was the songwriting for 'The Wait' a group effort?
DP: I
still do all the songwriting. The way I kind of do it is I go off on my own,
write the songs, and then I usually do a little demo in my apartment of the
song, send it out to the guys early in the week, before we have rehearsal, and
kind of let them get the song in their ear and then I'll call them and say
"I know I want this, I know I want that, and I kind of hear this guitar
part" and then I usually whistle the melody and then I give it to them and
trust what they do with their instruments. I don't give them too much direction
because I don't want them just to be doing exactly what I'm saying. [I] give
them enough to where it kind of puts them in the direction and then just let
them go do what they want; I can always say "well, no let's do it this
way".
Our
new guitar player is such a great guy and great player that I don't want to
hinder him in any way; like we came up with this song called "Desperation":
I've had it for awhile but it never really was working and I brought it into
rehearsal and he started playing this guitar part and I was like, "that's
nice but I want it a little more playful. It's gotta have this kind of vibe to
it" and in three seconds he knew exactly what I was talking about and [the
song] took on this new life that I never expected. I kind of like to give them
a little direction and then get out of their way for a little bit; let them
make their own arrangements because, really, each person in the band has their
biggest strong-suit and I think mine is bringing the songs to the band. Our
bass player, Warren, is such a great singer: he has this ear for melody and
harmony and he helps us work out everything vocally that we're doing. And my
brother went to Yale for classical music; his arrangement skills are just
insane. He can hear everything in small pieces and make sure no one is stepping
on each other's parts.
E:
You said your bass player has a great voice; does he sing on this album?
DP: He
actually doesn't do any [singing] on the new album. We're working on this third
album now, kind of in secret, and we kind of feature him a lot more on [the
third] album. On the first album I did like ninety percent of the vocals and
brought in a little bit of harmony and then we started exploring with a lot
more, almost like Mumford & Sons, with lots of three and four part
harmonies. Everybody in the band has to sing and I know a lot of stuff on our
newest album is going to feature a lot of it too, but we let him [Warren] have
his moment to shine on a lot of the stuff live because he has an incredible
voice.
E:
What inspired the album's lead single, "Give Me A Reason"?
DP: I
was obsessed with Oasis when I was a kid: I loved the idea of having your
brother in the band -I definitely hit with that- and I loved their song "Wonderwall"
and I wanted to write almost like an alt-country version of
"Wonderwall". A lot of songs on the album are reflections of
relationships that -specifically one or two- didn't work out for some reason or
another and "Give Me A
Reason" is kind of this apology song. It's this guy who is
dating someone who is really good for him but he's such a volatile, crazy
person that, at any moment, he's just going to run out the door and it's like
he's pleading with the person he's with like, "tell me to stay. Tell me a
reason to stay here with you and I'll do it, otherwise I'm probably going to go
and you might not ever see me again". It's kind of this weird romantic way
of him trying to tell the person that "I know you're good for me and I
know this is going to be great, but I have such crazy tendencies of running
away that you just have to step in and put your foot down".
E:
Is there a particular song from The
Wait which
you're most proud of?
I
think one of my favorites on the album is the very last song, "The Ballad of
a Dead Man". As far as story-telling quality, it's the most
unlikely that I think I've written because, when I look back at writing it, it
doesn't even make any sense to me like, this is not anything I would do. I was
living in a friend's basement for about six weeks; we were working on some
recording stuff and [the basement] got no sunlight and all he had was this
massive T.V. - I mean, it was probably five feet by five feet- so that was the
only light and [the T.V.] would always be left on. So I remember waking up one
day and National Geographic or one of those channels was playing a serial
killer documentary and I [thought] it would be interesting if I could write a
song about a serial killer; I didn't want to glorify that in any way but I
wanted to figure out a cool way that we could empathize with someone who had to
murder somebody. I got the idea of the story and created it and, little by
little, I started filling in the holes; like I would write a little bit of the
first verse and then a little bit of the last verse and then it kind of met in
the middle. All of the melodies - I have no idea where they came from, I was
just hearing it in my head - I finished it all in a matter of minutes and I
kind of put it away because I was like "it's not really catchy [or] upbeat
and we're never going to play it live". I didn't think I would ever record
[the track] but, when it came time to do the second album, I was like
"alright, we're putting it on the album".
I
don't know that there's a special meaning behind it. Usually, whenever I play
that song for friends, I give them a twenty minute introduction of what the
back story of the song is; one of my goals in life is to write a novel that is
the back story to that song: the last page of the novel is sort of the first
note of the song. I think a lot of the themes on this album kind of deal with
making tough decisions and heartbreak in a way that's not a traditional
heartbreak and I think that, just the way the song parallels to my life in that
I've had loss and how I'm dealing with it, and kind of how the main character
feels, I guess, because the song is told from the perspective of a little boy,
it fits on this album.
E:
Do you have a favorite song to perform live?
DP:
Right now we just brought in this song called "Desperation"
which is not on the first album; not on the second; it's from the third album.
The song should not be fun, it's about sad things that are hidden inside this
happy, up-tempo song but, just the way everybody in the band sort of plays
their parts, [this song] feels the most cohesive to the band.
E:
Now that the band has been together for a while, would you say it has hit its
sweet spot?
DP: I
think so. I'm surprised every time I go in to do a rehearsal or to do shows
[by] how comfortable everyone is on stage with each other and we can go into
little tangents and everybody follows everybody else and I kind of catch myself
sometimes listening to the band and being like "I would listen to this
band, I really like this". It makes me happy to know that putting in that
work and somehow finding the right people to be in the band has paid off.
E:
Have any fun stories from performing on the subway platforms in New York City?
DP: Honestly, it's one of the most fun times I've ever had
playing. When you live in New York or when you're going on tour, you're going
to places and you're trying to convince people to come see you play. The long
and short of it is like "I'm here; come see us play" and you almost
feel like a really bad advertisement so when you go [to the show] and people
show up, you're in a good mood; but when you go and people don't show up you're
like "man, we just drove all this way and no one cares" so it can
kind of take away from the thing you wanted to do to begin with: I just want to
show up and play music.
So we started doing this thing where we would rehearse on Friday
and then, at the end of rehearsal, pack up and do the rest of our rehearsal in
the subway. We were working on our harmonies and wanted to make sure what we
were doing was really working. It was kind of like boot camp for our band. You
have to stand really close together to hear each other and you have to be extra
good when you're playing or people won't care and they won't listen.
We started playing the subway to see who would react to [our
music] and we were doing it at rush hour on a Friday, when New Yorkers should
not care, but we were finding people were stopping and listening and it wasn't
just the people we thought it would be either, it was all over the board: I
couldn't come up with a better demographic.
We had
this one time - this is probably the most amazing experience I ever had - this
super elderly Chinese grandmother came through - she had heard the music and
clearly just come from the grocery store and did not speak a word of English -
she came through and gave us two of her oranges that she had just bought from
the grocery. Now, that's pretty cool, because we connected even though she had
no idea what we were talking about; we brought her joy with our music and it
was the best kind of response that we could get.
E:
You've made some mentions of your third album; have you chosen a direction for
the next album?
DP:
Yeah, it's more [of a] reflection of our live set: the first album was more of
a singer-songwriter type album and the second was an expansion on that, but the
third is what it's like here; just five guys together in a room playing off
each other. It's stripped down and we're sort of following The
Strokes philosophy, that you don't do anything in the song that can't be
performed live, and the tracks sort of take on that live energy.
E:
Is there anything you want to say to your fans about the album or your music in
general?
DP:
Just, thank you for listening. A lot of the songs are written for selfish
reasons, like I have to get it out, but our connection to people, because of
those songs, has been really great. [I] get messages from people every couple
of weeks that say "thank you for writing this song; it helped me get
through this", and I just think that's great because I almost didn't write
the song.
Make
sure to check out the band in the links below and grab their sophomore album, The Wait, now for sweet alt-country tracks
you can listen to on repeat.
YouTube
SoundCloud
- E
