Interview with The Dear & Departed vocalist Dan Under and bassist David Williams
The Dear & Departed are Simon O'Gorman (guitar), Darren Parkinson (guitar), Dan Under (vocals), Joel Bourne (drums), David Williams (bass)
Every now and then a band comes along that you just know is going to become something special. AFI, My Chemical Romance and HIM would be recent examples. Add The Dear & Departed to the list. The band's roots are in Australia and New Zealand, but after landing in the US, the lads quickly gained bands such as AFI and Avenged Sevenfold as fans, with both bands taking them out on tour before they had even released their debut album. The Dear & Departed vocalist Dan Under even sang background vocals on much of AFI's 2006 album 'Decemberundergound'. However, now that the bands debut album 'Something Quite Peculiar' is in stores nationwide, the band is ready to stand tall on it's own and fulfill their own destiny. I hooked up with Dan, along with bassist David Williams during the Warped Tour, where the band is currently kicking all kinds of ass. I hung out with the guys for quite some time before and after their set and I can honestly say that they are some of the nicest and most down to earth people in the entire music industry. On top of that, the album is pretty damn amazing! You might as well get in on the ground floor and find out about the band that everyone will be talking about in a few months...
Anarchy Music: The Dear & Departed is an overnight success story that took a long time to come, right?
Dan Under: Yeah, basically. That's a good way of putting it, I think. We definitely still have a long, long way to go. I think it's a good thing to be playing the Warped Tour, but we definitely have a lot more ahead of us, for sure. We're lucky to have some amazing people on our team and I think it all comes down to people, you know what I mean. Having good people around and good people sticking together means you're already successful in my book.
Anarchy: You did have a long road to get here though. You changed countries! What brought you to the US?
Dan: It was a combination of a few things. it was just getting stale in a place that's a lot smaller than here It was not so much that it was a dream to come here, just circumstance made it that we came here. We felt like we did all we could do in the countries where we're from, both on a musical level and a personal level. Everybody in the band is pretty similar in that we always want more and we're always struggling and struggling to get more and do better for ourselves. It was a mixture of a lot of things. Obviously, for the band there's a lot more people here. I don't want to say that it's easier to be a band, but when you're touring you can be out for a lot longer and there's more of a chance that a lot of people will hear your music.
Anarchy: There's no Warped Tour equivalent there?
Dan: They tried the Warped Tour there in 1997, I think, and again in 2000. With the exchange rate and everything, it's a lot of money to take the equipment and bands and everything over there.
Anarchy: One of the things about Warped is that some people come here specifically to discover new bands. Have you guys experienced much of that?
Dan: Yeah, I think it has to a degree. I think a lot of people though are coming because it's the Warped Tour. A lot of the bands that are playing get overlooked. For a lot of kids it's the whole day event of " let's put food coloring in our hair and pain ourselves green and go to the Warped Tour".
Anarchy: But what's the reaction been from people who haven't heard you before? You guys did a lot of touring before anyone could even buy a cd from you.
Dan: We're very lucky to have toured with the bands that we have and have had their fans welcome us with open arms. AFI especially. They have without a doubt the best fans in the world, the most devoted and coolest kids. For them to appreciate us in the way that they do, we can't ask for anything more.
David Williams: I think that we've had a delayed reaction because of our tours before where we didn't have a cd out. I think it's great that people have been patient and still come out to see us. It's reflective in the fact that we've sold albums on this tour, whereas before we only had a sampler out.
Anarchy: Dude, how do you get to tour with AFI and Avenged Sevenfold with only a sampler?
David: (joking) They are intelligent people and they know what they are doing.
Anarchy: Ah, They know the next big thing when they hear it, huh?
David: In a nutshell, yes!
Dan: They are trying to cash in before we really blow up and they want to be the bands to say "I told you so". Nah, I think that, like a lot of things, good people sticking together. We're just honest guys doing what we love and nowadays there's a whole lot of the opposite. AFI and Avenged Sevenfold have just done their thing from Day 1. They've done what they love and done what's in their hearts and they probably see the same thing in us.
Anarchy: You mentioned AFI's fans. From your guest vocals on Decemberunderground, did you have their fans coming over to check out the band?
Dan: Yeah, yeah, we have. That's definitely cool. I have nothing against liking us just because certain bands endorse us, but at the end of the day we are a different band and I'd like to think that they go home and listen to our cd If they find something in our music that they truly like then that's what we're going to be happy about. Its the age old thing. That's how I got into bands was seeing a band wear a shirt or noticing a pin on a jacket.
Anarchy: Chris Vrenna produced your album. Anytime he produces anything it makes people want to hear that band. What was it like working with a guy who's going to go down as a legend?
Dan: It was a dream come true, really. It came as a huge shock at a time when we needed a bit of a pick-me-up. We worked really hard writing songs and were booked with a producer and then a week before we were supposed to start, he cancelled. When you're a young band money is a huge object, unfortunately. Working with someone like Chris Vrenna is not really on your scale. It's like, it would be great if we had five records out or some heavy backing from a label, but we didn't have that. He's a great, great guy and we are so stoked that we could've worked with him and I know that he will be a big part of everything that we're going to be doing from now on.
Anarchy: When he walks into a studio, does his hair blow in the wind while a halo of light shines behind him?
David: Yeah, he shoots lightning bolts out of his eyes!
Anarchy: That sounds crazy, I know, but do you get that sort of feeling working with him?
David: I remember we were at his home studio and I found this little Korg sample machine and it brought back some memories of my sister and I when we were about 13, trying to reprogram some of the drum sounds from 'The Downward Spiral'. I picked up the thing and was talking with him about it. It was a very, very surreal experience. There's just so much that he knows that you just can't put a price on. We were very privileged.
Anarchy: We were talking about fans getting into the band on it's own merits. With a band like yours, that has dark and personal sounding lyrics, people will tend to want to know about the people behind the lyrics. What do you care to share about what goes into the lyric writing? Is it just writing cool songs or is it more like pouring out your heart?
Dan: I'd say personally, it's more pouring my heart out. We've had an interesting story. We've had a long, long journey and between everybody I think we've basically experienced all that there is to experience in life. My life is all I know how to sing about. I definitely have respect for some lyricists that are a little bit more abstract and more poetic, but as far as I'm concerned I just sing about what I feel. I sing about experiences and dreams and being let down, the usual.
Anarchy: That's too bad then because the next album will be all about getting rich and famous.
Dan: (laughs) Yeah
Anarchy: You definitely have a unique sound, but I can pick out pieces of about 50 different potential influences. What are some of the bands that inspired this sound?
Dan: We've had people come up to us and say that we sound like these really obscure bands that makes us really happy. We've also had kids come up telling us that we sound like a lot of the bands on this tour, which bums us out a lot. So it really depends on the person asking the question and what they're into and what they've been through. Music is just the soundtrack to your life and you take from it so many different things. You would take something from our music that's completely different from a 16 year old girl who still lives at home. Between all of us, we definitely have a lot of different influences. The one thing I can say is that we're all of English decent, so the whole English sound is pretty apparent.
David: I'm Welsh.
Dan: Welsh... the whole UK sound. I grew up listening to New Order and Spandau Ballet and Tears For Fears and The Jam and The Buzzcocks and stuff that my dad listened to. That's probably pretty evident. The other guys are pretty similar to some degree. Of course, we've all grown up and got into a lot of punk rock and heavier stuff. You end up just going back to what's really in your blood, what's inside you, despite what phases you go through.
Anarchy: I definitely think that you have what it takes to be a very big band. When millions of people are buying the record, what are you hoping that people take away from your songs?
Dan: That's a funny question because I guess when millions of people are buying a record, a lot of those people are buying it for different reasons. A lot of them buy it because it's the cool thing to buy, or because I saw him buy it, her buy it. I don't know if I'm dreaming or not, but I just want people to be into our music for the right reasons. Just feeling something for music. These days there's so much emphasis on money and a gimmick. It's like yeah, the music is one thing and you're a band doing this thing, but the whole money, sponsorship and label is such a nightmare to us. It's something that we just don't give a shit about and never will. Maybe I'm being ignorant to that, but I just want kids to listen to it and feel it and act on it.
David: We're not really the kind of band that pays attention to that kind of thing. We just do what comes naturally. People only take from music what they want anyway.
Dan: In this day and age, what can you really do to convince people that you're a certain way or not. They're just going to take it as it comes, anyway.
Anarchy: There's only so much space in the 'About Me' section of Myspace.
Dan: Exactly. I feel if we're just being ourselves and we're just being honest guys doing what we love, no one can really fault us for that. That's the essence of what music is. It's about expressing yourself from a situation that's happened to you or a social status. Being condemned by something or liberated by something, that's what music is. That's why all the music from 20, 30, 40 years ago was so different. They were actually singing about something that was going on in their world. Nowadays it's so over saturated with advertising and people don't really get to experience anything anymore. Every band here is singing about breaking up with a girl. There's a little bit more to life than that, you know?
Anarchy: When Warped Tour is over, what happens next for the band?
Dan: We go home for a little bit. We have most of August off. We have a tour with Within Temptation. Then we're going to be coming back with Saosin and our friends Alexisonfire. It looks like we're going to be pretty busy for the rest of the year, which is good.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I want to thank our new friends Dan and David for the interview and tell each and every person reading this to check out The Dear & Departed on Myspace and TheDearAndDeparted.com for more info! This is a rare occasion where not only does the band have the songs to make it big, but they are good people as well! Support this band!