Dog is the first track to be completed for a new 6-track CD i’m releasing in September called The Phantom Pains EP. It features me on piano, farfisa and vocals, Carlos Adura and Nick Weaver of Deep Sea Arcade on drums and bass, and Lisa Mitchell on guest vocals.
Writing Dog was a turning point for me. I think it marks the moment I began moving away from concept-based, production heavy songwriting and towards a more naturalistic approach. Let me give you the story.
I’d just come off a long tour with Lisa Mitchell, who was taking her first steps towards becoming a bona fide star of the Australian music industry. I was supporting on that tour, just doing a solo set for about 30 minutes before Lisa each night. I usually really enjoy being the support act because the expectations on you are so low that really you’ve got nothing to lose. And to boot, Lisa’s audiences were very warm and open.
At the very beginning of this tour (which was a run of over twenty shows) Lisa cut her index finger very badly. With the gash on her pointer, Lisa couldn’t play guitar. When her management got word they nearly had a heart attack; it was only the second show of the run and Lisa was couldn’t play for the pain of it. It was a very nasty slice (and i am all too familiar with cut hands, which is partly the inspiration behind the new album cover art… more on that later) After one miserable, Codeine-assisted show that left blood on the fret-board, it was obvious an alternative solution was needed, which is where I stepped in.
I got on really well with the bass player Jan (pronounced Yarn) the drummer Rob, and Lisa, which comprised Lisa’s touring trio, and they suggested maybe I could play piano in lieu of the guitar parts Lisa would normally play. It was a convenient solution for both of us; they would have a harmonic instrument, and I would have something do to each night other than just sit around and drink beer. I was very happy to be invited. The first show I played with them was in Ballarat, at the same club where a year beforehand I’d had the incident that would lead to me writing the song Small Town Arsehole.
Jan, the bass player, wrote out all the chords to Lisa’s songs on ledger paper before we went on stage that first night. I put them in a pile on my keyboard and, with the help of Jan calling out sections to me as we went, played through them for the first time on stage. What struck me first was the simplicity of the chords and rhythms and the song structures. It was all really straightforward, but yet it made for really good songs. It was a valuable lesson. For years I’d consciously avoided being that simple in my song writing for fear that I would seem formulaic. I had believed that inventiveness necessarily required a degree of complexity; otherwise what credibility would I have? But playing these songs, made up of three or four basic chords, a basic rhythm, and a simple structure came like an epiphany to me. They felt natural, unpretentious, and because I wasn’t straining my brain to keep up with it, it was actually fun to play, rather than an intellectual exercise, which meant it also sounded better. I began to see why Lisa’s songs worked: it wasn’t because she was behaving like a virtuoso or the songs were epic; they were just natural, and simple enough to let genuine emotion shine through. There was an honesty and strength in the simplicity. As an engineer might say, they were structurally sound. I really learned a lot from playing those songs. I should also mention that Lisa is a very talented lyricist, and the clarity of the songs meant that her lyrics, which are poetic and thoughtful and personal, were allowed space to breathe.
It was a few months after that tour that I wrote Dog. Lisa was on another tour at the time; her star was truly on the rise and she was selling out venues around the country that were many times larger than the shows we had played together. I was thrilled that Lisa, who is a sweet heart, was doing so well. I would read bits and pieces in the newspaper about her exploits; a song on a film or advertisement, an overseas tour, an album featured on Triple J radio, all that sort of thing.
I recorded a demo of Dog on a pump organ that sits in my parents’ house and which I often return to play on. My folks restored it years ago and it’s a wonderful thing to play. You pull out the stops to get the sound you want, then you pump your feet up and down on pedals to push air through the bellows and make the instrument literally sing (I always liked the idea that an organ sings like a voice does. Each bellow is like a throat).
It just seemed to me even at that time like Lisa should sing on the track. I could hear her voice. The demo itself became the first of the new songs I sent through to my manager. I sent it through and said: “I’m starting work on a new album, and I think it’s going to sound something like this.”
I recorded it with the band during that day in April that was intended to only be a “demo day”, a kind of dry run to see if the arrangements that Carlos and Nick and I had written would work when recorded. Most of what we did on that day was of a standard worthy of more than just a ‘demo’ and we kept a lot of what we recorded then, including Dog.
Shortly after this session I got a call, coincidentally, from Lisa Mitchell. Lisa said she was playing a (sold out) show at The Enmore Theatre in Sydney, and wanted to know if I would like to sing a song on stage during the encore with her and another beautiful singer named Lanie Lane. They had put together a brilliant, folksy arrangement of Madonna’s “Like a Prayer”, and had kept a verse and a harmony for me to sing. Needless to say, I jumped at the opportunity. The night of the Enmore show I trundled on stage, played the piano, sang the song with them and had a great old time. It was just astounding; only a year earlier Lisa and I had played to 200 people at the Hopetoun Hotel, just across the road from my place. Here I was, on stage with Lisa again, but this time she was playing The Enmore in front of 2000 people. Backstage in the green room there was a wall lined with commemorative plaques to hand out to people: “Lisa Mitchell: Wondertown” with the number of record sales emblazoned below. The room was filled with dozens of record industry types; swanning around, schmoozing, enjoying the success.
After the show I played Lisa the Dog demo and we decided it would be nice to sing on it together.
To cut a long story short, I had no idea how we were going to make it happen. She is a very busy musician, touring around the country and the world. Management aren’t usually much help: “no time” is usually their response to anything outside of their own agenda. So it was serendipity, I believe, when I called Lisa up two weeks later, and she happened to be staying in a hotel literally a block from where I live. She had an hour free that afternoon, so she came around, we had some tea, I put up a microphone, and together we wrote her vocal part for the recording of Dog, which was essentially complete except for her contribution. It was pure joy. We moved so quickly on it, because time was pressing down on us, but between her and I, the ideas flowed. With me at the controls and Lisa at the microphone we captured something pretty magical, I think. A hug and a kiss goodbye, and Lisa went off again on the breeze.
The song itself, if you want to know, is about what Winston Churchill used to call his black dog. You might also call it the blues, or the doldrums. I prefer to use any term other than the clinical one, depression, because I find the word itself to be altogether too condemning and very unfashionable.
This song is from a very difficult conversation I had with my girlfriend. Explaining to somebody that you are in an emotional or spiritual funk can be tough.
-Andy
