Chris: We met on the set of an indie film in Chicago. I was the assistant director and Joe was part of the sound team, as was Steve "Blood" Baldwin, whose legend looms large in our work. The film was not that great, but we grew to be friends after Joe made a Radiohead reference on the set one day that I got and no one else seemed to. We’ve been friends ever since.
Joe: I also ate a cow brain taco on the set of that film, which may have contributed in some way. Most of the time we were either communicating entirely in quotes from the Beatles movie "Help!" or from "Apocalypse Now," which no doubt confused the director to no end.
Chris: As I recall, he got the "Help!" quotes (a band tradition that continues unto this very day), but was kind of lost on some of the more obscure "Apocalypse Now" references. Anyway, one day after the film had wrapped, I was sitting at home watching Taxi Driver on TV and the phone rang. It was Joe asking me to come down to the studio where he worked and help him remix a track for the band he was in then, which was called Evil Genius. The track got stranger and stranger as we worked and we both decided that this was something we should pursue. We got together a couple of weeks later and recorded our first track, which is called “Cranberry Sauce” and is on our first album, Tree Fort.
Kim: Where did you get the name DWLB?
Chris: We were both huge Big Lebowski fans and the name Donny Who Loved Bowling comes from Walter’s eulogy at the end of the movie.
Joe: It's been pointed out that Steve Buscemi's character from "Big Lebowski" is actually named Donnie, not Donny. But with the "y" it just looks better.
Kim: I understand that both of you are living in different locations. How does this work exactly? Do you send each other digital files back and forth?
Chris: You bet we do. One of us will come up with a demo, then post it. As we work on it we post the latest version for the other to make changes.
Joe: In fact, our "Butcher Covers" album came about because we were field-testing that over-the-internet workflow on a bunch of cover tunes and they turned out well enough to release.
Kim: I have noticed several places in your albums where there may be an automatic, transcendental rhythm with a hypnotic beat much like a journey. I would consider this both relaxing and motivational at the same time.
Chris: Thanks! The funny thing about DWLB is that we really don’t discuss that kind of thing--anything that’s transcendental probably results from us NOT talking about it....It’s a pretty strong Collective Unconscious that we share. Anyway, since neither of us is a drummer, we work a lot with drum loops. Our demos also tend to be long grooves that we then edit down and overdub onto, and that can help with creating that trancelike state. And then we both just seem to know when the track is right.
Kim: How would you describe your music?
Chris: Well, we described our first album as “A day-tour through the world of laptops and loops.” Things have changed a little since then, I guess--I end up calling it “abstract instrumental music” when I describe it to people.
Joe: that's good; I'll have to start using that one.
Kim: Who are your influences? What inspires you to create?
Chris: We’ve always taken the tack that anything you listen to influences you--that having been said, we are both big fans of Robert Fripp and Brian Eno’s work, as well as the first four Brian Eno albums; Frank Zappa was and is a big bonding point for us; David Bowie; the Beatles; the 1970s Miles Davis albums; the mid-period Pink Floyd as well.
Joe: "Screeching and Exploding" was a big Motown trip, at least from my point of view. There's a lot of Motown on that record, whether you can hear it or not. Sort of Motown meets late 60's psychedelia.
Chris: Yeah, we found out after we recorded it that in many ways it was a tribute to the things we loved about a lot of 60s records: big chunky rhythm guitar parts, tambourines, "dit dit" background vocals....
Kim: On Screeching & Exploding you made a nice tribute to Bettie Page - Bettie (Were You There?) Can you tell us about this dedication?
Chris: Not wanting to be crass about it, but in addition to the collective unconscious ethic we also seem to be inspired by deaths--my grandfather died right around the time we finished our first album, and some recent deaths in our families have inspired some of the music we’re working on now. We’ve also done memorial tracks for people that inspired us as they passed, and one of those people was Bettie Page. The way that particular track worked was that I recorded a basic track of bass, drums and rhythm guitar and posted it for Joe. He added lead guitar and vocals and did a preliminary mix. In November 2009 I went to Chicago so we could finish Screeching And Exploding and we had our friends Steve and Jodi add the handclaps.
Joe: Bettie is predominantly seen as a sex symbol, which really mystified her. The last 50 years of her life she was very religious, so the "Were You There?" theme is just as important as the slinky groove that's underneath it.
Chris: Absolutely, and that dichotomy was way more interesting that the sex symbol stuff everyone already knew.
Kim: I understand there was a story that at one point your remake of a Pink Floyd song was considered for a movie? Can you tell us about that?
Chris: It was actually considered for a movie ad campaign, not the movie itself....We’d done a version of “Us And Them” when Richard Wright passed away for our friends Vince and Daisy’s radio show and a music placement professional heard it on our myspace page. Nothing came of it, but it was pretty exciting just the same....
Joe: Apparently the Floyd are just fine with their music being used in films, but not in advertisements. So a scene in the film that would have contained "Us And Them" could not be used in the trailer unless the music was changed. So the trailer-editing company went looking for covers. If I remember right, they ended up using a different song altogether.
Kim: Each of your albums are all unique and different, and you have successfully maintained your DWLB signature sound. Can you tell me about each of the albums, and the themes that were represented?
Chris: We don’t really go into each album thinking of a theme or a unified sound, but we have been very lucky in how that’s turned out. Our first album, Tree Fort, had a very “everything but the kitchen sink” kind of approach, because when we started it we had no idea what the finished form would be or if anyone would even hear it besides us. So it’s kind of all over the place, which when I listen to it now is both a strength and a weakness.
Joe: Yup. There's a balance to be struck between "no rules" and "needs focus." But we were finding our feet to a great extent, and trying to find where the edges were.
Chris: Our second album, Butcher Covers, started out as a way to figure out how we were going to collaborate long distance once I’d moved back to Austin. We had some cover versions lying around and decided to make a full-length project out of them, so we came up with a list of other possible covers--songs we felt we could add something to or change up in such a way that listening to our versions would not necessarily call the originals to mind.
For Screeching And Exploding, we really just had a collection of demos that we got together in Chicago to finish--as it turned out some were very close to finished and some we wrote just from a drum track. Once I got to Chicago and we got down to work, the album that had been germinating for about four years came together in five days! There’s much more real instrument playing on Screeching And Exploding than there is on the first album.
Joe: I think if there's a signature sound, it's due to the fact that the same two guys made all of those records, certainly more so than any commonality of instruments or production techniques -- because those things change dramatically from album to album.
Kim: So you are working on a new album now. How may this album be different from your other recordings?
Chris: Playing live has been something we’ve wanted to try, but because of the geography we haven’t been able to accomplish yet. So our next album, which we’ve already decided is going to be called Circus Animals, will evolve from live recordings of the music we’re working on now.
Kim: Tell us about what you have in store for the future.
Chris: World domination ;)
