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Dexter talks about the New Album [Part 2] (Web Dude)
[D]So I‘ll just start playing some of these demos for you right now and we‘ll just talk about them as it goes along. Wow, do you feel special?[Begins Playing Demo]
[WD]: OK…I heard this a couple of months ago…what did you call this part? The kind of urgent part?
[D]: Oh, you mean the superfreak part.
[WD]: Yeah. [laughs] This song is rad. It has a lot of cool transitions.
[D]: Yeah. This one‘s pretty cool. I like the groove in this part a lot.
[WD]: Yeah. Simple, but really powerful.
[D]: Yeah, so when we demo songs we pretty much pick the good parts and get rid of the bad parts. Anyways, so that could be a good one. Did you here that part in the beginning where it sounds like a 1,000 people singing backups? I wanted it to sound really big, the idea was to take a back up part and make it sound like a stadium singing it. So Higgins tried to simulate it on a computer and kind of make it sound like a soccer stadium kind of thing and I thought that would be really cool. Especially if we played live at festivals and stuff. It would be rad because it would already sound like that. So a few months ago we thought since we were doing these festivals in England that we could actually ask the crowd to do the part. So when we were in Reading, in England, I actually stopped the set and said, “You guys wanna‘ sing on our new record?“ And actually we had them sing that part. I said I‘d sing it and then you guys sing it and there were like 60,000 people who sang that part.
[WD]: Oh, so you guys recorded it.
[D]: Yeah, I can‘t wait to put that on. That‘ll be cool.
[WD]: So will you have to list album credits to each of the 60,000 people and have a 200 page CD booklet?
[D]: [laughs] We were going to hand them all waiver forms on the way out the door. Let me play you a really punk one here…called ‘Never Gonna‘ Find Me‘.
[Continues To Play Demo]
[WD]: Cool. A very familiar Offspring sound to it.
[D]: Yeah, but with a little twist to it. I mean, what do you do after 6 albums?
[WD]: Yeah, but I think it‘s almost necessary.
[D]: Yeah, I do, too.
[WD]: I mean that Offspring sound defines you guys.
[D]: But if you did a whole album like this people would think we weren‘t trying, so you got to mix it up stuff but at the same time keep things familiar.
[WD]: This would be an awesome live song.
[D]: So that one will be called ‘Never Gonna‘ Find Me‘ although I don‘t have most of the lyrics yet. I think the idea of it is gonna be like …..
[WD]: That could be the sniper song, “Never Gonna‘ Find Me!”.
[D]: [laughs] No, more in like the internal sense, like, you are at your job or school or wherever and you put on the face for the outside world but you are not gonna‘ let anybody in and see the real stuff. There you go…your quota of teenage alienation for the record. But it‘s true and I think it‘s something a lot of people can relate to and I like the idea of calling it ‘Never Gonna‘ Find Me‘. Cuz, it‘s artistic, you know what I mean? [laughs] It‘s not like finding you in the physical real sense, it‘s to find you in the abstract sense.
[WD]: Yes, in the existential sense.
[D]: [laughs] Exactly. OK….so there‘s that one. Let me see what else I got here.
[Plays Demo]
[WD]: [laughs] I really, really like this song. Really cool drums.
[D]: That one isn‘t really finished though. It has a verse and a chorus and an intro, but that‘s about it. There should be something else in there. So it is not finished musically.
[WD]: So in a song like that would you go into the studio and maybe ask the producer for an idea?
[D]: I might. But I‘ve got an idea for a bridge that I might put in, so I might try that. Over the next few weeks I‘m gonna‘ take these demos and I‘m gonna‘ see if I can finish them.
[WD]: So what is a bridge for someone who doesn‘t know?
[D]: Well, sometimes you hear a song and you hear the verse and it does its chorus or whatever and sometimes it‘s good to change it up a little bit in the middle of the song. It‘s like adding a new middle section.
[WD]: So it‘s not redundant or something.
[D]: Yeah, so we do that sometimes and I think that‘s what this song needs. So I‘ll try it out and see if it works and hopefully it will and the song will be done and ready to go.
[WD]: You could add a huge Noodles lead in there.
[D]: [laughs] Yeah. There you go.
[WD]: This is a really cool song. I love the transitions.
[D]: OK….what else do we got in here….
[Plays Next Song]
[WD]: Oh, I think I heard this one in D-13.
[D]: Right now I‘m calling it ‘Give It Up‘. It‘s about a jerk who is all into himself and he thinks all the girls want him.
[WD]: Yeah, this song has a kick ass bass line. It‘s really cool. I like it a lot.
[D]: Yeah, I like it, too. It‘s different. We write tons of songs about fucked up sexual behavior. That‘s a quote right there for ya‘.
[WD]: [laughs] I‘ll just put that as the title for the interview, ‘Plenty of songs about fucked up sexual issues, Dexter talks about the new album‘.
[D]: [laughs]. Yeah. Exactly.
[WD]: Now this song sounds close to being finished.
[D]: Yeah, it needs some lyrics and that is pretty much it. Maybe mess around with the drums a little bit. Have you heard this one?
[Plays new song]
[D]: Kind of a slow rock song that kind of like…well, I like it a lot. I‘ve called it ‘Pass Me By‘. I don‘t know what it‘s going to be about. You got 5 minutes? [laughs]
[WD]: Yeah, I want to check this one out. It sounds like Denial, Revisited a little. It‘s really hard rock with beefy guitars.
[D]: It‘s kind of spooky. I like this lead part a lot. It‘s one of those songs where I‘ve played it for people and they‘ve said maybe you could shorten it or something but I kinda‘ like it the way it is and I figure it‘s not necessarily gonna‘ be on the radio and not all songs need to follow a real strict pop single format. And to a certain degree you‘ve got to let a song write itself.
[WD]: Yeah, there‘s no formula that you just plug stuff into, right?
[D]: Not really, and it just seems like there are spots in that song where it just called for certain things. It‘s a 5 minute song, but I think that it‘s good the way it is.
[WD]: That‘s cool. I like it the way it is.
[D]: Yeah, that seemed like one you‘d like.
[WD]: Cuz I‘m a rocker?
[D]: [laughs]
[Continues to play demo]
[D]: This one is the ‘Worst Hangover Ever‘.
[WD]: I think my friend Holly had the ‘Worst Hangover Ever‘ after the Halloween party. She barfed all day long.
[D]: [laughs] Yeah, she can relate.
[WD]: You know this song sounds really cool especially after the one we just heard. It‘s cool. Is there any way you arrange songs on the album so that they play off each other?
[D]: Sure.
[WD]: This song is loaded up with goodies.
[D]: Sonic morsels.
[WD]: Wow, that‘s a different guitar part there.
[D]: Yeah, the Wah-Wah. It‘s only 2 minutes long but when I wrote it I was like, that one‘s done. It just does it‘s own thing. This next song we are calling ‘The Roof Is Falling‘ for a working title.
[D]: So, I think I‘ve played you all the songs so far.
[WD]: We should maybe let everyone know why you have been going down to San Clemente.
[D]: Yeah, so I‘ve got a demo studio that I go into and record demos. Higgins helps me out.
[WD]: D-13.
[D]: Yeah, here in Huntington Beach. Everyone writes songs in different ways and I write songs not by sitting down and playing guitar so much, but by thinking about stuff and getting away and driving or something. We should talk about my old truck some time where I wrote a whole bunch of stuff. So I decided to just take a break and write a few songs so I actually rented a little house in San Clemente and drove down there everyday. It was like an hour drive each way every day. So I just hung out at the house, went surfing every day. The house was right out by Cotton‘s for anybody who knows surfing. So that was cool. Surfed there a lot. Surfed San Onofre a lot. It was just a great time. A month of just writing songs. It was a blast. I wrote 3 of those songs out of that.
[WD]: What is it about San Clemente that makes it so cool?
[D]: Well, I dunno…I really like Orange County and everything between here and San Diego is beautiful. It‘s just the ocean, the surf, simple things like that.
[WD]: Cool.
[D]: So as far as the record goes we are thinking about getting started maybe in the next few weeks and talking to Brendan (O‘ Brien)...
[WD]: Can I mention that?
[D]: Yeah, I think it‘s OK. I think it would be great if Brendan could do it, but I wouldn‘t want to say that for sure until he says he‘s going to do it. But that‘s a good possibility and we may be getting started before Christmas. And so for now, we are looking at maybe a release early next year. And as I get more lyrics and stuff hopefully it will gel into something that feels like a certain direction.
[WD]: When you guys go into the studio how long are you guys normally in there?
[D]: It‘s taken us about 10 weeks on the last 3 records. So about two and a half months.
[WD]: That‘s 10 weeks of total recording time? And then there is maybe a month or two of preparation before it is released?
[D]: Yeah, we record and as soon as it gets done we go around to places like Europe and do interviews, a lot interviews with people in Europe and here in the U.S. And there‘s a lot of phone time with people in Japan, Australia, and South America and stuff. And then as soon as the record comes out, you are gone, playing shows and touring. And that is cool, it‘s fun and that‘s what it is all about.