doleful lions-interview with Jonathan Scott (Nov 2002)
Our second album The Rats Are Coming! The Werewolves Are Here!, really feels more like the Doleful Lions first album than the 2nd, at least thats how i see it. It was the first time I felt like at the end of the process there was something somewhat resembling the sounds in my head on the album. It was tough at the same time though cause we were on a budget and if we had, had the chance we would have done so much more i think. It is all a learning process I guess, with every album we were learning more and more about how records are made, and for me I felt like I was learning how to write better songs. I was writing like a fucking madman around that time churning out a song a day or so for weeks at a time, I became completely obsessed with songwriting and didnt wanna stop haha. The songs were changing and how they sounded was changing too. Both Dave and myself have a wide variety of influences and it really felt like at that time I was trying to get them all in on these songs I was writing and recording on my 4 track. Those songs became Song Cyclops Volume One. I had demoed close to 40 songs and we were planning to go back into the studio to record the best ones. We just couldnt decide which ones to record and we had been listening to these demos I had done a bunch. Dave started adding things here and there to the songs and really opened them up. We felt like, insted of going into a studio and trying to record 10 of these songs as fast as we can cause of money restraints, lets just release the demos as the album. So thats what we did, at this time our band was a 5 piece with 2 backup singers so we could do 3 part harmonies live and stuff. That was a great time for the band, and probably the most fun live experiences I had in the band. I wasnt sure how people would react to Song Cyclops especially after our first 2, it was really different. I really thought though it was the best album up to that point and I still like to listen to it. It totally captures a time in my life and I guess all of our lives, and it was when we started working with Aynsley Pirtle, she has such an amazing voice! The other backup singer moved away and our bass player quit right around the same time. So it was just Dave, Aynsley and me. I was still writing a bunch but being a little more selective with what songs I showed the band. Cause some of the songs were just shit, haha. We talked about getting more people in the band, but by this time there had been probably 20 different people in the Lions and we had seen all kinds of strange people come and go. Some of them were easy to get along with and some werent. We felt instead of risking fucking up the dynamic yet again lets not get a bass player and just be a 3 piece with Aynsley on lead vocals, Dave on drums but more on keyboards and weird sounds and me on acoustic guitar and vocals. We played a couple of shows like this before we recorded Out Like A Lamb, it was so cool, all quiet and stuff you could hear what everyone was doing in the band and we seemed to play off of each other more than before. It was again really exciting. One thing about playing in this band with so different people, it never gets boring.
So next up was Out Like A Lamb?
Well yeah, Dave had bought a digital 8 track and we decided that we would record the album ourselves. Song Cyclops sort of made us decide that we didnt need to go drop money in some big studio anymore, we could do it all ourselves and move at our own pace and make sure everything sounded the way we wanted to. We recorded the record in Aynsley's extra bedroom in her house in Chapel Hill. The room was really small and we only had one microphone, so we did a lot of experimenting with how things sounded. Some of the songs we recorded a few different times with totally different results. I Can Take You To The Sun had to have been recorded 5 different times. We would always scrap it and say "we will come back to it". I dont know if we ever got it truly right, well I guess we are not the judges of that, the listener is. A couple of the songs,Texas Is Beautiful and When We Were Wolves were written right near the end of the recording. I can remember writing the middle 8th of Wolves right before we recorded. Its fun to do stuff that way, we arent the type of band that practices very much or plays live for that matter. We just sort of made this record based on what felt right at that time. I know I was guilty of springing things on Aynsley and Dave without them really knowing it, but they were always totally cool and went with it. I know I could be weird sometimes during recording. I know I sound like a dirty hippie when I say this hahah, but I wanted to make a record that sounded peaceful and full of love. I am a huge fan of records that maybe when you put them on you arent in a good mood or you are hating the world at the moment or something, and then when the record is over you are overwhelmed with a feeling of peace. We really tried to do that with Out Like A Lamb, I dont know if we did or not. Maybe after you hear the album you might wanna go break stuff, if you get that from the album then thats cool too. I just know that Aynsley, Dave and myself have a lot of love for each other and we really wanted that to be expressed in the songs. Of course lyrically that isnt always what is expressed, I love the record The Notorious Byrd Brothers by the Byrds to me that is an amazing example of an album that sounds so beautiful but lyrically expresses some things that arent so balmy and pleasant, like Draft Morning. Love's Forever Changes is another record like that. Personally, I was struggling with stuff when I wrote and we recorded this. I just wanted some peace and love in my life haha.