There are some who would say a particular atrophy attends modern rock n’ roll. It seems the genre is being saved at every turn (remember The Strokes? White Stripes?) from the pratfalls of progress, past and present, (commercial viability, disco, modern rock radio, the ineffable flux of time, etc.) and, in its ripeness, wastes away again. Of course, the argument’s bull, but for those non-avant garde fans in the audience, there’s always the tendency to look back.
Thee Oh Sees, in a sense, are a band looking back. Their sound is reminiscent of ’60s psychadelic and garage rock, maybe a foothold of their San Franciscan roots; but “looking back” implies insult, and Thee Oh Sees merit anything but insult. They make vital, forceful music worth a hell of a lot more than snide remarks of their relation to music of days past. So, to naysayers: If they’re mining a dead genre, then they’re a frightening—and fulfilling—facsimile.
At the hub of Thee Oh Sees is frontman John Dwyer, but a band is nothing if not the sum of its parts. Enter Brigid Dawson, keyboardist, tambourinist and vocalist, who has been in the band since June of 2005. Though she is as much a part of the fabric as everyone else (Dwyer, guitarist Petey Dammit! and drummer Mike Shoun) she is modest of her contributions.
“I feel like I’m just one quarter of the band, in the sense that very often it’s John that brings in the germs of a song, like he’ll bring in lyrics and the melody, and then all of us will write our parts around that,” Dawson said on the phone from Birmingham, Ala. “Often when we record, we’ll have extra time and so we all write together.”
Dawson’s tenure in Thee Oh Sees began innocuously enough—in a coffee shop in the Lower Haights.
“I met John working in a café around the corner from both of our houses like, 10 years ago when I had moved to America [from England]. And so I knew him for a couple of years just serving him coffee and kind of making friends.”
Mr. Dwyer had been around the block a few times in bands such as Pink and Brown and Coachwhips, and several iterations of Thee Oh Sees (Orange Country Sound, Orinoka Crash Suite); so when Dawson joined it was up, up and away.
“We started touring pretty much right away. We played around San Francisco, and then that fall we went to England,” said Dawson. “It was a different lineup than it is now, little bit. Petey or Mike weren’t in the band yet. We had our old drummer, Patrick Mullins, who’s on all the early recordings … so it was just the three of us—me and John and Patrick,” she said.
For Dawson, touring has had its glories and its frustrations, such as discrimination via security personnel who can’t, to her chagrin, conceive of a female playing rock music.
“I know that you think just cause I’m the girl that’s hanging out with them that I must be [a] groupie. But c’mon, y'know? Modernize your views a little bit or something.”
Dawson added, “I’m a bit older at this point, so you have to laugh at these things. We joke around about it in the band.”
Thee Oh Sees are touring this fall with fellow Californian scene mate, and personal friend, Ty Segall, who has a long history with the band.
“Me and John saw him at a house party in our neighborhood,” Dawson said. “It was when he was in his one-man-band thing, and we literally fell in love and John wanted to put out his album on Castle Face, and we took him on tour with us. He became a friend.”
Dawson said further that their friendship has made touring all the better for her and Thee Oh Sees.
“It’s been a joy, this tour, so far, because you’re with buddies, y’know?”
Dawson speculated that the pairing of Thee Oh Sees and Mr. Segall (who is with his own group, the Ty Segall Band) has been beneficial for both, especially on tour.
“I think that double attraction of us both together is cornering bigger venues, which is kind of interesting,” she said. “We’ve definitely been playing bigger venues more than smaller venues on this tour.”
The arrangement has also brought an ancillary benefit: flexible schedules.
“We’ve kind of been trading off headlining and opening up, which is super nice for us cause then a lot of times we get to play the earlier slot,” Dawson said, “which is great cause then you get to have a drink or whatever, just relax after playing and watch your friends play.”
Over the years, Dawson has noticed, besides changes in venue, a change in the band’s fans.
“I clearly remember, like a few years into being in the band, maybe three years, where suddenly it wasn’t just your friends, like everyone in the front row would be a person that you knew,” Dawson said. “all of a sudden it was like these new faces and you’re thinking, ‘Holy moly! Where are these people coming from?’”
For the future, Dawson hopes to be able to expand Thee Oh Sees’ tour circuit even wider than before.
“I’d love for us to be able to play in places like Russia. And Eastern Europe and Japan and China and maybe do a little bit more of that,” Dawson said, “because that’s definitely one of the biggest joys of touring: you’re going to a new place, and being able to bring the music you’ve made, to a place that you’ve never been to before, a wildly different culture.”
On the whole though, Dawson is pretty content with things as they’ve developed.
“Otherwise, [I’m] pretty content. I mean, I never thought I’d be only playing music for a job. I mean, that’s crazy to think about. That’s an achievement in itself, I suppose.”
For Dawson, the experience of being in Thee Oh Sees has had a profound effect on her life.
“I knew when John asked me to be in the band, I felt super, super lucky because finally I was gonna be able to be in a band with someone who’s making music that I really liked. And that doesn’t happen all the time. It’s lovely when it does.”
Thee Oh Sees was not Dawson’s first group, and certainly not the one she would have joined immediately. Nonetheless, she was not daunted.
“I’ve never been close-minded to music. I knew it was gonna be great. I just hadn’t envisioned singing music like that. That’s all.”
Dawson’s open-mindedness was evident when asked whether she had any guilty pleasures.
“So I dearly love and prize, like, opera. That’s, I guess, not a guilty pleasure. You can hold your head up high… I’m trying to think of a really good one to tell you.”
Her furnished example was nothing if not surprising.
“I love Sigur Ros… however you pronounce it. So maybe that would be my most guilty pleasure.”
Dawson responded with ease when asked whether “what if” ever crossed her mind, like “what if Dwyer hadn’t asked her to join the band?”
“I would imagine that I would have kids by now and maybe some chickens. And a house. It’d be a different life. I think I’d probably be equally happy, I’d still be painting, I’d still be doing everything else that I do,” Dawson said. “But I’m really glad that I met John and I was able to be [in the band.] The other stuff can hopefully come later.”
Asked whether she had any particular achievement with the band or otherwise she took pride in, she was caught off guard.
“Yeah I do, weirdly. No one’s ever asked me that before, but it’s definitely with Thee Oh Sees.”
The achievement in question is a live DVD album entitled Three Hounds of Foggy Notion, which Dawson went in depth about.
“It was recorded on a single boom mike, live—all live—one or two takes, and when I finally got a copy of it and listened back to it, I thought, “Holy shit, man, this is all live … and we sound like we’re not making too many mistakes, and we can do this.’”
Dawson went on to explain further what makes the album so special.
“I think maybe cause that year I had been worried about my singing and thinking I wasn’t very good, and then I listened to that. That album has always been the one where I’m like, ‘Yeah, we got this. We do good. We do all right together.’”
Dawson will be performing with Thee Oh Sees at The High Noon Saloon this Saturday. They’ll be co-headlining with the Ty Segall Band, with guest performances by Trin Tran and The Hussy.
