What was the driving force or inspiration behind forming Underdog, and how did the band members come together?
We’ve actually known each other over 40 years now. Bryn and I first met in 1983 when he was playing drums with the Dark Cellars, as they were mutual friends. A couple of years later he was getting his own band, The Hackmasters, together as the guitarist and singer, and asked me and our friend, Glen Sherman, who was playing drums with me in the World of Distortion at the time, to join on bass and drums. We were playing songs that Bryn had written and demoed. We recorded a 45 of “Shark Attack” that we released in 1987, and soon after recored another handful of songs that never got released, but we’ve been talking about releasing them in the near future, as sort of a historical document.
Around 1996 Bryn joined fin-de-siècle, which I had formed in the early-90s, on drums, when the original drummer, Tom Kelly had other obligations. I was now playing guitar and singing, playing the songs I had been writing. My cousin, Aram Heller, who I had been in a number of bands with, and Bryn had played with the Cellars as well, was on lead guitar. We recorded an EP and an album that are available on a variety of streaming platforms. It sort of laid the groundwork for Underdog in a lot of ways. Around this time Bryn and I were working together as well, and we have always remained in touch.
In the mid-00s Bryn came to my place to help clean up my drum kit and I played the demos of songs I was working on, that I had recorded on a Yamaha Audio Workstation, which was great, but had certain limitations. A few years later Bryn played me some demo he had made at AMRD Media Studio, which he had built at his home, using ProTools. We discussed the idea of getting a band together and invited Aram and Tom out to Bryn’s place for an initial jam, but they were both unable to make a full-time commitment to a band at that time. So, Bryn and I decided to continue to get together and start recording the backlog of songs I had been building up, with the hope of finding a bassist and drummer, but that never happened. We carried on recording and soon the Ether Dome album began to take shape.
What’s the story behind the band’s name, and how does it reflect the essence of Underdog’s approach to making music?
Well it actual comes from, or was inspired by several things. Shortly after Bryn and I started getting together on a regular basis, I was involved in helping my wife Priscilla, get ready to do a reunion show with her band the Underachievers, as part of a 3 month run of shows to celebrate Pipeline’s 30th Anniversary, it’s a live in the studio broadcast show on WMBR here in Boston. As half of the band is now living in Vancouver, I was sitting in on guitar for rehearsals until they arrived for the show. We were in need of a name, and I thought it would be cool to somehow include “Under” in it. My nickname since the late-70s has been Dog, which I was also hoping to working into the name. Without much more thought Underdog came to mind, and then I started to think about the other aspects of how it really applied to us. The fact that it was just the two of us, rather than a group of four people, and also that we are both moving on in years, we felt like we were fighting a bit of an uphill battle.
I had also recently adopted a 5 month old puppy, Suzie, from a local shelter, who had come up from Alabama to the Boston area with a couple of her sisters, and as I learned more about her background I realized she was also an underdog, She is our band mascot and is our avatar on social media. Around the same time I became aware of a German documentary called “Underdogs” about convicts in prison that were training dogs, which just added another dimension, or layer, to the meaning. The fact that it is a single, easy to remember word was also a great thing in my mind, and the thought that “Everyone loves an Underdog!” Oddly enough, even though I loved it and grew up watching the TV cartoon, it didn’t really cross my mind except as an afterthought. But let’s face I it has the best character names ever. Is there a better name for a heroine than Sweet Polly Purebred, or a more evil sounding villain and Simon Bar Sinister? I think not.
Reflecting on the early stages, what unexpected challenges did Underdog face, and how did they shape the band’s approach to making music?
Trying to find a drummer and bass player, which still hasn’t happened, really shaped the sound of the band, because it meant that we only had to filter ideas through the two of us. But it also allowed us to get closer to what our vision of the final songs should sound like too, as both of us were in more control of what was being recorded for each song, with each of us playing a couple of parts. Bryn playing lead guitar and drums, and me playing rhythym guitar and bass.
Also working with ProTools was a big challenge, for me at least. Bryn was a bit more comfortable using it at the outset, and I was sort of picking up the very basics along the way. We both come from a background of recording to analog tape, so certain aspects of the recording process were the same, by way of mic placement, building up basic tracks, and recording overdubs. I was a bit surprised that for a program with so much built into it by way of EQ, compressions, gating, as well as all sorts of bells and whistles that were never that easily available working with tape, that things like backwards recording had not been figured into it. I think as a result of all these things we tried to keep the songs, and approach to performing and recording them, fairly straightforward and simple. Most everything was done a single live take for each part on the first album.
Can you share a memorable early moment in Underdog’s history, whether it’s the first jam session or the creation of your first original song?
Sure, I think the day that Bryn attempted his lead guitar part on “Over and Over (Northern Lights)” was a moment when it all crystalized for us, as we were finally able to hear a delivery on the promise of what we were expecting. His part fit the song perfectly, and there is a moment in the solo where he just goes over the top. It took a long time to get a final take that he was happy with, but in the initial moment of hearing it all come together for the firs time was huge, and definitely a confidence booster, or building moment. It was one of the first songs we worked on and was really satisfiying for us as far as hitting the mark we were hoping to achieve.
Also I think when we pulled out “Suzie My Dear” after many months to give it a listen and see what we still needed to do to finish it up, and realized that it was perfect the way it was. I think we thought it was still in need a final lead guitar part, but when we gave it a listen and all that wha-wha feedback explode out of the speakers, we both looked at each other like “Where did that come from…!” Bryn even said he had no memory of playing it, and was pretty impressed with what he had accomplished in the performance. Obviously it’s not the sort of top part that can be recreated exactly every time we play the song, but that’s the beauty of live music, and definitely another aspect of what our sound is all about. It’s constantly shifting and changing, so in some ways we’re very particular about what we’re capturing in the recordings, but with the understanding that it’s a one off performances and the parts will always be evolving.
What pivotal moments defined Underdog’s musical identity and the sound you wanted to pursue?
I suppose getting “Over and Over” finished and out there, as sort of a lead off single from our first album, Ether Dome, really helped put that stake in the ground, and also set the bar for what we would accept as a good quality song. Oddly enough a couple of songs, “Everything I Can’ and “Suzie My Dear” which I had not thought of as being hit single material, have both found there way onto heavy rotation on various station, and “Everything I Can’ even got us into the final rounds of a Super Battle of the Bands on the Music City Digital Media Network out of Nashville, which really blew our minds.
I think the first song I actually wrote for Underdog was “Storm” which happened in the blink of an eye, at our first rehearsal, when I plugged my SG into Bryn’s Marshall amp at his studio, and this roar came out and turned the air into fire. It just came flying out fully formed except for the lyrics, which didn’t take long either once I sat down to write them. So right out of the gate we knew where we were going, and what sort of direction we wanted to go in. I think we’ve both had our own distinctive guitar sounds and styles for years, and this really became the synthesis or merging of them together. Bryn has always been a very powerful drummer, so that was already a given. My time spent playing bass also helped keep things melodic and solid on the low end as well.
How has the chemistry between band members evolved, and how does it influence your collaborative process today?
Good friendships are an ever evolving thing. We’ve been lucky to have played in so many bands together and there’s almost a type of communication shorthand that goes on because of that. We even ended up working together doing graphic design for a few years from around 1998–2001, so we got very close at that point. Listening to all sorts of music at work, and going record or guitar shopping during our lunch breaks, so we formed deeper bonds than just the sort of ones that band members have.
So, Underdog evolved in a very organic way out of what were some recording sessions to demo some of my newer songs, it just seemed like a logical progression and the next chapter of our collaboration and friendship. The great thing is that no matter how “finished” a song may be when someone brings it into a rehearsal there’s always input from the other just by what each of us contribute to the recording. There’s also suggestions about lyrics and arrangement ideas that are part of the natural creative process that always come up.
Can you share a memorable fan interaction or a moment that highlighted the impact Underdog’s music has had on your audience?
Actually a few come to mind. Dave and Emi Wilson out in California, covered “Shark Attack” off our first album, which was a huge honor. They are currently working on a version of “Suzie My Dear” also off Ether Dome, which we can’t wait to hear. They have stayed in pretty constant email contact with us over the years, and are two of our most dedicated fans, always checking out our new songs as soon as we release them.
Another good friends of ours, Bryan Palmer made the ultimate pilgrimage to see us at a street fair in September 2019 when he was already very ill. He totally surprised us by showing up unexpectedly with his girlfriend, Marie, driving all the way from Rhode Island to be there. It totally blew me away that they cared enough about our music to make that voyage, and I know it really helped spark the band to play our best that day. Sadly Bryan passed away in June of 2023, so we dedicated the Trans Global Amnesia album in his memory.
My friend Taso Vouzakis, from Sydney, Australia, who is marred to a good friend of mine, Sophia, from back in the fin-de-siècle days, and is also a talented musician has been a big supporter as well. I sent them a Care Package with T-Shirts and the CD of the first album, and she sent pictures of him wearing it all over the place, at live shows they attended and just out and about. She said he wouldn’t take it off for a week after it arrived, and for all I know he wears it to bed, haha! I believe the CD of Ether Dome we sent to them stayed in their car CD player for a few weeks at the very least, which reminds me I need to send off a copy of the new one to them.
“Trans Global Amnesia” is a captivating title. Could you elaborate on the concept or theme behind the album and how it shaped the songwriting process?
Well I heard the term from a friend, Kathy, whose sister had gone on a business trip to Maine, and when she woke up she had no idea where she was, or why she was there. When she got checked out at a local ER they said she had Transient Global Amnesia. Kathy must have misheard it, and when she told me about it, referred to it as Trans Global Amnesia. I thought it sounded really cool, and I told her on the spot that I was going to use it for an album title. So the album title was in place in my mind around 2017, and prophetically or not, it seems like the world was in a moment of suspended animation for the few years we were making the album from 2020-2023.
As for how it impacted the song content of the album, there were a few songs I had planned to have on this record that didn’t make it for one reason or another. I don’t think there was any conscious theme linking all the songs together, but many of them seem to have tangental relationships to other ones, so there is a sort of connection between certain songs. Some of the later additions like “New World Raga” and “Mallus Maleficarum” definitely help add a sort of global feel or vibe to what was going on, and had been set forth with songs like “Helsinki Airport Blues.” That said, I don’t think that the concept of Trans Global Amnesia had any direct impact on the writing of the songs, it more of less just all fell into place very neatly.
Can you walk us through the creative process of developing the tracks for the album? How did ideas evolve from initial concepts to the final recordings?
Some were very straightforward, like “Helsinki Airport Blues,” which just sort of spilled out along the course of the trip and very quickly. The recording was also pretty straightforward as I had a very specific idea of what the final song sounded like in my head when I was writing it, which is often the case. As it’s just two guitars, bass, drums and vocal, it’s one of the most stripped down songs on the album. Most of them have a lot of layering on them that we steered clear of on the first album, as we wanted to make something we could reproduce live faithfully. Once we realized it was just us, and primarily a studio band, all that went out the window. “Summer Song” was an idea that started when I was experimenting with recording guitar and bass direct to ProTools, rather than through an amp, as there were other people around that didn’t want to be sonically assaulted. The music for the song came about really quickly on the spot, and I think I left the original guide guitar in the mix to thicken it up, but otherwise re-recorded everything in the end using amps. It seemed like a happy upbeat song, so I wrote the lyrics around the thought of it being a perfect summer song.
“Rocket Baby” and “You Told Me” were both inspired by personal experiences, one good and one bad, They are also pretty much two guitars, bass and drums, except for the intro to “You Told Me” which is a layered up chorus of feedback guitars, as we wanted to kick the album off with a bang. “K-9” and “New World Raga” really evolved as instrumentals right from the get go. They both have a certain adrenaline rush aspect about them, perhaps to make up for the lack of lyric content. I think I knew there was no way of singing over either of them, and I really wanted the music to be the focus anyway. I did acquire a pedal late last year, that inspired the bridge of “New World Raga,” which suddenly made it a contender to be on the album, otherwise I don’t think we would have had two instrumentals on it.
“Regeneration” and “Louie & Marie” are more social commentary I suppose, the former more serious than the latter, as it’s dealing with environmental and political issues, where “Louie & Marie” is more of a social leveling number and has more humor injected into the lyrics. They also ended up sounding very close to what I had imagined at the time they were written. “Munchausen By Proxy” and “Mallus Maleficarum” were both inspired by things that I had heard about. Obviously with an illness like Munchausen by proxy there is an element of obsession and control that walks a fine line parallel to a more healthy relationship. I first heard about Mallus Maleficarum, a European text from the Middle Ages, used by witch hunters, in a history class years ago, and when I learn that the title translated to Hammer of Witches, I knew I had to write a song about it. So much of that mentality is alive and well today, just look around and you’ll see the search for the guilty and the persecution of the innocent going on. They both took on a life of their own during the recording process as I was trying to paint some fairly vivid images through the music.
“Echo Of A Dream” is one of the songs that came to me in my sleep, and it deals with that dreamscape your find yourself trapped in between the waking world and your dreams. The music came first with this one, but I knew instantly what it had to be about, and I knew that it would be one of the more layered tracks on the album once we started to record it. I think there are at least three different guitars creating the backing track, each with different effects on them. “Blow Your Face Off” was originally intended to be the final track on the Ether Dome album, as it is really the second part of a suite with “Music Box” and another song “Beach Dirge” that are about our friend, Glen Sherman, who passed away a number of years ago now. It’s definitely the sort of song he would love, and was written with that in mind. I knew it was going to be a big production number to close out the record, and somehow we managed to balance all the guitars pretty well, as it gets really dense towards the end. The idea was to turn the air into cottage cheese.
In terms of production and sound engineering, what techniques or technologies were employed to achieve the desired sonic qualities on “Trans Global Amnesia”?
The actual recording, mixing, etc. was all done with the magic of ProTools, hahaha. As for the sounds captured to “tape” everything is acoustic or analog, whatever the term is for plugging guitars into fuzz boxes (far too numerous to list here), and tube amplifiers, and playing an actual set of drums. There was a certain amount of trying different combinations and experimentation with the guitar sounds, also the use of different instruments like sitar, tempura, and tabla. There is some EQ and reverb on the vocals that were done in ProTools, and the instrument sounds your hearing were all captured live in the room and not processed in any real way beyond that. I’m sure as we continue using ProTools, in the future, we’ll take more advantage of the built in technology, as well as explore the various plug-ins we have at our disposal.
Most of that supersonic quality is coming straight from the guitars and amps themselves, and the fact that Bryn is an incredibly hard hitting drummer. I have a few Gibson SG’s and an Epiphone Casino that I used primarily, but I also broke out the Rickenbacker 12 String on a few of the songs, and the Electric Sitar to boot. I have an aray of vintage Vox amps and a Marshall. Bryn is a Gibson guy and primarily used his three Les Pauls, but occasionally his ES-135 makes an appearance. He has a pair of vintage Fender amps and a Marshall, as well as a smaller DeArmond that can really howl. Among the fuzz tones we used, there was a wide variety of vintage boxes, right alongside some very recent technology, and everything in-between, so a lot of experiencing went on to get the specific sounds we were looking for. I used three different basses, a Hofner, a Vox Mark IV with built in distortion, and a Gibson SG Standard, depending on what the song needed, and sometimes more than one of them, going through an Ampeg B-18, so lots of super low end going on there.
How do you envision the emotional journey for listeners as they progress through the different tracks of “Trans Global Amnesia”?
Well, there’s a lot to process and a fair amount of heavy stuff on it, but frequently delivered with a sense of humor. I guess a lot of emotional highs and lows, and some gray areas in-between. The many facets of love going on, loss of a friend, persecution of the less fortunate, save the world before it’s too late. If not for ourselves but for whatever comes next, so I would expect the listener to go through a fair amount of ups and downs along the way. The album opens with a fairly nasty little number about the end of a relationship, and really ended up in that spot because it was the perfect opening to the album musically, rather than lyrical content wise. The next track, “Helsinki Airport Blues” would probably have made a better lead off based on the album title, but it seemed to long, and didn’t have the punch that the start of an album should have to grab you and draw you into it. It’s a narrative that celebrates the joys and woes of air travel in the Golden Age before everything went upside down.
The next few songs are sort of a roller coaster going from faux raga instrumental, to power pop, to in your face rock ’n’ roll, but are all fairly upbeat numbers, hopefully giving off a positive vibe. They are more like celebrations of life and love I suppose, before getting hit with a bit more of a dirge. “Louie & Marie” is definitely a send up, but also a chance for us to really let loose and have some fun. Hopefully that comes through to the listener, as bits of the lyrics were inspired by news stories I heard about at the time I was writing it.
“Echo Of A Dream” kicks off what would be side two of a vinyl album, and at this point we’re pretty deep into the dream state that’s referred to in the album title, and sets the tone for a heavier side of the album. I think everyone has found themselves in this space of disorientation upon waking up at some point where you can’t differentiate between what’s “real” and what’s a dream. At this point the album really takes off with three high speed numbers, a couple of them being warpped loves songs in the form of “Munchasuen By Proxy” and Mallus Maleficarum”, and the other instrumental, “K-9“ being about what I imagine is going on a dog’s mind when they are out running around and enjoying life to the fullest.
The last two songs are almost at opposite ends of the spectrum with “Regeneration” having a fairly laid back feel to it, despite the caustic nature of the lyrics, before you get steamrolled by “Blow Your Face Off” which starts at one point and builds into a finale crescendo by the end. Sort of a torrent or hurricane of sound. Going out with a bang as it were.
Looking ahead, where do you envision Underdog’s heading musically, and what new elements or styles might you explore in the future?
Well for us that has always been looking into the unknown, in some ways. Although we sort of have a style that we fall into, I think we’re always open to new ideas across the entire spectrums from genres or styles that we might take elements from or mix into songs, to different instruments to create new sonic textures. My guess is we’ll probably try to explore some gentler sounding songs on the next album, and I would except at some point keyboards will show up, most likely in the form of a Vox organ I have used in the past.. I already have a Kazoo on one of the new tracks, and other odds and ends I’ve got laying around the studio that I’m sure will make special guest appearances. At this point it’s like exploring uncharted waters, not knowing exactly where it’s all going to take us.
I don’t really see us getting too deep into electronic music by way of synth or MIDI, but who knows what the future will bring. I’ve always loved the sound of a Theremin because it has that sound like it’s from another world, without sounding completely synthetic. I think we are as excited as anyone to see where the journey takes us.
