Have I mentioned how much I love Screaming Females? One of my favorite bands in the Universe, I have listened to them incessantly since I went on brooklynvegan late last year and read Jarrett Dougherty’s best of 2009 and didn’t know one single band.
So I did what any real man would do… I checked out the bands he recommended and preferred Screaming Females album Power Moves to the lot of them. And then i called their PR woman who is very busy (you should look at her website), got ignored, mentioned it on a post and Jarrett who by the power invested in Screaming Females prolly used one of his four arms, replied.
Now we’r on Facebook… er facebooking… and you are there…
IL:can i start at the end? “I Do” is awesome… is it new?
JD: “”I Do” is actually a really old song. Mike and Marissa used to play a version of it with their old band, Surgery on TV. It was one of the Surgery on TV songs that we kept playing when Screaming Females started. It would pop up in our set a few times a year. Jeff the Brotherhood had asked us to do a split with them for their label Infinity Cat. So while we were recording Power Move we also recorded I Do for the first time. The split 7 inch with Jeff the Brotherhood sold out pretty quickly. We have a few other 7 inches that are going to be out of print pretty soon. So we’ve collected the songs from those and put them on a CD called ‘Singles’ that is coming out in February.
Il: When did you join the band?
JD::I joined Surgery on TV for a few practices in summer of 2005. There was a keyboard player in that band. He left and the chemistry between the 3 of us just clicked. So we started writing new songs and renamed ourselves Screaming Females.
IL: You call yourself a drummer like a character description.
JD: I’ve played drums most of my life. It’s an important part of who I am
IL: how dya mean? do you just hear rhythm?
JD: I mean that it’s important because I definitely would not be the same person I am today if I had never started playing drums. I can’t image where I’d be.
Do I consider Screaming Females a punk rock band? Yes. Punk rock has such an amazing history.
To me the kinds of bands that define punk rock are The Minutemen and Fugazi and Beat Happening. seems that even ‘indie’ music fans are listening to a lot of stuff that just sounds like pop music. Those bands are obviously punk rock too but the clash were never just a three chord kind of band either.
IL: but youre own drumming is kinda sophistiicted as well.. it’s not four on the floor
JD: My favorite drummers have always been ones that played lyrically and melodically. Drummers that really add something to the song not just play along. Dave Grohl, ?uestlove, Billy Martin
IL: Please tell me about the new brunswick scene where you play in basements,etc. is that over.
JD: New Brunswick, NJ is a weird city. If you just drove into town you would think that there is nothing going on here. There is only one venue which is a bar. But all these amazing shows go on in basements around here. There is one almost every night. Mike and I go to shows a few times a week at least. We just played a basement show two weeks ago. Two amazing touring bands, Natural Child from Nashville and Campo-Formio from Puerto Rico, needed a NJ show on the same date. So we set one up for them and played it.
IL: What book are you reading in your profile?
JD: Hoyle’s Rules for Card Games
IL: You opened for Arctic Monkeys, any thoughts?
JD: They had asked us to do a big tour with them in the fall and we decided not to because we had just been on the road so long. So when they came back over they asked us again. Bands and band’s managers and band’s agents and labels all have friends that they could bring on tour and put in a big support slot like that. So I think it’s pretty awesome that they asked us to do it just because Alex saw us play live once
IL: I love your girlfriends band
JD: My girlfriend doesn’t have a band
IL: Fave book
JD: Picking a favorite book is really hard for me. Right now I’m reading The Jungle by Upton Sinclair. So far I love
Thanks Jarret: as a lover of dance bpms take it fom me… you are excellent