The Doctors Fox
Music Interview with The Doctors Fox
Music Now Artist/Band Spotlight Weekly Series
Photo by Andrew Tamulynus
By: Isaac Davis Jr., BGS, MBA
Junior’s Cave recently caught up with The Doctors Fox, an indie band, that is carving a nice niche in the music industry. Their music is certainly original and unique enough that will draw in fans from all around the world. What our Webzine is enjoying the most about this band is their overall style that we think is simply groovy. In a recent online conversation with the members of the band, our Webzine gets the 411 on who is the band, what do they like to do in their spare time, and what are some of their rewards and challenges they have face together. Want to learn more? Read on and you will not be disappointed.
Isaac: What are you currently up to?
We are all living in the Jamaica Plain neighborhood in Boston. We are vigorously promoting our new album,playing throughout Massachusetts and the Northeast – as North as Burlinton, VT; as South as Somerset, NJ; and as West as Rochester, NY. We are also gearing up to go back in the studio this spring to begin recording another album.
Isaac: When you compose a song where do you get your ideas from and how does a song evolve?
David (Bass,Vocals): It is hard to break down the different parts of song writing, because each song takes its own path. Some songs are written in one sitting, like “Autobiography of a beached whale.” Others, like“Yossarian” and “Sacha”, took me over a year to finish. When writing a song, I often pick something that is relevant in my life at the time, or was brought up in a recent conversation. “Chemistry” is about having a sinus infection. “Yossarian” is about the character in Catch-22 by Joseph Heller, which I had just read. “Ode to Sun” is about spending the winter in Rochester, NY. I finished “Fourth of July” on July 4th, a song that took me 4 or 5 years to complete, and thought it would be an ironic title.
I have never listened to just one kind of music, and the more music that I listen to, the more influences I draw into my compositions. My college roommate, Amos Rosenstein, from the band Walri, introduced me to almost half my music collection, and was a big influence during some of my prolific writing surges. Its cool that that I can write a song in my head, workout stylistic changes - melodies,harmonies, rhythmic changes - bring it to the band, and the finished product is often a very different piece of music than I imagined. We do most of the arranging collaboratively. Jon Dashkoff, one of our guitarists, writes a lot of the vocal harmonies. He’s got a natural ear for it. Josh is my favorite drummer to play with because I can throw a couple words at him like“spooky” or “circus” and he’ll nail it. Ryan Aylward, our violinist, is a really fun person to write parts with.
Ryan (Violin): In most cases, we work parts out in rehearsal on the fly. Often David brings a lot of ideas for violin parts, which I try to apply at the same time as we run the structure of the song. Other times,we both have ideas for violin lead parts and we bounce them off of one another.For the comping parts, it's more up to me to just settle on something that feels good, fits, and go with it. The same process tends to go for the other voices. We are all fairly good at taking ideas and quickly translating them into our own expressive vocabulary.
Isaac: What are the rewards and challenges about being in a band?
Josh (Drums): At the moment, the monetary rewards our overshadowed by the sense of personal accomplishment. We do our own booking and promotions and our hard work is starting to show results. Our live gigs are drawing steady crowds and the new album is getting really great reviews. The best reward so far is knowing that people are taking the time to listen to the music and are enjoying it.
The obvious challenge is not getting burned out. You can't really take a break. Its like having a second job, except we're working for ourselves and there is nobody holding us accountable but ourselves. To compensate for this,we always have to be thinking three or four steps ahead and can't slack off.
Ryan: As a violin player, I've never been able to have this much creative impact on any piece music in my life. So for me, the reward is simply being able to perform original music as a core member of an ensemble. Playing the kind of music I wanted to play on the violin is something I had once ruled out as a possibility. But it is like a second job, or maybe just a second part of life,and the challenge is admitting that pesky things like goals must be involved.No one gets to just hang around these days without justifying their existence.
Isaac: What tracks do the band most enjoy performing live and why?
David: Ode to Sun. When we hit the changes, it is so tasty.
Josh: It's a toss up between "Don Juan" and"Sacha". I like the reggae third verse in Don Juan and I like how tongue-in-cheek the lyrics are. I like Sacha because people dance to it. I also like playing "Diva." Basically, my favorite songs live are the ones people will dance to.
Ryan: Sacha is definitely one of the most fun. People dance, I dance. Sometimes I lose my glasses. Dance grooves are broken up by what I like to call a Pink Floyd jam, kind of a guilty pleasure. I have an excuse to turn my phaser all the way up. Kiguru is another favorite of mine and it fits in a similar space, there is a nice wailing violin solo. But I also like the tunes where I can lay back and enjoy some more traditional fiddle-style accompaniment,like Yossarian and Annabelle. Terry Galanoy is the song which sold me on the idea of forming a band with David, so that one will also always have a special place in my heart.
Jon (guitar): Sacha is certainly up there. It has such a solid groove and Ryan and I get to take raunchy solos. An added challenge is trying to belt out the backup vocals without passing out.Wholefoods is another favorite because we have played such drastically different versions of that tune, every time is a unique experience.
Isaac: What do you think The Doctors Fox need to do to gain more exposure and fans? Has the Internet helped spread the word about the band and its music?
David: The Internet is a double-edged sword. Social networking sites make it much easier to promote our music and shows. We can sell our music digitally to fans who live far away. The Internet also provides an open forum for various independent media and blogs who are more likely going to cover independent artists, just like Juniorscave.com. At the same time, the Internet is like an ocean of information, and the sea level is constantly rising. With so much web space taken up by spam and junk, we have to work that much harder to get noticed.
Josh: We need to keep doing what we're doing but we need to work harder. Working with independent media,artists, venues, and community groups have given us a solid foundation in music business. We are at the point where touring seems like a logical next step. At the moment, we organize mini-tours, or as we call them, Tourritos. These three show runs seem to be a more financially viably model for the time being as we work to make this a full-time gig.
Isaac: Could you take us through some highlights of the first studio LP, Plural Non-Possessive?
Ryan: Our friend and recording guru Luke Sullivan worked with us over many months on the album and contributed significantly to the evolution of that material. I think we all experienced some really great creative exchanges with him in the process.
David: Making the album was a great learning experience because it hightlight a lot of our weaknesses. We were able to improve drastically throughout the recording of the album and I think we're all very excited to approach this next recording with a stronger direction.
Jon: The recording sessions were a lot of fun and great opportunities to rethink songs we had been playing for months and to come up with alternate parts. Every time Luke sent us a mix of another song was a highlight. It is a great feeling to have something to show for all your hardwork.
Isaac: What do you enjoy doing in your spare time?
Photo by Andrew Tamulynus
David: Reading, cooking, gardening, hosting an open-mic,attending my sweetheart, and playing music. I'm an after school teacher so I get to play with legos, play tag, and eat a snack at 3pm every day.
Josh: In my spare time, I enjoy playing with as many musicians as possible, including Abbie Barrett and Left Hand Does. Listening to music, spending time with the old lady, visiting my folks in Connecticut.
Ryan: I love the outdoors - hiking, kayaking, biking, etc.Snowboarding in the winter. I'm an electrical engineer at a very small start up company so my day job is demanding and full of tedious decision making. However, it is also very flexible, offers an incredible range of experiences, and occasionally I remember that I love digging down to the level where I can draw so many parallels between what I'm working on and the physics of music or audio processing.
Jon: I am currently in my first year of medical school so this concept of "spare time" is a rather strange one for me. Seriously though, I love it. I have always been fascinated by science and the natural world, and music is just another wondrous part. When I actually have free time, I spend it with my girlfriend and friends and try to get outdoors.
Isaac: Message to your fans?
David: Thanks for dancing at our shows. Most people in Boston are too cool, but not you. You are just cool enough!
Josh: Thank you to my friends for tolerating my shameless self-promotion
Ryan: Thanks to all of you who have amazingly turned out for show after show since we first started, including my parents!
Jon: Thanks for listening to and supporting our music.There's more where that came from!
Isaac: Final Thoughts...
If you’d like to see us play in your hometown, let us know and we’ll make it happen. We do all of our own PR and booking and appreciate your support of local musicians.
Official MySpace:
http://www.myspace.com/thedoctorsfox
Music Now Artist/Band Spotlight Weekly Series
By: Isaac Davis Jr., BGS, MBA
Junior’s Cave recently caught up with The Doctors Fox, an indie band, that is carving a nice niche in the music industry. Their music is certainly original and unique enough that will draw in fans from all around the world. What our Webzine is enjoying the most about this band is their overall style that we think is simply groovy. In a recent online conversation with the members of the band, our Webzine gets the 411 on who is the band, what do they like to do in their spare time, and what are some of their rewards and challenges they have face together. Want to learn more? Read on and you will not be disappointed.
Isaac: What are you currently up to?
We are all living in the Jamaica Plain neighborhood in Boston. We are vigorously promoting our new album,playing throughout Massachusetts and the Northeast – as North as Burlinton, VT; as South as Somerset, NJ; and as West as Rochester, NY. We are also gearing up to go back in the studio this spring to begin recording another album.
Isaac: When you compose a song where do you get your ideas from and how does a song evolve?
David (Bass,Vocals): It is hard to break down the different parts of song writing, because each song takes its own path. Some songs are written in one sitting, like “Autobiography of a beached whale.” Others, like“Yossarian” and “Sacha”, took me over a year to finish. When writing a song, I often pick something that is relevant in my life at the time, or was brought up in a recent conversation. “Chemistry” is about having a sinus infection. “Yossarian” is about the character in Catch-22 by Joseph Heller, which I had just read. “Ode to Sun” is about spending the winter in Rochester, NY. I finished “Fourth of July” on July 4th, a song that took me 4 or 5 years to complete, and thought it would be an ironic title.
I have never listened to just one kind of music, and the more music that I listen to, the more influences I draw into my compositions. My college roommate, Amos Rosenstein, from the band Walri, introduced me to almost half my music collection, and was a big influence during some of my prolific writing surges. Its cool that that I can write a song in my head, workout stylistic changes - melodies,harmonies, rhythmic changes - bring it to the band, and the finished product is often a very different piece of music than I imagined. We do most of the arranging collaboratively. Jon Dashkoff, one of our guitarists, writes a lot of the vocal harmonies. He’s got a natural ear for it. Josh is my favorite drummer to play with because I can throw a couple words at him like“spooky” or “circus” and he’ll nail it. Ryan Aylward, our violinist, is a really fun person to write parts with.
Ryan (Violin): In most cases, we work parts out in rehearsal on the fly. Often David brings a lot of ideas for violin parts, which I try to apply at the same time as we run the structure of the song. Other times,we both have ideas for violin lead parts and we bounce them off of one another.For the comping parts, it's more up to me to just settle on something that feels good, fits, and go with it. The same process tends to go for the other voices. We are all fairly good at taking ideas and quickly translating them into our own expressive vocabulary.
Isaac: What are the rewards and challenges about being in a band?
Josh (Drums): At the moment, the monetary rewards our overshadowed by the sense of personal accomplishment. We do our own booking and promotions and our hard work is starting to show results. Our live gigs are drawing steady crowds and the new album is getting really great reviews. The best reward so far is knowing that people are taking the time to listen to the music and are enjoying it.
The obvious challenge is not getting burned out. You can't really take a break. Its like having a second job, except we're working for ourselves and there is nobody holding us accountable but ourselves. To compensate for this,we always have to be thinking three or four steps ahead and can't slack off.
Ryan: As a violin player, I've never been able to have this much creative impact on any piece music in my life. So for me, the reward is simply being able to perform original music as a core member of an ensemble. Playing the kind of music I wanted to play on the violin is something I had once ruled out as a possibility. But it is like a second job, or maybe just a second part of life,and the challenge is admitting that pesky things like goals must be involved.No one gets to just hang around these days without justifying their existence.
Isaac: What tracks do the band most enjoy performing live and why?
David: Ode to Sun. When we hit the changes, it is so tasty.
Josh: It's a toss up between "Don Juan" and"Sacha". I like the reggae third verse in Don Juan and I like how tongue-in-cheek the lyrics are. I like Sacha because people dance to it. I also like playing "Diva." Basically, my favorite songs live are the ones people will dance to.
Ryan: Sacha is definitely one of the most fun. People dance, I dance. Sometimes I lose my glasses. Dance grooves are broken up by what I like to call a Pink Floyd jam, kind of a guilty pleasure. I have an excuse to turn my phaser all the way up. Kiguru is another favorite of mine and it fits in a similar space, there is a nice wailing violin solo. But I also like the tunes where I can lay back and enjoy some more traditional fiddle-style accompaniment,like Yossarian and Annabelle. Terry Galanoy is the song which sold me on the idea of forming a band with David, so that one will also always have a special place in my heart.
Jon (guitar): Sacha is certainly up there. It has such a solid groove and Ryan and I get to take raunchy solos. An added challenge is trying to belt out the backup vocals without passing out.Wholefoods is another favorite because we have played such drastically different versions of that tune, every time is a unique experience.
Isaac: What do you think The Doctors Fox need to do to gain more exposure and fans? Has the Internet helped spread the word about the band and its music?
David: The Internet is a double-edged sword. Social networking sites make it much easier to promote our music and shows. We can sell our music digitally to fans who live far away. The Internet also provides an open forum for various independent media and blogs who are more likely going to cover independent artists, just like Juniorscave.com. At the same time, the Internet is like an ocean of information, and the sea level is constantly rising. With so much web space taken up by spam and junk, we have to work that much harder to get noticed.
Josh: We need to keep doing what we're doing but we need to work harder. Working with independent media,artists, venues, and community groups have given us a solid foundation in music business. We are at the point where touring seems like a logical next step. At the moment, we organize mini-tours, or as we call them, Tourritos. These three show runs seem to be a more financially viably model for the time being as we work to make this a full-time gig.
Isaac: Could you take us through some highlights of the first studio LP, Plural Non-Possessive?
Ryan: Our friend and recording guru Luke Sullivan worked with us over many months on the album and contributed significantly to the evolution of that material. I think we all experienced some really great creative exchanges with him in the process.
David: Making the album was a great learning experience because it hightlight a lot of our weaknesses. We were able to improve drastically throughout the recording of the album and I think we're all very excited to approach this next recording with a stronger direction.
Jon: The recording sessions were a lot of fun and great opportunities to rethink songs we had been playing for months and to come up with alternate parts. Every time Luke sent us a mix of another song was a highlight. It is a great feeling to have something to show for all your hardwork.
Isaac: What do you enjoy doing in your spare time?
David: Reading, cooking, gardening, hosting an open-mic,attending my sweetheart, and playing music. I'm an after school teacher so I get to play with legos, play tag, and eat a snack at 3pm every day.
Josh: In my spare time, I enjoy playing with as many musicians as possible, including Abbie Barrett and Left Hand Does. Listening to music, spending time with the old lady, visiting my folks in Connecticut.
Ryan: I love the outdoors - hiking, kayaking, biking, etc.Snowboarding in the winter. I'm an electrical engineer at a very small start up company so my day job is demanding and full of tedious decision making. However, it is also very flexible, offers an incredible range of experiences, and occasionally I remember that I love digging down to the level where I can draw so many parallels between what I'm working on and the physics of music or audio processing.
Jon: I am currently in my first year of medical school so this concept of "spare time" is a rather strange one for me. Seriously though, I love it. I have always been fascinated by science and the natural world, and music is just another wondrous part. When I actually have free time, I spend it with my girlfriend and friends and try to get outdoors.
Isaac: Message to your fans?
David: Thanks for dancing at our shows. Most people in Boston are too cool, but not you. You are just cool enough!
Josh: Thank you to my friends for tolerating my shameless self-promotion
Ryan: Thanks to all of you who have amazingly turned out for show after show since we first started, including my parents!
Jon: Thanks for listening to and supporting our music.There's more where that came from!
Isaac: Final Thoughts...
If you’d like to see us play in your hometown, let us know and we’ll make it happen. We do all of our own PR and booking and appreciate your support of local musicians.
Official MySpace:
http://www.myspace.com/thedoctorsfox
Posted by Isaac J Davis Junior at Tuesday, January 12, 2010 1:53 AM 
Categories: Music Now Artist/Band Spotlight Weekly Series
Tags: Music Now Artist/Band Spotlight Weekly Series with The Doctors Fox
Categories: Music Now Artist/Band Spotlight Weekly Series
Tags: Music Now Artist/Band Spotlight Weekly Series with The Doctors Fox
Trackbacks
-
Tuesday, March 08, 2011 7:25 PM
Forget me not flowers. wrote:
Forget me not flowers. Buy forget me not flowers. Forget me nots flowers.
Comments