It’s 11 AM on a Tuesday morning and I’m sitting down for a chat with Dave Rennick of Dappled Cities. He’s just barely woken up and still looks a little scruffy but with a clear attempt of hiding his tiredness. Neither of us is in a real rush so we wait for our coffees before we begin the actual interview.
He is very casual and relaxed as we talk, making it feel less like we are here for an interview at all and more like we are two friend’s catching up after years apart. After a few minutes our coffees are ready and now so are we so we decide to get straight into things.
“We’re in the very final process of finishing our record, which has taken us over a year to make. We’re into our fourth studio, Albert’s Studio in Neutral Bay. We’re just doing final touches and it gets sent up to mastering this week.”
“We like to hope it is a development for us. It is certainly a much more epic record and epic sound than we’ve ever really done. We’ve expanded our mojos to a big grandeur of feelings but it is still a Dappled record.”
Through the tired eyes, you can see Dave is quite excited about this album and that they have all put a lot of work into it. The question is; when do we get to hear it?
“We are playing Northcote Social Club in Melbourne and Essential Festival here in Sydney this month. They are two fairly moderate shows, just to get us back in the swing of things here in Australia. We worked up quite a spectacular set for our trip to South by Southwest and we really just wanted to show everyone here what we did and what we are doing.”
“These shows are kind of preempting the new music we are about to release. It is all going to be new stuff, a new set up with big fancy outfits. We are certainly a band that doesn’t like to do what we were doing last time we played a show. The album will be released just as we’re coming into spring, then we’ll do a big pants off tour.”
I draw a very confused look at the sound of fancy outfits and pants off being phrased quite close together. I’ve recently read on the band’s MySpace blog posts tour stories involving Playboy parties, nights out drinking with The Grates and two homeless men saving the show in Austin.
The band are clearly not ashamed of their wild side. I look for further explanation of this. Dave begins laughing at the memory of their trip to South by Southwest a few weeks ago.
“Yeah that was great. It was a very intense and quick trip. We were only in the States for two weeks and then we were back home again with a plethora of diseases and malfunctions but it seemed to go really well. It was our third South by Southwest trip and I think we were really getting noticed. The partying really is non-stop.”
“We got back completely exhausted because the whole time you are there you are lifting gear or drinking or playing or…I don’t know. Just partying. And then you go to sleep, it’s 5 in the morning, wake up at 11 the next day and have to do all again. Just two weeks of that… maybe I’m just getting old and starting to notice it more. It’s pretty intense.”
We laugh at this idea as we both trail off into our own thoughts. As Dave appears to be reliving the crazy moments on the road with a wide grin on his face, I begin to wonder what these guys will have in store for us.
“I don’t know just yet; time will tell (laughs). We’re very excited. It’s been a long time between drinks for us. The last tour we did was over a year ago where we just started playing these new songs. Now we feel like we’re really ready to make a step into a new realm. We’re about to release the biggest record of our lives.”
