Interview with Ted Danson With Wolves

I N T E R V I E W 
Ted Danson With Wolves
By Arpie Shirehorse

This Saturday sees Sydney's Ted Danson With Wolves hit Nivara Lounge for a show with locals The Goth and The Pixie and The Recently Deceived. HUP caught up with Bassist Dean Crovve ahead of the Australian Emo Punk's first NZ shows.

TDWW is quite the moniker! I have to ask how it came to be…. Haha well actually it started as a throwaway Facebook status. We used to be called Crouching 80s Hidden Acronym (don’t ask) and when we inevitably got sick of that name we started making fun of it with a string of joke ‘Changing our name to..’ statuses. TDWW got a good reaction and we thought it was at the very least a great improvement.

You’ve just released a new EP entitled Don't Tell Me What's Wrong With You, Because I Will Find Out And Tell You. It Will Make Sense To You And Work. It is brilliant! How do the songs come to exist? It feels like there’s an organic-jam type thing going on while at the same time it’s startlingly tight. Thank you! We’re very proud of it! I guess that’s a fair assessment - Josh will come to practice with whole song structures written on guitar, then basically we loop section after section, each writing our parts, saying what we like and dislike about what everyone’s doing and eventually (hopefully) we wind up with the best song we can!

The Sax in your sound helps to make TDWW fairly unique. How did that come about as being a part of what you do? Well sax is Nick’s first instrument but he was playing bass in the early days, I remember they asked me to join because they were covering Bowie’s ‘Let’s Dance’ (RIP) and wanted Nick to do a sax solo - unfortunately he couldn’t do both so here I am! It’s pretty much been all sax all the time since then.

Tell us a bit about the Sydney scene. Is it healthy in terms of quantity of good bands and people attending shows? Sydney rules hard. It seems to cop some flak but only from people you never see at shows. I really think some of the most interesting and exciting new music happening in the whole world is going on in Sydney at the moment. It might be lacking a bit in the way of ‘legit’ bar venues but the DIY/Warehouse scene is really strong and well attended.

What has been the highlight of being TDWW thus far? The last tour was pretty incredible, we got to go to Adelaide and Western Australia, I’d never been to either before so it was very exciting to see those new places and faces. We’re very excited for New Zealand for the same reason!

Will these be the first TDWW shows in New Zealand? What are you looking forward to most about playing here? Yep, first time! It looks like such a beautiful place! Hopefully we’ll get to see some sights as well as hear some new music. Having checked out some of the bands we’re playing with it seems like we’ll be upstaged most nights. We also get to play with our friends Carb On Carb and Mr Sterile Assembly a couple times so that’s super exciting.

Some quick fire questions… Most rock n roll TDWW moment to date…. Haha there’s not very many to be honest! One that comes to mind is the first time we ever got paid for a show. It was $100. We decided to treat ourselves and get some Indian food for dinner. Chicken tikka masala, balti tiger prawn, vegetable korma. Thought we'd really push the boat out. There was a naan and a half each! At the end of the night we got the bill and were shocked to find we had ordered $130 worth of food. No, really, that’s actually my answer.

Who is the sportiest TDWW member and what are they into?! That would have to be Tom, our drummer. He’s a star forward for the mighty Winston Hills Bears soccer team. He’s such a bear.

Who else should we be listening to from Sydney/NSW? Canine might be objectively the best band - they make thrashy and catchy powerviolence, Tom also plays in Burlap who are putting out their debut LP ‘Burnout King’ later this year and their almighty riffs will crush you. You should definitely also catch our good friends H A N N A H B A N D who are doing their own NZ tour just after us, they are noisy and catchy and fun. 

If you were organising a show and could have any three bands play, who would it be and where? Thin Lizzy playing three sets at my house.

The best thing Steve Albini has ever done is…? Pretty much everything about Shellac. 

Finally! Can we expect Merch at the show in Hamilton? Yes! We’re crunching the numbers and looking at how much the airline will let us bring. We’ll have shirts and copies of our new EP and also our 2014 LP ‘WWTDWWD?’.

- Ted Danson With Wolves, The Recently Deceived, The Goth and The Pixie @ Nivara Lounge, Sat Feb 20 9pm, $10 on the door!

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