INTERVIEW: THE RUBY DARE


If you were lucky enough to see the Make-Up sometime during the last six months, you were also probably lucky enough to catch another great DC combo - the Ruby Dare. In a world where the commodity of rock is, sadly, no longer plentiful, the Ruby Dare deliver heaping portions at every outing with their unique brand of bluesy/funky/unclassifiable-y groove. They were gracious enough to be interviewed by Jes’ Grew for our debut issue just before another great set at Brownie’s in NY, sitting on the Avenue A sidewalk and noshing some goodies from the 2nd Avenue Deli, 9/5/98

I know you guys used to be known as the Shivers. How long did you operate under that name?

Ryan Chaney [vocals]: About a year and a half.


And what made you change it?

R: We were on PCP [a NY based label] at the time and there was some alternative country band. Their label called PCP and told us that they could possibly sue. I don’t think anything would have come of it; it was just a better idea to change it.


So there wasn’t any actual legal pressure?

Cinar Akcin [drums]: No. We could have changed our name to something like Shivers, Inc. and they would have been fine with that. But we just didn’t want to deal with it or get confused with some other band. Eventually they broke up, I heard.

R:We’re not a threat to anyone. Not yet, anyway.

 

Your new album [Lurk Late and Strike Straight] is on Secret Police. Is that your label?

R: No, it’s a small DC label. It’s pretty new but it has a few bands on it now. It’s distributed through Dischord. The guy who started it kinda wanted us to be his pioneering band, so...

 

Do you know anybody else who’s on it?

C: The Jerks are going to be on it, I think, and Savage Boys and Girls Club.

 

The album was recorded at Inner Ear, and, well, you guys are from DC so it’s probably not a big deal to you, but it seems legendary to me.

R: It’s a really cool place. Don Zientara, the guy who engineered it, he’s great. He’s the one who does all the Fugazi stuff.

C: We also recorded with Nick Pellicciotto. He does live sound for Fugazi, and actually we owe a lot to him. He did a huge amount and put a lot of his effort into it. I think it sounds okay. I don’t know if Inner Ear is a great place for us, though; it sounds really clean. We recorded once at this place in Brooklyn, Plaintain. It had this hollow echo that was great. Inner Ear seemed very clean and absorbed, so I think at points the edge of our music was lost. But at the same time, we made up for it in other areas.


So you were maybe looking for something more dense or rough or...?

C: Well, I’m not really an expert in terms of sound, but maybe something a bit more raw, essentially, and not so polished. I think on some songs, like "Fever," at the end of it, it doesn’t sound polished at all and maybe captures the intensity that we sometimes get on stage. Really, though, no regrets. They’re great people to work with and they really know what they’re doing.

Now, I’m not from DC (as I’ve made abundantly clear), so I have a romantic idea in my head about the place, and it seems that for a long time there’s always been something interesting going on there. As folks who are from DC, do you see it that way? Is that intimidating?

C: Yeah, I think it’s really creative in many respects. There’s a lot of novel ideas coming out of there – bands like the Make-Up and the Monorochid [R.I.P.] and the Cranium. It’s really not that intimidating. It’s a really small environment so you’re running into the same people all the time and sharing ideas, and there’s almost this confluence of ideas going across in music. I think, at the same time, that it’s competitive in many respects, so it forces you to be a little different or eccentric in the way you approach your music.

 

I was wondering about that because when I was on tour this summer we were in DC and while parking the van we saw Raquel from the Cranium. Just walking around, you know, no big deal, probably on her way to a show (not ours, unfortunately). She’s in what we considered a pretty big band and yet she’s still out and about checking out the local scene. For some reason this blew us away. Also, we drove down to see Fugazi play a benefit at the Sanctuary, and it seemed like every person from every band in DC was there, like one big happy family.

C: There’s definitely a great community in the area. At the same time there’s a small clique mentality that can get incestuous at times, in regards to the music itself. But you’re right, it is a great community and you do run into people constantly, and luckily this leads to a lot of cool ideas.

 

Is there anything you guys latch on to there musically right now that you find interesting?

C: This is just for myself. Out of DC, I guess Skull Control, because we have a lot of similar ideas musically, maybe the choppiness. I like Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. Starlight Desperation, from California, we played with them for a little while. I like their music and the way they approach it. I can’t speak for the rest of the band, but there’s nothing we specifically latch on to. That’s what I think is strong about our music, because I think it keeps us from sounding like other bands and keeps things original.

 

Latch on to was probably a bad word. I guess I meant just music going on now that you find interesting. Here in NY, I know you’ve played here [Brownie’s] before, and I know you’ve played the Cooler. How do you find playing here in the city?

C: It’s been hit and miss. A lot of places we’ve gotten great response and there are people who have given us a lot of support. We’ve played all over, like here, the Cooler, Coney Island High, the Continental. We’ve been shown a lot of respect, and at other times it’s a bit frustrating, I guess because there’s so much else that’s going on.

 

You mentioned some folks you’ve played with, in particular the Make-Up. How was that?

C: It was great, to see a fellow band from DC at that artistic level, and how they do outside DC. It seems many people find their sound interesting and novel, and some don’t really know how to approach it. At the same time, just to get a lot of compliments and feedback for your music for us, and for them at the same time, was really interesting. Just touring with them, they’re really great people, really warm and they have a great sense of humor.

 

A band like the Make-Up definitely has a political edge, or an ethos. Do you see your band as having that at all?

Mike Maran [bass]:We definitely don’t have an agenda. There’s some bands that present themselves very well on stage doing that. It’s the kind of thing that’s really hard to do going out from the get-go, because if you do it half-assed it really shows. Speaking for myself, I don’t really see the point in doing something that uniform.

R: As far as political agenda is concerned, they almost always turn into schtick. It’s very difficult to create any sort of coherent ideology on stage without it appearing cheesy. I wouldn’t say the Make-Up have an agenda. It’s more of an ethos. They definitely create an aura about themselves.

M: If we had enough money, I wouldn’t mind us all dressing the same, in suits or whatever.

R: I don’t mind ideologizing or anything like that, if that’s what you wanna call it. But I find that once it starts getting coherent, it takes itself way too seriously.

C: I don’t think we’ve ever used that as a medium, so I don’t think it's really a consideration at all.

 

Any other bands you enjoyed touring with?

R: Candy Machine was awesome, they were so much fun. They’re a little bit older than us. They’re really chill, witty people to be around, even when our tour was not going that well.

 

Is there anybody you’d like to tour with?

M: There are bands that I like now, but I don’t think there’s a whole lot of them we’d necessarily be compatible with. I like Golden a lot, but they’re a lot more classic-rock sounding. Bad Seeds are great too, but I don’t think we would come off too well in front of their crowd.

Burleigh Seaver [guitar]: I don’t like any of those bands, so...

R: I’d like to play with the Rolling Stones at some point…We seem to have a lot influences that we don’t sound like at all. Cinar and I like Nick Cave. I like Tom Waits and some country stuff…Mike and Burleigh have very eclectic tastes.

 

I can definitely see the Tom Waits influence, at least lyrically (although, of course, I didn’t see it before you mentioned it), because he likes to write about those real seedy, down-and-out characters.

R: He’s great, he’s a showman.

 

Have you ever seen him live?

R: No, unfortunately. I’d love to.

 

So would I, if he ever dared hit the road again. He hasn’t toured in at least 10 years.

B: You know why he hasn’t toured? The original Chester Cheetah, they copied his voice for that. He sued Frito-Lay and won something like 10 million dollars, so he doesn’t have to tour anymore.

 

That’s the way to go.

M: Birthday Party, I like. Jesus Lizard. Late 80’s Touch and Go stuff, but I don’t think we necessarily sound like that. I guess because we listen to different stuff, I hope it’s hard to narrow it down to one or even a few. You could say the bass player sounds like so and so, the singer sings like so and so. We got reviewed about a year ago, and the guy said we sounded like somewhere in between Shudder To Think and Scratch Acid, which was probably one of the more on the ball observations. I really like Scratch Acid, although these guys don’t, and these guys really like Shudder To Think.

 

I hate the fact, though, that whenever a band gets reviewed, other bands are the immediate points of reference and points of comparison. Points of comparison because if you can’t relate them to another group, the music doesn’t have worth, and points of reference because it’s like a contest: ‘Let’s see if I can compare this band to the most obscure band I know and show off my indie-rock knowledge.’

B: I know we’ve been compared to Birthday Party and Talking Heads. Bauhaus, I’ve heard, too. You [Ryan] got compared to Peter Murphy.

M: It’s lame but it’s a necessary evil of reviewing things. The alternative is deciphering what someone’s trying to say when they write ‘The guitar is broadcasting itself across the universe with acid-translucent bass-lines...’ It’s kind of entertaining to read but it doesn’t give you a whole lot to work with.

 

Do you guys have anything coming out any time soon?

R: We’re on a couple of compilations. We’re on one with Golden and a couple of European bands. Apparently you can only get it in Sweden and Spain. We’re gonna try to record soon. We have some ideas. We haven’t set anything up yet, but as soon as possible, I think. We’ll be touring in October, definitely. We’re gonna try to do a West Coast trip. Hopefully from LA all the way to Seattle. After that, it’s anybody’s guess.

 

The Ruby Dare’s debut album, Lurk Late and Strike Straight, is out now on Secret Police.It has been spotted at many reputable outlets, such as Kim’s and Generation Records. Should these places be inaccessible, write Secret Police at: PO Box 2804, Kensington, MD 20891. They also appear on the Lovitt Empire compilation, with the Monorchid and Bluetip. Their latest 7", Fever b/w Wedding Day, is out on Irony Records, PO Box 5431, Richmond, VA 23220. Check em' out on the web at The Ruby Dare Homepage


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