“Dean Dinning Holds No Fear, Starting Now” (A Conversation with Toad the Wet Sprocket’s Secret Weapon)

JB: I have found you to be a really elusive bass player, online. Very little information comes up when researching you. Have you ever been in any of the other bass-oriented magazines in the past, or have you steered away from that world?

DD: I don’t consciously steer away from it. I guess it’s one of those “always a bridesmaid” kind of situations; I just don’t know. I don’t think our guitar player, Todd, has ever been in Guitar Player. I think we’re looked at as more of a “song band” than a “player’s band,” and feel like a lot of musicians like us. I definitely feel that in the audience, people’s eyes are on me watching when I play; like someone’s looking at me in a technical way. I can pick out a bass player waiting for something.

JB: Right, waiting for you to clam!

DD: Yeah, that’s always the way it is: “I just want you to fall down.”

JB: I think you made a good point. It’s true, there are a lot of musicians that really do appreciate Toad the Wet Sprocket and what the band brings to the table, from a musical standpoint. All four of you have such a long history, and you got together during your high school days, correct?

DD: That’s right, the official beginnings of the band when we started taking it seriously was around 1986, but we had jammed together before that as a very loose version of the band where the name came from. We didn’t expect to keep that ridiculous name if we knew we were going to do it professionally.

JB: How did you stumble across the name? I know it’s from a Monty Python sketch, “Rock Notes.” Was somebody watching Monty Python and then decide to approach the other guys about using the name?

DD: I had a friend whose parents were from England, and he had these albums with all kinds of Monty Python stuff on it. One album was this Monty Python’s Contractual Obligation album, and I believe at that time Monty Python’s Flying Circus was being played on MTV. We would watch the shows together and listen to this record which had the sketch called “Rock Notes.” Eric Idle actually wrote it for a television series that predates Monty Python, called Rutland Weekend. It’s essentially MTV News, except with absolutely ridiculous band names, and the very first announcer’s line of the sketch (which I of course thought at 16 was the funniest thing I had ever heard) says, in English accent, “Rex Stardust, lead electric triangle with Toad the Wet Sprocket has had to have an elbow removed following their recent successful worldwide tour of Finland.” That was the funniest sentence I’d ever heard in my life, and I said, “If I’m ever in a band, I am going to call it that, even if it’s just for one day.” I started making logos for it, and if I were to look at an old high school yearbook, I can see that Randy drew a version of my logo in my yearbook in 1985, or something like that. The name was already there; the name came with me.

JB: Is it fair to say that Toad the Wet Sprocket was your brainchild, or was it everybody coming together with a vision?

DD: You know, it really was more of everybody coming together type of thing. The band wouldn’t have happened if Todd and Glen hadn’t been writing songs, and learning how to record home demos, creating a catalog of songs for us to perform. Todd was really adamant that we play live as many times as possible. So we started playing every gig we could get, in the beginning, like a battle of the bands, then we found this place called “The Shack” where the owner didn’t pay his ASCAP or BMI fees and you had to play original music. If you played Happy Birthday to someone in this club, he would run up and stop you because he was afraid of getting caught. It all sounds a bit ridiculous now, but it caused us to write new songs every week, if we wanted to keep updating the set, and it got us into the habit of writing.

JB: Glen was a couple years younger than the rest of you. Did you have to wait for him to graduate in order to hit the road, and was he able to graduate by the time Bread & Circus was independently released in 1988?

DD: Glen actually tested out of high school and started college early. He just took the test and got out. He’s a very smart guy and it was no problem for him testing out and just be done with high school.

JB: Talk to me about your musical background; how did you get introduced to the bass guitar? Was it something that you yearned for as a young kid, or was it by default? How did your musicianship evolve?

DD: Well, my journey of getting the bass comes through my family. My family’s been involved (at least on my dad’s side) in the music business for as long as anyone can remember. My dad was a musician, and pretty much all of his siblings except for one were musicians. And the first people in the family to find success were my Dad’s three sisters, Jean, Ginger, and Lou, who were called The Dinning Sisters. You can look them up on the internet. They were a trio singing group like the Andrew Sisters, doing very close harmonies. They were my dad’s three sisters, and when they were teenagers, he decided to manage them, taking them to Chicago, where he got them signed to NBC radio. This was before people listened to records. They used to perform on a show called The National Barn Dance, and it was live radio that people would tune in and gather around the radio (before television) and listen to this program. It was an early version of The Grand Old Opry. So my dad took his sisters and they made records, they did movies, they performed with Bing Crosby, and all kinds of things like that. He was their manager and he would hire the arrangers and pick the songs and teach the girls their parts around the piano, working them the whole time.

Then in 1960, my dad’s younger brother, Mark Dinning, had a number-one hit with a song called Teen Angel, which was on MCA records, and this song was written by one of the three Dinning sisters (Jean) who actually backed him up on that one. It went to number one and got a whole new life when George Lucas used it in American Graffiti in the early 1970’s on the soundtrack album, which was very successful. That was the second instance of my family succeeding in the music industry, and Mark was one of those great “one-hit-wonders” in music history. Then there was my aunt Dolores, who was a backup singer in Nashville, and she was on the television show Hee Haw for its entire run. Music was in my family, and my Dad had a little combo and played every week; he was a stand-up bass player who sang. At that time, I had been learning acoustic guitar, and when I asked for an electric guitar, he said that there were ten guitar players for every bass player that could sing well. He ended up buying me my first ‘70s P-bass that we got for two or three hundred bucks. I didn’t want that and wanted an electric guitar, so it sat in the closet and I saved up my own money for an electric guitar.

JB: How old were you at this point?

DD: I was either 15 or 16.

JB: You let a ‘70s P-Bass collect dust in a closet?

DD: [Laughs] Yes, I know, but it had a nice life after that! When I originally came into Toad the Wet Sprocket, Todd and Glen had been recording these demos, and they had a bunch of keyboard parts on it and I was a keyboardist, playing piano since I was about seven. Everybody knew me at school for being a piano player, because I had done this thing at the talent show where I played piano and sang this song Masochism Tango by a guy named Tom Lair. I don’t know how I got away with it, but I did because the lyrics are very risqué. But everybody knew I played piano, and when they wanted to play live, they called me asking if I could play these keyboard parts they had on their demos, and I played a keyboard that Glen’s dad had bought him. I was the keyboard player until we started working on new songs that hadn’t been recorded yet. Then I picked up Glen’s bass one time in rehearsal and came up with a great bass part on my first try for this song that we were working on. I pretty much never put it down after that and just moved right into that spot. For a while there, even up through the Pale record, there were songs that Glen played bass on where I played keyboards. Even through our second album, we were still sort of trading off.

JB: When you made the switch from piano/keys to bass, did you end up taking formal lessons, or are you completely self-taught? Also, did you find that when you finally switched over to bass you had to have a conversation with Randy, like, “Let’s try to make the rhythm section super tight,” and did you both click instantaneously, or was there work that needed to be put into it? How did that dynamic work between the two of you?

DD: I took piano lessons, but I never took a bass lesson, so that makes me completely self-taught. I can read music from playing piano, but I am really rusty at it. With bass, I operate solely by ear. Regarding Randy, that didn’t really happen until the Fear record, and I think Bread & Circus was tighter than Pale. We were doing everything live, and it sounded tight, but there was not a conversation about it. We weren’t really focused on it; I was just playing what I felt the song wanted and knew where the kick drum was falling. Randy’s a great drummer and he was playing the right parts of the song and I was playing the right parts for the song, and it didn’t require us having a discussion.

JB: Right, but do you feel like it took a few years to really lock in, because you needed to gig and play out live to gain that experience together, correct?

DD: Yes, we definitely did, and I needed to play live, because I needed to simplify what I was doing, because the bigger the room that you play, I’ve always felt that you can play a lot less. All those fast parts and things really get lost, so it doesn’t matter how much ability you have or how fast your fingers can go, if no one’s hearing it. As we started to play more I started to calm down. [Chuckles]

JB: Less is more.

DD: Less is definitely more, and I was always playing for the song. I always felt like everything that we were doing was there to support the vocal, and nothing should get in the way of that, and so I started paring it down, but the temptation was to just really go for it all the time. When you start to get some ability with something, you go, “Wow, my fingers can really move much faster than they used to!” You end up playing too much; so I went through that period, and then I calmed down.

JB: Were you the type of player who would sit and shed in your bedroom, or was it more of really working things out once you got to rehearsals?

DD: I practiced like crazy on my own.

JB: Who were your go-to players/influences and what styles of music were you listening to while trying to get your chops up to speed?

DD: In high school, I started going out to the local swap meet and buying records on vinyl every Sunday with the same friend who had the Monty Python record. I started buying Beatles albums and albums by The Who, and I loved John Entwistle. I was a huge fan of that and I’ve been attracted to bands like Led Zeppelin – a power trio with a singer. I’ve always liked John Paul Jones. I remember when that Led Zeppelin box set came out, I would sit and I would turn the bass all the way off and I would just play along with that, song after song. There was McCartney, and there was Entwistle, and John Paul Jones. I also loved singer-songwriter music, because I grew up in the ‘70s and had an older brother who’s seven years older than me. His record collection really influenced my tastes. Then, I discovered Leland Sklar and had gone to see James Taylor at the Santa Barbara Bowl; that was a game-changer for me when I heard him play. I felt that was the most “supporting of the song” playing I had ever heard in my life.

JB: Lee went on record saying that he feels uncomfortable taking solos (but can do it if required), and that he is more of a pocket player, which makes sense when you hear his deep groove. He is definitely a pocket player, for sure. I saw him with Phil Collins a couple years ago and was so impressed with his tone and great feel.

DD: Oh, yeah! So, that was when I realized just how much real estate the bass took up in the mix, while also being simple and in the pocket. Learning all his parts by putting on James Taylor’s Greatest Hits and playing Your Smiling Face, or How Sweet It Is; those are busy parts and they’re also not busy, at the same time. A lot of those ‘70s guys, like Randy Meisner from The Eagles, these are all the guys. Then there was Sting. When I heard The Police in the ‘80s, where songs would be built around a bass line, like Walking on the Moon, where the guitar had so much space. Andy Summers was really letting the effects do the work, you know? Then Adam Clayton comes along with U2 and you’ve got songs like New Year’s Day. [Hums the bass line] Good God! It was tremendous! I could go on and on, but I was really paying attention to what these guys were doing.

JB: Were you thinking subconsciously that you were going to try bring some of that influence into Toad the Wet Sprocket, or did you have to just work it out? Did you think to yourself, “I want to incorporate Lee Sklar in this song with his feel, and McCartney for this song,” or was it just you getting into a rehearsal room and seeing what happens?

DD: I was always trying to work in something that would be a little nod to those guys in the songs, even if I was the only person who knew it was there.

JB: I can hear that in your playing, especially on the Fear record. Let’s forward a bit. The band gets together writing songs and gigging incessantly. You get signed by Columbia records, who end up re-releasing the two independent albums, Bread & Circus and Pale. Is that correct?

DD: Right; we met with several record companies, but the team at Columbia were the only team that were really in favor of us putting out those first two independent records on our own label (but through Colombia’s distribution) and sending us out on the road to build a live following. That turned out working really well, because we were in a much different place. If we had somehow combined the songs from those two records into some type of big debut release, it wouldn’t have been the same as the record that we did with Fear. We ended up working with Gavin MacKillop; he was a great producer. We did some things that we hadn’t done before. It’s right on the downbeat of the first song, when you hear that first vocal line from Walk on the Ocean; Glen’s register is way up in the air. He’s in a higher register than he’s been on either of the first two records, and I remember playing the advanced copy of the record for some friends at a party, and when that first song came on, everybody’s eyes just went wide open saying they never imagined Glen could sound like that. We brought the keys up and were really thinking about where the vocals were sitting for the first time, and we hadn’t thought about that on those first few records, which is why you have vocals that are kind of in this mild range. Then you get Fear, and all of a sudden the vocal is up above the band and the harmonies are up above that. Honestly, it took the whole thing more “pop.”

JB: Leading up to the Fear record, you guys are becoming road dogs, right? You’re out there doing the live thing, and then you get into the studio to record Fear. Was there a lot of stress from the record company to generate some hits? Was someone in the studio, like an A&R guy stopping in to check on progress, and were you feeling pressure from them to finish recording the album?

DD: This is why our team at Columbia was the best and why making this decision to sign with them was the best thing we could have ever done. They left us completely alone. Our A&R guy was Ron Oberman, who passed away a few years ago. He came up once for half a day, listened through to where we were with the songs, loved everything he had heard, and left. We purposely recorded the record out of town, in Reno, Nevada, at a studio called “Granny’s House” that we had found.

JB: How did you stumble across that particular studio?

DD: Gavin found it. We actually looked at three or four places, and that was the one that we felt would be the best. It had similar technical requirements. Gavin wanted an SSL desk with specific outboard gear, and things like that. It ticked off all of the boxes, and it was also a place where we could all live under the same roof and all have our own bedrooms. It would be a whole residential studio with a cook, and we wouldn’t have to think about anything except making music 24 hours, any time of the day or night. People could work on whatever schedule was best for them. I’m more of an evening person, and Glen likes to work in the morning, so a lot of the time, we would be working on guitars and bass overdubs and things like that into the evening, and then Glen would come in and do vocals with Gavin in the morning. So it just worked out really well. That was the place; it was the middle of winter and it was freezing cold and bleak! The best thing about it was the recording and the recording sessions; I remember it being a great time.

JB: The band sold over a million records on this one, and you had two Top 20 hits with Walk on the Ocean and All I Want. When listening to the final playback of the mixes, did you all look at each other and agree, “We’re onto something big here,” or was it more of, “Let’s keep moving forward and get the album finished?”

DD: No. All I Want almost didn’t happen … except that it did. It was a demo that Glen had made of a verse and a chorus of that song. We had a rehearsal space and one of those Akai 12-track machines, and Todd was out there one night going through some tapes, and he stumbled upon this demo of an early version of All I Want, with just a verse and chorus. And he played it for us the next time we got together and said we should work on this, because this is really, really good; so we worked it up. It was one of the songs we used when interviewing producers, and I always loved the song. It had that sort of “special factor” that there were three singers in our band and that we could really use that to set ourselves apart, and it had the thing where Todd and I could do one vocal, and Glen could do another vocal above us. So it would not necessarily be call-and-response, but like a lead with definite backups. Todd and I could be The Pips, and Glen can be Gladys Knight up there. The song was a struggle to get recorded, because it had all of these layered vocals, and it also had a 12-string acoustic guitar, which was the main chordal instrument on the verses, so it was really a pain to get in tune. People wanted to abandon the song, because it wasn’t coming together, and I kept pushing for it, because I believed in the song and I really thought that it could work, if we just got it right. We couldn’t get in tune though, and then … this is embarrassing, but I’m going to admit it anyway; put it in print I don’t care! [Laughs] When we were mixing it, we discovered that the bass was out of tune. So it was me all along that was the problem.

JB: Were you a little sharp?

DD: I don’t really remember, but I think it was probably a little sharp. I was like, “I have to put a new track on this and play a new bass part on this right now!” Gavin called up a friend he was living with at the time who was from an Australian band [Chart Hogs] that he was working with and asked him to bring over his MusicMan Stingray bass. I had never played a Stingray before and it was the only bass we could get our hands on. So, I plugged it in direct and played the part and saved the song, and the rest is history I guess.

JB: That explains why this particular line is so punchy; I was going to comment on that as a matter of fact. You were switching between the A minor and D minor chords throughout the verse sections, cutting through the mix beautifully. Then you hit that E7 into the F chord that transitions into the bridge release of the tension – it’s a magical moment. Did you improvise that line, or was that worked out ahead of time, because it’s very active?

DD: I did improvise that, because what I was doing wasn’t working, and it wasn’t enough.

JB: When you say it “wasn’t working,” did you mean against Randy’s drum parts, or within the context of the mix with the entire band?

DD: It wasn’t interesting enough, and it wasn’t enough to just to stick to the roots, despite everything that was going with the lead vocal and harmonies behind it, and then these beautiful “chimey” electric guitars with a very steady drumbeat. If the bass stuck to the roots, it felt like it was almost there, but not quite, and we knew that it needed something more. Gavin kept pushing me to do better. His famous words: “Just do better.” When I played the part that is on the record, I played that thinking it would be over-the-top ridiculous and too much. I always like to find the edge, and then pull back, but I knew that I was going far enough, finally. So I played all of that stuff on the chorus, and it worked.

JB: Was the band happy with the end result?

DD: Yeah, I mean it saved the song, but we buried it on the record. It’s like the seventh or eighth song that nobody thought would be a single.

JB:  I remember listening to the single on radio and thinking, “Wow, this bass player is tight, and very melodic.”

DD: We had Michael Brauer do a mix for pop radio, and boy did he push the bass up on that! What a thrill, I have tell you, it’s like when you hear your music in the grocery store and kind of hearing the bass part, going, “Wow!” It was coming through on anything you played it on; that’s Brauer’s secret: sounding good on anything.

JB: Moving right along to Walk on the Ocean, did you play fretless on that track?

DD: I did, yes. I had a fretless Fender Jazz Bass that I played on that song. That didn’t change much from what I originally played the first time around. On the first day we played that song, we played it the entire day. I mean, we played that song over and over, and over again; it was clear that song was something special. I had been toying around with fretless bass a little bit and thought that would be a good song to try it on.

JB: Were you comfortable with your intonation at that point?

DD: Well, my fretless had lines on it and I played through a tuner and watched the tuner and adjusted myself. I was not confident at all, and I’ve never played fretless live. It was a studio texture for me, but I liked the feel of it. If I think about where I was hearing that sound, it was probably on Windham Hill records, or something like that.

JB: Michael Manring?

DD: Yeah, exactly. It was in those places, more than in rock, but I thought it would work for the song, and it did.

JB: It was very tasty, and I really admired the way you approached the walk-up runs into the chords during the slide guitar solo. I always thought that you served the song correctly with that bass line.

DD: Oh, thank you. Some of that was a producer friend of ours, Tony Berg. He was one of the producers we auditioned and though of working with when we were making the Fear record. That slight chord change in the walk-up was something that he suggested on the day that we worked with him, and I kept it.

JB: It was a great suggestion!

DD: Oh yeah, I am always open to a great suggestion.

JB: I know you had said that you don’t play fretless live, but did you ever take it out and then go, “Oh God, what am I doing?” and then put it away? Or did you just know you were going to play fretted on this song going forward?

DD: I did a few local gigs where I played the fretless, and that was before I was using in-ear monitors. I might be able to play it better now that I have in-ears, but because it was so reliant on me hearing what the intonation was and being able to adjust it higher or lower. If I had had my amp at the volume I would have needed to hear my intonation, I would have thrown off the whole mix and would probably have gotten kicked out of the band.

JB: Some things are better left in the bedroom closet.

DD: I still use it occasionally, but I don’t have that bass anymore and do have a fretless I pull out sometimes.

JB: Let’s discuss the song Butterflies. You talk about an unorthodox bass line that drives and dictates the melody, and it’s so upfront in the mix. Was that intentional?

DD: That song wasn’t fully written, and then the band worked out an arrangement for it. That was one of the only songs that was developed entirely by the band with those very raw parts. I think it’s just two chords until you get to the big drop D, or the big drop E.

JB: You’re alternating these little slide licks between A and G during the female speaking bits, and then when Glen’s vocal part comes in, you were executing a cool root-5-9-7 figure.

DD: That song was always kind of the one where we thought, “This is our chance to be weird and really stretch.” We had the two chords going back and forth between A and G, that’s all it was doing. The challenge was to find three different bass parts that would define each part of the song. When we were making the demo, I came up with these three parts, and the drum part was there – “doom dat dat doom dat doom dat dat” – that repeated over and over again. Then Glen gradually came in one day and did a whole ton of vocals that really define the sections of the song, but that was really developed as a as a band, together. The goal was for us to just get freaky.

JB: It was very different from what the band had done musically up until that point. It stuck out like a sore thumb, but in a good way.

DD: Yeah, that was when I started really getting into using my 1989 neck-through Warwick Thumb Bass, and I was one of the only people playing them at that time.

JB: Was it active?

DD: Yes, it was, and you know, on a song like Butterflies, that’s the Warwick. If I had played that on my P-bass, it wouldn’t have sounded like that. It has that squawk to it and that voice with a slightly nasal tone. It just worked; it worked great. That was the beginning of my relationship with the folks at Warwick.

JB: I know this was a long time ago, Dean, but do you remember what amp setup you were using, and was it a combination of blending a direct signal with the mic’d amp?

DD: I do remember. I always used two tracks, one through an amp and one direct. We did things like taking the amp tone and putting it through a Tube Screamer on its way to the amp, getting a really extreme amp tone, and then just blending a little of it with the direct tone. It’s mostly direct, but we always did that, and I still like to do that, today.

JB:  Do you have a preference and prefer one over the other?

DD: Now I just go direct; that gives me everything I need and I know that I’m getting the purest signal into either the console or to the house.

JB: Yes, I agree. It’s punchy and I like that sound, too, as opposed to an amp, but everybody

has their “thing.”

DD: Everybody has their “thing”…

JB: Getting back to the Fear record, you guys work the album with some hits under your belt, you’re out there performing to bigger crowds and MTV loves you. After thirty years, can you listen back to this album with fresh ears, feeling proud of what the band was able to accomplish, and is there anything you would change if you could turn back time and talk to the younger version of yourself?

DD: The only thing I would change about the Fear album is that we were using a lot of digital reverbs, so I might dry it up a bit. If I could turn back time, I might tell my younger self to use the P-bass on Is It For Me, instead of the Thumb Bass, to make it a little tougher, and I would also tell myself to check the tuning on All I Want and save a lot of grief in the mixing. Although that would mean I wouldn’t have used the Stingray, and we love the Stingray on All I Want, so I guess I’d tell myself to use a Stingray on that song!

JB: Isn’t it true how hindsight is 50/50? I would say it all fell into place according to plan. Now, you get back into the studio a few years later and record Dulcinea and generate more hit songs, then you go back in and record Coil. What was happening at this point? It seemed like Columbia wasn’t pushing the band enough, no? Also, were there tensions brewing behind the scenes that led to Toad the Wet Sprocket splitting up? Talk to me about the initial breakup.

DD: There were things that were going on, for sure. During the Coil record, we had re-negotiated our deal with Columbia, because we didn’t take a lot of money when we signed with them. We opted for a higher royalty rate when earning it off of selling the records, but after we had proven ourselves and had a couple of hit records, we and our management felt comfortable going in there and negotiating a bigger deal. What we didn’t realize at the time was that would change our relationship with the record company in terms of the interest, and letting us do whatever we wanted. They were very keen on us working with a different producer and Jerry Harrison (Talking Heads) was very popular at that time, with the Live records like

Throwing Copper, and things like that. Harrison wasn’t going to be available for six months to a year, and we didn’t want to wait.

JB: Was this around 1996?

DD: Yes, I believe so.

JB: Do you know why he was busy? He was working on the Neurotic Outsiders super group with John Taylor and Steve Jones, and that band put a record out around late ‘96. I know he was working on that for a while – just a little useless side note.

DD: Isn’t that interesting… You know, Glen was starting to play out solo acoustic more often during that time, and I think some of us were afraid that he was going to leave the band if we didn’t make a record right away. So, we made the decision to plow ahead and use Gavin again, and this time record at home. Todd built a home studio behind his house in an old garden shed and we did all of the basic tracks at Master Controller in Burbank, and then we did all of the overdubs at Todd’s house. The money that we didn’t spend (because we kept the cost down and had a good budget doing things at home) we spent on having Tom Lord-Alge do the mixing. I attended the mixing sessions and thought, “Man, this is gonna be a masterclass I cannot miss out on.” As a result, I probably inhaled secondhand smoke from about 50-100 packs of cigarettes while he was mixing that record; who knows how many, but that guy’s a rock star. I understand why he is who he is and how he got there. He just did an incredible job mixing that record and that’s still the record even today working with Mikal Blue we use and aim for, sonically. We now have a prototype so we can A/B and hear a Toad the Wet Sprocket record mixed by Tom Lord-Alge and then hear the new song that we’re working on and say, “It needs a little more of this or a little more of that.” You steal from the best, right?

JB: Exactly! Okay, the Coil record gets released and didn’t do as well as the previous two records. What was transpiring within the inner circle of Toad the Wet Sprocket at this point?

DD: There was a lot of disappointment that it didn’t do what we hoped it would.

JB: Did you receive any radio play, and did MTV even put any of the singles in its rotation?

DD: MTV didn’t play anything from that record, and that’s what I would tell anyone; you being hot doesn’t last very long. If it’s happening, you shouldn’t worry about it, because there were thoughts of “this schedule is killing me” and “I can’t do this for the rest of my life.” Well, you know what, you won’t have to, because the public will move on, and by ‘97, there were other bands that were doing very similar things to what we were doing: Tonic, the Gin Blossoms, Goo Goo Dolls, you name it. There were a lot of people who were new doing music that was similar to us, but they had the extra added advantage of being new, and we were struggling to stay new.

JB: It’s a limited shelf life.

DD: It is; it always is. The bands that have been able to pull off a complete reinvention, like U2 with Achtung Baby. That is the gnarliest thing I’ve ever seen in my life, it’s one of their greatest records, and it didn’t suffer.

JB: I still love Wild Horses up to this day.

DD: Oh, my God, I could go on and on about that!

JB: Me too, but that’s a whole separate conversation. Back to Toad the Wet Sprocket, was it a mutual decision to take some time off and then get back together after clearing your heads, or was it much deeper than that?

DD: If it was going to be more of the way things currently were, nobody wanted to do it. We shouldn’t have broken up, though. We didn’t have anyone sitting us down saying, “You guys are making a dumb decision, here; you’ve got a great record deal, just take some time off, but don’t break up, because you’ve got everything in place with a major record deal,” etc. Breaking up was really silly, and looking back, it was a mistake. We lost a good number of years, and honestly, we lost a number of years of selling actual physical CDs, which was tragic. But I think everybody was ready for a break; but we didn’t need to break up.

JB: Was it acrimonious, and was it the type of situation where no one was in contact with each other for a while?

DD: We didn’t; people just went on and did their own thing. The songs we were working on at the time ended up on Glen’s first solo album, and also on a side project that Todd and I started developing, which was called Lap Dog, which came very close to getting a record deal, and that fizzled out.

JB: What was the impetus getting everyone back together in a room to talk about reuniting?

DD: Actually it was Adam Duritz from the Counting Crows; he got us back together. Glen had opened for Counting Crows on a solo gig around 2002, and they were gonna be playing a run of theater shows in Texas, and six at The Warfield in San Francisco, then another bunch of shows at The Wiltern in LA, and then in San Diego. Adam called Glenn and asked if he wanted to open these shows, and Glen said sure, and then Adam said, “We want you to get Toad the Wet Sprocket back together to do the shows.” Glen said, “I can ask,” and then we got back together going out and playing with Counting Crows at these theater shows, which were great! He made it happen, which is nice in a way, because Adam has been a friend for a really long time. He was actually on our original mailing list we had in the very early days when we would let people know where we were playing live. Adam was part of our original snail mail list before he was even in Counting Crows.

JB: Isn’t that funny, he was a fan!

DD: [Laughs] Very funny, he was a fan from way back!

JB: Is it safe to say from 2002/2003 up until now Toad the Wet Sprocket has been pretty active?

DD: Well, we did a tour in 2003, then it fell apart again, for various reasons. There was a

manager involved who didn’t help things who wasn’t our previous manager; it just wasn’t a good situation. It was clear that the conditions were not right for us to get back together as equals again, and so it fell apart. Then things got better, and we decided to play more around 2005/2006, and we really started piecing it all back together.

JB: You released a new album and EP between those reunion years up until present day.

DD: What happened was we had a great publishing deal. Our original lawyer wrote us a great publishing deal back in the day, and we got the rights back to all of our songs. I mean, 100%. Nobody even gets that. Everybody thinks that’s really unusual, and it is. When we got the rights to our entire catalog back, the four of us were the owners of this thing, this baby that we were co-parenting. We had a meeting with our business manager and we decided to make a re-recording album for licensing purposes, just as a good business move, so that we could have masters of our songs that we own. We made a record that we called All You Want, which is a new sort of “best of” album and a few of the songs are reimagined with different arrangements, and maybe slightly picked-up tempos. We corrected some flaws in the original recordings, like things being too slow or in the wrong key.

So, we put this thing out, having our publishing back, and having a record that every little step that we took brought us closer and closer together to actually being able to play again. Glen was performing this whole time with either a band or solo acoustic, and we had Glen’s agent book us some shows and the interest was there. We didn’t do very much at first, we probably did like six shows, and then it went to like 15 shows, and then it went to 25 shows, getting better and better. I remember we played a show at the Chicago Zoo one time and 3,000 people showed up, and we all looked at each other like, “Our audience is still here!”

JB: On a personal level, do you feel like it’s now water under the bridge? Do you feel like you guys have become closer as friends, forget about the music, just as people in general, do you feel like you were and are connecting more, and that this was the right strategy moving forward?

DD: I think we’re accepting each other more for the people that we are, instead of wishing someone was different. Those things you learn along the way, right? It’s easier to change yourself than it is to change someone else. So certain things, yes, certain things got fixed, and other things we learned to accept about each other and move forward.

JB: Is Toad the Wet Sprocket the type of band that hangs out with each other during downtime, or do you kind of do your own thing and when it’s time to hit the road or to write, is that when you reconvene?

DD: We used to, back in the very early days, but then around ‘97 or so, I think Glen was the first one to move away. He got married and relocated to Washington State, and that was a change. We weren’t all in the same town, anymore, and didn’t have the clubhouse or rehearsal space. We weren’t all getting together every week, and that was different. We all still pretty much live near each other, but people were getting married and buying houses and settling down.

JB: Becoming grown-ups.

DD: Right, becoming grown-ups, and that former aspect was all pushed to the side.

JB: I wish to bring up Randy, and know he gave you his blessings to move forward without him. Is it okay speaking about his health condition, or is that a private matter? I don’t want to push the subject if it’s uncomfortable discussing it.

DD: No, no, I can talk about it.

JB: I caught the band live within the last three to four years and noticed a gentleman named Josh Daubin subbing for him, because Randy wasn’t feeling well. I know that he has a bone condition. Talk to me about what happened, and why Randy had to move away from touring and recording with the band.

DD: Randy has a condition that’s called osteogenesis imperfecta, and it does various things. It causes his bones to be very brittle. When he was in adolescence, I remember one time when we were in junior high school (because I’ve known Randy and Todd since junior high), he broke his leg stepping off a curb. That’s how extreme his condition is. He did a great job, and he was strong. I mean, aside from his condition, he was an athlete, playing basketball and coaching kids’ basketball, for God’s sake. He was strong for a really long time, and then our schedule being what it is picked up, and we started doing more and more. Once we got back together, it basically became kind of untenable. His condition was getting worse and he began needing a wheelchair at the airport. By that time we were at the end; it was just too much.

JB: Did he call the band up and say, “Listen, I cannot do this anymore?”

DD: It’s like it is with anybody; you can go along until somebody hurts themselves, and then has a hard time coming back. My mother is 90 years old and she lives by herself, but if you fall, this is all over, this whole fantasy of living alone up here all comes to an end. Randy took a fall and broke several ribs, and this was two weeks before a tour was supposed to start, and it was gonna be a heavy tour. He called us and said he wasn’t going to be able to do it and we were going to have to find someone to sub for him. Josh originally came in. I auditioned him and he was supposed to play for two, maybe three weeks, until Randy came back. You think that it’s going to be okay, and you think he’s going to be able to heal, but that’s not a sure thing, and the target date for him to come back kind of came and went. The other thing about his condition, this osteogenesis imperfecta, is that it manifests in different ways and different times in your life, and it came back in the form of horrible tinnitus. He was the only person on stage using a wedge monitor, and he couldn’t use in ears. His doctor literally told him at one point that he was going to go deaf at some point if he continued playing, so these were all parts of it.

JB: That’s devastating. Randy literally had to quit or else face catastrophic health issues. What an unfortunate and gut-wrenching situation to be in.

DD: It was. Josh came in and studied Randy’s parts like a scholar. He was the drummer for the band that was opening for us. We thought we would just get the drummer for the opener to fill in, and that’s what it was. Josh is a pro from Nashville. The band that was opening for us were a three-piece without a drummer, and they hired Josh as the pro to come in. He’s the kind of guy who you send songs to and he can learn it on the plane and then show up and play the gig, flawlessly. He’ll chart it out, and he’s just a pro, and did that with our music. He studied Randy’s parts, and he was even putting on our entire playlist on Spotify while he was sleeping so that the songs would soak into the core of his brain.

JB: How did that affect you? Here you are having a friendship and partnership with Randy since middle school, and he’s now out of the picture. Did it take time to lock in as a rhythm section with Josh?

DD: With me and Josh, it was instantaneous. From the very first time we played together, he was listening to me really hard, which made it really easy for me. He is such a great listener, playing the right thing. Then eventually, he started suggesting things, like picking up tempos of the songs and over the course of the time that he has been with us, he’s contributed so much. He contributes to making the setlist, developing a cheat sheet that we give to the lighting person at the venue that we play in, shooting video and taking photos. He does all kinds of stuff and playing the drums on the show just scratches the surface.

JB: Is he considered a member of the band, or is he still kind of an auxiliary hired gun?

DD: He’s still a hired gun, at this point. I mean we have resisted; when you’ve done something for thirty years together, it’s hard to just bring someone in and instantly make them a member. But yeah, he is considered a member, for all intents and purposes, at this point.

JB: Let’s bring up Starting Now. You released this new record late August, early September. I love it, and cannot stop listening to it. As far as recording, did you track before COVID and the shutdown? How did it work as far as the recording process for the new album?

DD: The only people who played these songs together were me and Josh. We got those tracks down right before everything shut down. We had started this in late 2019, just a couple of songs, and didn’t know that it was going to become a Toad the Wet Sprocket record. Alan Parsons lives in Santa Barbara and he teaches a workshop where he has people come in who are laptop producers who have never recorded a live band before, and me Josh, Glen, and Greg Leisz were a live band for one of his workshops and we recorded two of Glen’s songs in one day at this workshop. That’s where the idea came from to do another Toad the Wet Sprocket record, because we heard how great we all sounded together. Todd was unavailable; he splits his time between Santa Barbara and Mammoth Lakes. So we recorded these two songs and got them done with Alan Parsons, then Glen called me a couple months after that and was like, “You know, we should probably record more of my songs and make a Toad the Wet Sprocket record.” Josh and I went in a couple more times using Glen’s templates. Todd didn’t have his parts yet, because he likes to work on his parts after the tracking is done.

JB: You just made a comment that’s very interesting. Does that mean that you don’t jam together to get song parts sketched out? Does Todd participate when you’re trying to get ideas formulated?

DD: He likes to woodshed and he likes to do it on his own. He can do it the other way with everyone together, but he prefers to do it this way.

JB: Understood. Was Glen sitting on a lot of these tunes for a while, and then presented them to the band?

DD: He had a solo record that was almost finished, and then when he heard how the two tunes that we recorded (Best of Me and Transient Whales) sounded. When he heard them, at least I would like to think that when he heard our versions of them, it made him consider presenting more material. He had other songs with other players on them, but we didn’t use any of the tracks from the solo recordings that he did. Then I went through a folder of his songs and picked a bunch and those became the other five songs on the record. Four of them were originally for a solo record that he was making.

JB: I will say, in regard to Transient Whales, the harmonies just pop out and are so lush. It definitely sounds like a Toad the Wet Sprocket arrangement.

DD: When we get together with those voices, it’s magic and a combination that works. We have been singing with each other for over thirty years.

JB: Let’s take a moment to discuss those harmonies, because we didn’t really emphasize much in that department. When Glen is taking a part, let’s say the tonic, are you taking the third or the fifth, and then Todd fills in the missing piece of the triad? How do you determine who takes what part when you’re executing stacked harmonies?

DD: Generally speaking, my range is higher than Todd’s, so if there’s a part below Glen’s, Todd takes it, and if there’s a part above him, I take it.

JB:  Are you going into falsetto, or real voice?

DD: Full voice, pretty much. Occasionally, when my voice is tired, I will fake a part live, but for the most part, it’s all full voice on the records.

JB: Did you talk about the vocals much for this record, or did you just feel it out? Was there a template of who’s singing which parts?

DD: Gosh, it varies. It was everything. Sometimes, Glen would make a sketch. Like Transient

Whales, he had a definite idea of what all the parts were, and he gave me a guide. We essentially stuck to the guide, and then changed it. [Chuckles] It’s both; there are a lot of songs where I was pretty much left on my own to do the vocals, and there was a definite idea, like in Transient Whales, where he had all of those parts sketched out for us and then we recreated them afterwards and fiddled with them.

JB: Were you sending files to each other? I assume this was during the pandemic, right?

DD: All the time; that was the greatest challenge of recording this way, keeping track of the files, and even when Mikal was running the mixes at the very end, he would say, “Okay, I think this is the Oregon song,” and I’d look and I’d be like, “That’s not the right one. The one you want is this one, do a search for it,” and he’d find it in a folder somewhere. Then, we’d swap it out. So I have a pretty good head for keeping track of this stuff, definitely for my own parts. Anyway, I can tell when it’s the right one and when it’s a previous one. We sorted it out, and I don’t think it was a struggle, but there were so many files being sent, we had to make sure that we had the right ones when going back and forth. It all worked out in the end, but that was the challenge.

JB: You have the godfather of yacht rock, Michael McDonald, singing on Best of Me. How did you manage to get him to sing on this particular song?

DD: Oh yeah, well, Michael is a Santa Barbara guy. He’s lived here for a long time and he probably has a few houses, but he’s known as a Santa Barbara guy. He knows people we know. If you live in Santa Barbara and you’re a musician … My life is weird; somebody or a friend will call me and say “We need you to be a judge for an American Idol thing at the high school.” I’ll show up, and it’s me and Kenny Loggins. This is the kind of thing that happens in Santa Barbara. I am always trying to get the old Santa Barbara guys and the new Santa Barbara guys and kind of build a bridge, there.

So, getting Michael involved was just a dream. Best of Me was one of the songs we did with Alan Parsons. Glenn had that vocal part and the lead part that he sings. I always call that part “the Michael McDonald part,” because it sounded like something Michael McDonald would sing, and I just called it that. I may have walked around the studio singing like Michael McDonald a few times just to prove that it was a Michael McDonald part. I never know when it’s going to be the last chance to do something. So if I have an opportunity, I am going to ask someone if they want to do it. I thought this is such a crazy idea, but it never hurts to ask, and why not ask Michael McDonald if he would like to sing on this Toad the Wet Sprocket song?

We actually have a great version with me and Todd singing those parts, and maybe we’ll release that at some point. I think we probably will; it sounds amazing. It’s the same parts that Michael sang, just with me. We sent Michael those as a guide, but anyway, the way the story works out, we were finishing the record, and it was almost as if there’s just one more thing – kind of like Colombo, you know, “Just one more thing…” – we should ask Michael McDonald if he would sing that part on Best of Me. And I was like, “You know, it’s now or never, and it never hurts to ask; the worst thing that could happen is that he says no.” It turned out that Michael was making an album with an engineer who Glen knew, and Glen literally ran into him on the street in Santa Barbara three days later. He was like, “Hey Chris, how’s it going?” Chris said, “I’m making a record up at my studio with Michael McDonald.” Glen’s like, “Gosh, okay, well, it’s now or never” and Glen’s, like, “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but we actually have a song that would be perfect for Michael to sing on.” Chris told him to send it over, and it just went from there. We sent the song over and Michael agreed to do it, but he wouldn’t do it until his solo album was done. So we waited, and we waited, and we waited, and then one day, we got a folder of vocals during the pandemic. That was one of the few times that I went in to check with Mikal Blue; we had this folder of vocals and put the whole thing together. We just couldn’t believe it, we got the chills. We’re working with an iconic singer.

There’s always been a little bit of Toad the Wet Sprocket that wears the captain’s hat. There’s a little bit of that with Walk on the Ocean. There have been some references of a Hawaiian shirt or a shell necklace in someone’s closet in this band. It really came about as organically as it could because, honestly, we’re all living in Santa Barbara.

JB: The end result is incredible, and it sounds top notch!

DD: I like that we did it differently live, acoustically, with all of us singing harmonies around one mic. You can’t get up there and try to recreate what Michael McDonald did on your song; you have to do something different. But it serves in the same way that Michael serves; it’s different but it’s equally pleasant.

JB: Did you keep that throughout the setlist on the tour, opening with Best of Me?

DD: We did, we opened every show that way.

JB: It was a nice entrance segue into the electric stuff. Normally, I wouldn’t think of an acoustic track as an opener, but it flowed seamlessly.

DD: Thanks! That actually came out of a mistake that happened due to a power failure at one of the earliest shows on the tour. It was a show in Santa Barbara where we went out to start the very first song when something tripped the breaker and we lost the power to the mains, and we had to fill time, Glen said to Eli our guitar tech, “Hand me the acoustic” and started singing Best of Me, and when he gets to the chorus, all of us are over there in the wings waiting for them to fix the problem. He motions for us to come out and sing the chorus, and then we just did it that way from that night on. We said, “Well, that’s cool and the audience freaked out!” They loved it and we said that certainly worked! I was wanting to do something like this for a long time; doing that as the opener for the show. Glen had this special mic set up that we used, and that’s really how it happened; it was born out of failure.

JB: I’m glad you kept it, because I saw you at Infinity Hall in Hartford back in September. My wife and I were looking at each other going, “Wow, this is a real treat hearing Best of Me as an acoustic version.” A lot of bands rock out from the first downbeat, hitting the audience with a wall of sound that gives you heart palpitations. This was soft and easy, and a pleasant way to ease into the setlist.

DD: Our current front-of-house mixer, John Edman, does a really great vocal-centric mix. A lot of people build the mix from the kick drum and the bass, and the vocals are the last thing they put in. John goes the other way; John does a vocal-centric mix, and no one on this tour has said that they couldn’t hear the vocals, ever. He mixes from the vocals all of the way down. Coming out doing Best of Me acoustic says to the audience, “This is gonna be a show about vocals.”

JB: It’s true, the vocals sat beautifully in the mix. I had earplugs in and eventually took them out midway through the set, and it didn’t bother me one bit; everything was at such an even and manageable level.

DD: That’s John, and he is our guy.

JB: Keep him on the payroll!

DD: Oh, my God, he’s not going anywhere!

JB: Dean, this conversation has been great. May I ask you a few more questions, and then I’ll let you go?

DD: Absolutely!

JB: You have been so kind with your time; thank you. Are you guys finding as a ‘90s act, it being difficult keeping the machine moving forward in the digital streaming age? I am in my late 40’s and come from the era of selling CDs, and it’s not about that format, anymore. Are you struggling with that, as far as making revenue through streaming? Are you doing well on the road, selling merchandise and records?

DD: This whole music industry experience is all about multiple income streams, and has lots of different pathways for it to come in. Yes, we’re not selling records anymore, but we’re on Sirius satellite radio on a lot of different channels, and honestly that pays really well, because Sirius goes through SoundExchange, who pay the artist. What I’m trying to say is, yes, we’ve lost something in terms of CD sales, but that whole era was inherently false. If you remember paying $18 for a CD, a piece of plastic. That was a massively overinflated price for what you were getting, when records used to cost, maybe seven or eight bucks – when I was a kid anyway. You have to make up for it in other areas, certainly in live playing. We still couldn’t be doing this if we weren’t playing live, because you have to make sure that your merchandise game is strong. You have to make sure your live game is strong. Our current manager, Bill Leopold, has found ways to really tap into things like YouTube that we weren’t doing before; just really passive sources of income streams that we that we weren’t paying any attention to. I feel like we’ve got all of our bases covered, and we’re doing the best we can, and honestly the more content that we put out that we own, the better we do. All of these new albums don’t require a cut for the label or anything like that. When the fractions of a cent come in for streaming, we don’t have to split it with anyone.

JB: Right, you get to pocket all of it.

DD: I’m not going to rail against streaming, because I don’t think we’d be selling that many albums in 2021, anyway. What are the chances that our albums would be selling more than a couple thousand? I mean that’s optimistic, all of these years later. So, actually, streaming has worked out better for us, because now if some kid like my own kid (who’s 18) discovers a band and wants to do a deep dive into their entire catalogue, it’s all there. Here’s how it gets made up. My kid calls me while I’m on the road and says, “Dad, I want you to get tickets to see Dinosaur Jr.” How the hell does she know about Dinosaur Jr.? The fact is that she talks about music with her friends, and they’re all on this kick of discovering bands. Honestly, people are deep diving into the ‘90s catalogs right now and listening to the playlists, and it happens organically. People hear our song on one of the streaming services, they save it to their library, and it keeps coming back and keeps getting played, and then they come see us live, and then they buy the t-shirt, and then they’re a fan. The question is, “Would that be happening if we were only available on CD?” I don’t think it would, because they’d have to go to the record store and be like, “Do you have Toad the Wet Sprocket?” and some kid behind the counter is like, “Toad the who?” and then we’re right back where we started.

JB: Do you consider yourselves a cult band with a cult following?

DD: We have an audience, and we don’t do a lot of what you call “soft ticket shows,” which are a lot of fairs and festivals where people can see the entertainment as part of their admission into the county fair. That’s called a “soft ticket show” or “casino show,” where someone gets the show bundled in with the price of their room, or something like that. We are what you would call a “hard ticket band.” People buy a ticket they get a seat and they come to a show that they have actually paid money to go and see and experience. We have an audience, and honestly I’m still blown away. I’ve never been more thankful to have an audience, because I have what all of these kids want desperately.

JB: So you feel like this most recent fall tour was a success?

DD: 100%; absolutely.

JB: Are there plans to go out next year in 2022?

DD: Yeah, next year is going to be a great year, because you have to vary it up. Headlining shows are the best, but we’ve been waiting for the right package to come along to go out and play in the summer months performing to large crowds. The right one finally came along, and unfortunately came along in 2020. That was a tour called “Last Summer on Earth” and it’s us, Barenaked Ladies and Gin Blossoms. That was originally supposed to go out summer of 2020, and then the pandemic happened. So 2021 came along, and then the pandemic continued. They got moved to 2022. That’s what we’re doing next year.

JB: That’s great, because Starting Now won’t fizzle out and you’ll have another go at helping promote it.

DD: The original idea in 2020 was, we go out and we play these large shows on a three-band bill, and we play to a bunch of people who haven’t seen the band – either before or in a long time. It’s kind of like “the reminding people we exist tour” right outside of our fan base, because we could just continue to play to our fans and do great, because our fans show up every time; they are the best. But it’s also nice to get in front of people who aren’t as tuned in to what we’ve been doing for the last twenty years, or so. Then the idea would be to bounce from that to go out and do another headline tour.

JB: Final question, Markbass amplification; how long have you been using their product and what is the attraction that lured you in?

DD: The attraction to Markbass is … oh, we didn’t even discuss Lakland basses, at all.

JB: That’s right, I know you use their 4 and 5-strings. Please talk about them, too, if you don’t mind?

DD: Okay. Well, I got the Markbass at the same time that I got my first Lakland, and I am all about simplicity and not having to get on how things go wrong in a technical sense. When I’m out on the road, I don’t want to have a rig that I have to worry about. I started doing some research, and I tried out Markbass. When we started playing again, we used to do fly outs a lot and rely on rental backline, and I was requesting things like SVTs, and every once in a while you get one that had a loose tube, and I was going through some technical stuff with all of this tube gear. So, I wanted something that would sound great and really have a lot of punch, but also be 100% reliable and sound the same, every night. I brought the Markbass home, plugged it in, and it was so powerful that all of my wife’s shoes that were in the upstairs closet fell off of the top shelf. It was way louder than I ever needed it to be.

JB: It’s only 4×10’s, right?

DD: It’s only 4×10’s; it’s incredible craftsmanship with these neodymium magnets, and it’s lightweight with a ported cabinet. There seems to be no end to how much sound it can throw out. It can put out as much sound as an 8×10 SVT cabinet. Now, for the Laklands, I’ve been playing those since 2012. Originally, I was playing Warwick 5-strings a lot, but they’re really, really heavy and I needed to get away from that, because it was actually affecting my spine and I needed something lighter. I was paying attention to who was playing them. A lot of the Nashville pros were using the Lakland 5-strings, and it had a great super sound that’s roadworthy; American-made in Chicago by real guys. When we decided to make the New Constellation record, it was going to be a new push for the band. From that point on, I’ve been using my “new era bass.” It’s a Joe Osborne model 5-string Jazz Bass, totally passive. Taking away all of the complicated stuff, there’s no active anything, inside.

JB: No 9-Volt to worry about.

DD: Nope, no active DI’s. I’m going back to a passive DI and I’ve got passive pickups. I’ve got two Laklands now because John, our sound mixer, wanted the basses to sound as much the same as possible. So having those two has been absolutely great and I get a lot of enjoyment out of playing the bass. I really do; I feel like it’s very natural thing for me to do, and when I play in these spaces, I feel like I am absolutely in my zone in my happy place. As an experience goes, I can’t imagine anything better.

JB: Watching you play live looks effortless, and you also look very comfortable playing that instrument.

DD: I am very, very comfortable with it, and it’s not overly complicated. It’s just ultra-high quality. I like to know that whatever I’m playing, the sound that I’m delivering to the audience in the house is going to be as good as they have ever heard in their life.

JB: I can attest that it sounds great through the mix and cuts through beautifully. You’re not getting drowned out, and when attending a Toad the Wet Sprocket concert, you hear everything perfectly. It’s pristine, and that’s a true joy!

DD: That’s me and our front of house guy, John, working together to make that happen. It’s part me, and it’s part him. It really works, and I don’t do anything to it. Before it gets to him, there’s no compression or anything. The only thing I’ve added in the last two or three years is a wireless setup, which makes my life a lot better on stage without all of those cables. That’s all I’ve got. Other than that, it’s completely passive, completely simple, and it’s just the best tone, ever, delivered straight to the system in the house.

JB: Have you ever looked into endorsements at all, or is that not really your thing?

DD: Well, I work with the people at Lakland, and I’ve been an artist with them for a while, and I didn’t really track down anyone at Markbass. I’ve gotten plenty of stuff for free in my life and I’ve done very well in that department, but if I want something, I’ll just throw down the credit card. I’m not gonna let it not happen because I couldn’t get something for free. I called up the guys at Lakland and had this thing made for me. All of the American ones have to be special ordered and take three months to get. I am doing a lot going forward, and I want this to be my rig for the foreseeable future, here’s what I want you to make for me. They did so, and it’s perfect.

JB:  Hey, listen, it has been a real pleasure, and thank you so much for your graciousness. I’m so happy we were able to dig deep!

DD: My pleasure Joe, anytime. This has been great!