Remember when Mikiel said that the Dirty Heads’ single “Lay Me Down” holds the honor of being one of the few radio hits that he can hear repeatedly and not want to turn the dial? Well, over one year and countless plays on KROQ later, the statement still holds true for me. The infectious track featuring Rome from Sublime was my introduction to the SoCal genre-blenders, and like the rest of their fanbase, I’m eagerly awaiting the follow-up to their 2008 debut, Any Port in a Storm.
Thankfully, we recently had a chance to talk to The Dirty Heads’ vocalist Jared “Dirty J” Watson about recording that upcoming release, playing the Sunset Strip Music Festival later this month, and the New Englanders showing the Dirty Heads lots of love. Check out the full interview below!
Photo by: SJRosenfield
You’ve been out on the road for the last few months now, so how has everything with the tour been going?
Better than we could ever really ask. The best it’s been. The last tour was our first headlining tour as a band. We’d done little west coast tours and maybe some east coast tours by ourselves, but never a nationwide headlining tour. Our fans came out in crazy amounts. We sold out almost 75 percent of the shows. We were selling out shows in towns we had never been to, so that was really cool.
The last month, we’ve been doing some weekend warrior stuff, like we’ll fly out Friday, play some festivals Saturday and Sunday, and then fly home Monday and have the week off to hang out, go to the beach or do whatever, so it’s really been perfect for me. We did a killer headlining tour and now we’re playing shows occasionally while we’re recording over the summer.
Are there any dates that stick out in your mind from this last stint of shows that you’ve played?
Yeah. Boston. We sold out the House of Blues Boston. It was 2,000 tickets or something, and that’s the most tickets we had ever sold as a band. Every time we’ve played Boston the shows have been really good, but you don’t think of Boston as being really into reggae or rock or hip-hop. You think of ‘em as being these big Irish-American Dropkick Murphy fans that can kick your ass, but it’s totally different.
They really like music out there. Boston was one of the bigger shows of the tour, and the vibe of the show was amazing. Everybody was cool. There were no assholes. There were no people trying to fight. Everybody had a good time. It was one of my favorite shows of the tour.
You mentioned that you didn’t think that they would be into that style of music in Boston, and that brings me to my next point. The Dirty Heads are a fusion of several very different styles and don’t pull from just one genre. It seems like you really just play the music that you love. Who would you say are some of the band’s influences when writing music?
It’s weird because I don’t get inspiration from bands that sound like us. I get inspiration from Incubus and the Black Keys and The Ink Spots. I’ve been listening to a lot of these old 1940s, five-part harmony bands, really old reggae, like a lot of Horace Andy. A lot of stuff that doesn’t come across as our style.
When we started as a band, Sublime opened our eyes to that whole idea of, “Oh my God, here’s a band that has four styles, and he switches in and out of these styles even in the middle of songs.” That was the first band that I listened to that wasn’t just one style.
Then the Beastie Boys would come out with a hip-hop album, then some jam album that was instrumental, then a hip-hop jam album, then an album that would have punk songs on it…I think the Beastie Boys and Sublime were the two main bands that really opened our eyes and made the Dirty Heads into this band that wasn’t going to say, “Hey, we’re this one kind of music. Let’s stick with that.”
It’s cool being known as that type of band because people are more accepting if you decide to try something else for a song or two. If a fan buys the new album from their favorite metal band and there’s a folk song on it, there’s gonna be backlash. I think we have a little less of that, so it’s cool. It’s liberating.
So you are back in the studio working on your new album. How does the process for writing this album differ from the last?
Prior to the first album, we’d never worked with producers before or written with anybody else. We were really young, and the music didn’t really have any structure. We had songs without choruses. Duddy and I were comfortable with each other, so if I had an idea for him to change, he would do it, and it wouldn’t be a problem. Or if he wanted to change something, I trusted him.
When we first got together to write with some producers and other musicians, we were kind of closed-minded. It’s hard to come up with something and then have somebody else change it. I would pull my hair out, but then at the end, I’d be like, “Oh my God, OK, this is genius.” Once you finally accept that, “OK, you know what, I’m not always right and I don’t always write the best things,” you’ll learn to push yourself, and it becomes better.
We did that with the first album, but on this album, it’s just me and Duddy writing again. We went through almost a year of writing with other people and learned structure, and then we played as a band for a couple years. We wrote, mixed, and produced “Lay Me Down” ourselves—just me, Rome, and Duddy—and it came out great. Obviously it worked, and we’re really proud of that. Now I’ll come up with an idea or Duddy will come up with an idea, and then we’ll go sit down in the studio in Newport with our engineer/producer/friend Louis Richards. We’re kinda doing it more on our own, and it’s working out really well.
Photo by: Jimmy Swan
Do you have a favorite track to play live from the new set of songs? Or a favorite track from the old album that you like to play?
My favorite track from the old album is “Believe.” The lyrics are my favorite off the album, and it’s just really fun to play live. It’s kind of a crowd interactive song and the audience gets really into it. We just started playing a couple new songs, and there’s this one called “We Will Rise” that I really like playing. It’s really reggae-ish, and we get to really dub out my vocals. It’s more jammy, which is fun because we get to just mess around and play music.
Do you have a favorite band that you’ve had a chance to tour with?
The band we’re closest to is probably Sublime with Rome. We had been so close with Rome before, and we had actually known Eric from Sublime before too. We all met out of this little studio in Newport, 17th Street Recording Studios. Once we got on the road, it was just like a big family, and then we stayed out for so long together. We just recently met back up to do a couple of festivals, and it was funny how much everybody missed each other. We’ll definitely get back out with those guys.
The Expendables are another reggae rock band from Santa Cruz that are really fun to tour with. They took us out when nobody really knew us. We got really close with those guys. We still see them at shows, and it’s really fun.
The Dirty Heads are playing Sunset Strip Music Festival this year. Do you have anything special planned for that show?
Yeah. We’re probably gonna be playing some songs we’ve never played. We’ll bring out some new tracks, and we’ll see if Rome will show up and do “Lay Me Down” if he’s in town.
That’s awesome. Are there any bands that you’re excited to see play at Sunset Strip?
Motley Crue’s playing. That’s awesome, right? How can you not like that?
It seems that the touring wraps up after Sunset Strip. Besides working on the new album, what do you have planned for the rest of the year?
We’re recording the new album in September, and then we go back out on tour in October with a band that I think everybody’s really gonna be stoked on. I feel like we fit together, so that’ll be really good.
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