A Conversation with Devin – HuffPost 4.10.12

Mike Ragogna: Devin!

Devin: Hello, how are you?

MR: I’m fine, you?

D: Swell.

MR: Peachy. So what’s your deal? What is “Devin”?

D: Devin is pretty straight rock ‘n’ roll. We have a high-energy set that we play. We’re brand new and we’re having the album out so we have a lot ahead of us.

MR: So you’re on the Frenchkiss label and there have been all these comparisons to David Johansen and Iggy Pop. Are they fair comparisons?

D: Yes, I agree with all of that. That’s the source material that I’m taking from directly and that’s the music that I like, so that’s what I’m trying to do.

MR: So beyond Iggy, David Johansen and the New York Dolls, who or what are your influences?

D: Those dudes. The ’70s were really great for rock ‘n’ roll. Iggy Pop is just genius. Besides that prot-punk stuff, definitely, original rock ‘n’ roll, which is what they were going back to in the ’70s–’50s stuff.

MR: What do you think of classic acts like The Rolling Stones?

D: I don’t like them. (laughs) Mick Jagger is the best, undeniably.

MR: Let’s look at some of the songs on your new album Romancing. First of all, you start off with “Masochist.”

D: That’s my favorite. It’s also pretty much the newest one, I wrote it right before we went into the studio. We recorded in August, so it was a while ago.

MR: So this album has been finished for a bit.

D: Yeah.

MR: Are there any songs that didn’t make the album?

D: Yeah, we recorded eighteen and twelve made it on there. They’re all good songs, it’s just what the album was about at the end. I just wanted to record everything that I had, I had twelve songs.

MR: Considering your larger amount of songs, how did you end up slicing away six songs off the project?

D: It was really difficult because it’s not just me. People paid for the album so there are other people you have to deal with. But it’s the label that managed me. There are like ten lists coming, “I think this, I think this…,” so it’s always a fight. But luckily, we had the theme of romance.

MR: With an album titled Romancing, but then there’s that opening song, “Masochist.”

D: Exactly.

MR: (laughs) Well, that’s one way to romance. By the way, how old are you?

D: I’m 28.

MR: Okay, and I imagine by now, you’ve racked up plenty of relationships and even if they weren’t super deep, you’ve at least had entanglements.

D: It doesn’t even have to be personal. You see people, just your friends, what they go through.

MR: Exactly, that was my next question. How do you write, where does it come from? From personal experience or also from observing other people?

D: It’s all of it. It’s fantasy, even daydreaming about having a horrible relationship. Just to have that crazy emotion that you never even had or you saw somebody else had, or from friends, or obviously personal. It’s all of that. To build a song that is its own specific thing is not real life in the end, you’re trying to make a good song.

MR: Do you sit down in back of an instrument or hear it in your head then go to the instrument later?

D: A bunch of different ways. But all these songs that I have, these are the best songs that I’ve written in my life, this whole group of songs, that rock ‘n’ roll style. I’ve recorded them all at home first–demo versions on my computer–and I use mostly programmed instruments, programmed drums. I usually start it with the drums, and then try to work up the melody. But it’s mostly the rhythm, which is really important to me. That’s why it took me so long to find a drummer for this band, to find a drummer that could do the rhythms. To play a half-an-hour set and all the tempos are 180, you need a real tough guy to do it.

MR: How tight are you with this band and how tight is this band?

D: We’ve been on the road for our third week, and that’s it. We’ve played a couple of shows in New York but we’ve only been on the road for three weeks, not even, so there’s not much experience. But I work them really hard plus they are really good musicians. That’s why it took me a long time to find them because I didn’t want to waste time with people that you know can’t do it. We went to London for a whole week and that straightened us out because the audience was different than Americans.

MR: Are they more demanding? How are they different?

D: Not demanding, but their expectation for rock is much higher. Rock is so busted in America, you can really do whatever you want and people are like, “I guess.” There’s no expectation. But since rock is like a machine over there, in the UK, and I hear Europe…I haven’t been there. They hold it higher and have an expectation. There are really great rock bands, which are respected there, which is not true here in America.

MR: Why do you think that’s the case? What happens there?

D: Well, it’s just a machine. I’m from New York and I really haven’t traveled much. But in New York, there’s a hip-hop machine on the radio and it’s awesome. Me being rock, I could never be on a hip-hop station, it doesn’t make any sense. But a new hip-hop act comes out and you see they’re on the radio, which is huge. Everyone’s listening to it. I hear about all the things that are happening, they’re selling out shows for new artists, they’re talking to them, you get to know them. There’s no rock machine like that in New York.

MR: Everything’s in New York, although it’s really scattered.

D: Exactly. You could do whatever you want. It’s really fragmented.

MR: What got you into music, what got you into performing?

D: I started late because I wasn’t that ambitious or had dreams when I was five, like, “I’m going to be a rock star” or anything like that. It doesn’t make sense to dream about something that’s not possible. But then, it was just out of pure boredom. After I went to college, I’m just hanging around in Brooklyn doing absolutely nothing. So just out of pure boredom out of my room, no friends worthwhile or anything, out of that, I found Iggy Pop, which is really important to me. Then I started looking at that music, so later, a couple years ago, I started really getting obsessed, seriously obsessed. I could have recorded on a computer, anyone could do it, so it was just me listening on headphones recording all the time, all day. I started to get good songs, finally, after a year of doing that. I got the first song and thought, “Wow that’s a good song.” I started building on that, figuring out what I could actually do.

MR: You’re a late bloomer, sir.

D: Yeah.

MR: You mentioned that you began creating because you were in solitude. Was that solitude also the place where your topics came from?

D: Yeah. I have a song “In My Solitude,” that’s pretty straight-forward. It really is, it’s just me. That’s why it’s a different band, and that’s why it’s been hard to find a band, to find people to surrender themselves to the project. There is really no other creative input–it’s not a band where we’re all coming up with parts, it’s not like a collaborative thing, even in the studio. It’s difficult.

MR: Did you produce yourself?

D: No. I wanted to, but didn’t. We worked with Chris Zane who’s a great producer. He got a great sound. I was extremely nervous. I was giving it up from working on my own and producing all this stuff, which was really nerve-wracking, for a stranger to come in and produce the album. We had a lot of talks throughout the recording of it. But it came out really great.

MR: How were you “discovered”?

D: That was great. The thing is, I really hadn’t performed much, I didn’t have a band. I just had the demos, but I was sending the demos to everyone, just emailing them, emailing all the songs to whomever–promoters, labels–not expecting much. I didn’t send it to French Kiss, but I sent it to Neon Gold, which is a singles label and has some sort of connection with French Kiss. Sid got it, and I wake up one more, just a regular morning, I don’t think I was working, I go in the emails and see a MySpace message and think, “What is this?” “MySpace – Sid.” It says, “This is Syd of Frenchkiss” through a MySpace message. What a weird way to do it, but it was crazy.

MR: And considering MySpace these days, I’m going to throw it out there, it seems like it’s kind of dead, right?

D: Yeah, it was so weird. I don’t know why he chose to do that. But Sid is awesome. That was basically a long time ago, a year and half ago, that he messaged me. We met a bunch of times and he said, “I want to make that album and I think you should be here.” That’s where it started. But it started from the demos because he heard these songs and he knew that they were good, that they could be good.

MR: We talked a little bit about “My Solitude,” the basics of where that came from, and also “Masochist.” Can you also go into your cover of “Born To Cry”?

D: Yeah, “Born To Cry.” That’s taken from Johnny Thunders, or that might be a Dion song that he covers, “Born To Cry.” We just took it because it’s great. Both artists are great, so I got that in there. That was a fairly early song that I wrote out of this grouping. It’s a fairly upbeat song, I’m taking from more early childhood songs. But all the songs are life-affirming songs. They’re all positive songs. It’s like being happy about even the terrible times.

MR: Even with titles like “I Died In New Horrors”?

D: “…New Horrors” is a great love song, a realistic love song, same as “Masochist.”

MR: I love the concept behind “…New Horrors,” it’s like, “Do I really want to be in another relationship?”

D: Exactly. Yeah, are we going to do this? But we don’t have any choice so we go through it.

MR: So what about “Forever Is Only A Moment”?

D: Yeah that was a later song written around “Masochist.” “Forever Is Only A Moment,” that’s a different song, I don’t think it’s a direct song to a girl. A lot of them are like from me to a girl,” written through that tone. “Forever…” was pretty complicated for me, the rhyme scheme. I was thinking about it differently, the whole music loop is taken from Ricky Nelson “When Fools Rush In.”

MR: Right.”Fools rush in where angels fear to tread…”

D: Right, that song. I heard it, got really obsessed because that’s what usually happens. Most songs are based on another song, or have something, a direct feeling, in mind. That one? I just loved it, the guitar solo, it was really crazy. It’s a great sound, and rhythm. I don’t have a song like that, so I just took that and I listened to that, and I think about what I could write about. It’s a different kind of song, “Forever Is Only A Moment” is a broad idea song.

MR: Even though you’re a new artist, what advice do you have for new artists?

D: I think recording on your own is really cool because it worked for me. I know a lot of musicians. If you’re in New York, everyone is a musician. You hear about all the terrible things, they tell you something and you think that’s a terrible idea. Like, I’m going to waste $5,000, go into a studio, just be rushed, and have a terrible recording, that’s just not worth it. I think I spent $1,000, but this is a while ago. I bought an Apple computer, speakers, and an M-Box, ProTools and that’s it. That’s all you need. I had a guitar and plugged directly in. You just can record. When you record and you can hear your voice back, you hear what you’re doing, there is no lying or anything. You hear yourself and you hear what you’re capable of doing. Then you can work on that privately, with no other pressure, in your room. Then you have a recording that you can give to people, it’s real proof and it has helped me. That’s the reason that I got French Kiss.

MR: Words of wisdom, Mr. Devin?

D: More words of wisdom?

MR: Yes. In general, to the world, not just to new artists.

D: Stay positive, life is pretty horrible. I say life is horrible, that’s my default face and energy, but obviously not. I’m having a great time. But yeah, stay positive.

MR: That’s good. Stay positive. If you were in a room with David Johansen right now, what would you say to him?

D: I wouldn’t say anything, I don’t want to know.

MR: Is that because you don’t want to break the image of your hero?

D: Yes.

MR: Excellent. I understand completely how one puts them on a high pedestal, and then they become human.

D: Definitely. I could be let down so easily, even going to places, any new thing. So I wouldn’t want to do that.

MR: Devin, I really appreciate your time, all the best of luck in the future.

D: Thank you so much, I love that you talked to me.

Transcribed by Narayana Windenberger