Dare Dukes releases second full-length album
Photo by Chia Chong courtesy of Dare Dukes
“Thugs and China Dolls” available this Tuesday
Fans of M. Ward and Architecture in Helsinki, would be interested to see an all-ages Dare Dukes show this weekend. On Thursday, Jan. 19 at 6:30 p.m., Dukes celebrates the release of his second album, “Thugs and China Dolls” at The Sentient Bean on Park Avenue.
While it’s been three years since Dukes’ first album, “Prettiest Transmitter of All”, the songwriter’s album shows he’s been hard at work between albums. “The one big difference is that there are tons more people on this album. I’m not that great of a musician, but I did what I could with different players,” said Dukes.
Some members of the long roster of collaborators include Peter Hess from TV On The Radio and Thayer Sarrano from Of Montreal. Additionally, singer-songwriter Jim White produced “Simon Says,” a track Dukes almost threw out.
“‘Simon Says’ was a really weird song for me. I recorded it twice, and both times I hated how it sounded. The arrangement didn’t sound right, and I was ready to axe it.
“Then I met Jim [White.] He really loved the song and told me how he would do it.
“It was totally different than how I imagined it but I agreed that’s how it should be done. We recorded it in the way that’s the most fun to record. If you have a ton of money, this is how you record. You go song by song because we started with my tracks.”
Another noteworthy contribution comes from Dukes’ wife, Susan Falls. The couple met over seven years ago while living in New York. Falls, a professor of Cultural Anthropology at Savannah College of Art and Design, plays piano on the track “Mighty Love.”
“My grandmother had given me a piano years ago,” Falls said. “Of course, I’m from North Carolina, and I had no way to take it to New York. My sister had it for ages. When I came to Savannah, I thought, I’m going to bring it down. He[Dukes] did manage to teach me a couple songs.”
While Falls’ has her grandmother’s piano, Dukes actually did not grow up in a musical family. The singer-songwriter said he discovered music while listening to his father’s radio.
“My dad listened to Perry Como. It was a good compromise if I got him to listen to Strauss waltzes,” said Dukes.
“I know the first moment I feel like I discovered music was when I was about ten years old.
My father had his radio on a baseball game and I was sitting in the living room playing legos. When he flipped the channel and I heard disco, I was like ‘Oh my God.’ It was on AM radio and I loved it.
“I remember feeling it was like a window had opened up.”
After a series of what Dukes deemed bad piano teachers, he eventually formed a band in high school. “I was in a bad, hilarious rock band in junior high, called Exodus. It was named that because like most good rock bands of the time, we were getting our name from the Bible.”
Dukes was able to use his band membership as a reason to convince his mother to get him guitar lessons.
“I found a guy who could teach me ‘House of the Rising Sun.’ I didn’t want to learn the instrument, I wanted to learn the song. Which, now that I say that, it’s kind of interesting.” After his high school band, the singer-songwriter lived in Minneapolis for a while and had a band that he described as derivative of the Pixies.
“That was my first real band. I really loved the Pixies and Fugazi. It’s funny, because at the time, I really felt like I was the only person who loved them [the Pixies] as much. After the fact, I read that Kurt Coban wrote ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ because he was trying to write a Pixies song.”
After his early band years, Dukes moved from Minneapolis to New York in order to write a novel. He sold all of his records and quit playing music.
“I had this amazing record collection, from my very first record on, with almost every David Bowie record up to “Let’s Dance” and weird new Romantics. I had a ton of great music, and it was a bad choice. I thought it would be interesting and symbolic to sell all of my music.
“I got 113 dollars for 2,000 records. “
Because he was moving to New York, he needed to have nothing with him except what was in the back of his Subaru station wagon. He said because he was going to be a novelist, he felt he had to leave his music behind.
“I eradicated that part of my life. I didn’t have any instruments.”
Dukes loaned his instruments to people and never got them back. He moved to New York, and began working on his novel. Dukes said at the time, his life began to fall apart.
“The novel never got published. I got an agent, but the novel never got published. As the novel wasn’t getting published, I really just crashed and burned. When I crashed and burned, I was forced to make new choices. One of the choices I made while I was in that process was to ask myself ‘why am I not playing music?’”
Dukes said his music started insisting itself upon him. He was trying to work on a second novel, and could not work on it. While he continued to work on his second novel, but he started to place music as more of a priority in his life.
“At one point, it just became clear that I was banging my head against this novel. I knew some professional musicians and they liked my stuff and they started playing out with me. It was fun and it felt right.”
When Falls secured a job at SCAD in Savannah, Dukes wanted to memorialize what he was doing with his band in New York. “I got some studio time and we recorded it. I wasn’t really thinking of putting it out. It sounded a lot better then I thought it was going to sound. So, when I got down here [to Savannah], I started adding tracks.”
Falls said they were both looking forward to the move. “Everything happened really fast,” she said. “We were just kind of ready for a change. We came down here and looked around and felt like Savannah was an interesting town. It was the entire opposite of New York.
“We thought it would be an adventure.”
Shortly after moving to Savannah, Dukes added to the tracks he recorded in New York. The memorial became the backbone for his 2008 release “Prettiest Transmitter of All.” Dukes described neglecting his music, as if it were like neglecting his dog. “It was like my dog was outside, and I finally let him come into the living room. Something seemed right about honoring my music.
“Its really easy to go insane with music, but I could probably say that about anything I do.
“I was really pleasantly surprised with the attention the first record received and I went ‘Oh, so I guess I kind of am a musician. That’s interesting. What will I do with that?’
The answer to that question is “Thugs and China Dolls.” The second album, is self-aware with greater attention to lyrics and arrangements.
“The first time that I heard the album, I just thought ‘wow.’” Falls said. “I’ve been watching from the sidelines of course. I know the songs. I’ve heard him play them hundreds of times, but when I heard them altogether,
“When I heard the whole arc of the whole project, I felt really happy and proud.
“I was blown away.” Part of the wow-factor in “Thugs and China Dolls”, might be Dukes’ background in writing and storytelling, that shines through lyrically.
“I do like writing songs and stories about other people,” Dukes said. “There’s a place, where you force yourself to take an imaginative leap. To me, you’re more likely to create something dynamic than if I sit down and scrutinize my everyday existence.”
Part of that everyday existence for Dukes is also performing live, which he says he is still not entirely comfortable doing.
“Playing live still terrifies me. I enjoy it once I’ve started. Sometimes I hate it the whole time. Sometimes I know the way I’m feeling about it is totally wrong.”
However, he also said that he looks forward to his upcoming release party at the Bean, specifically because of the venue itself.
“One of the reasons I love The Sentient Bean is that the audiences there are very respectful. They close the curtain and they just watch you. It’s really amazing. I have a lot of quiet songs so it’s nice to be able to play venues like that.
“It’s wonderful to play somewhere like the bean where I can walk into the audience without a mic and have everybody listen.”
